- I like that things are being fixed.
- I like the "Go UP" button at the end of a thread.
just read an OLD thread. in the new quick reply box, a red warning " this thread is older than 120 days...."
the new quick reply box seems to offer a solution to the problem of loosing access to attachments. if you are commenting and want to go review that attachment from someone, you can, without loosing your post.
I love two things about the upgrade
A) the new quick reply box, it finally has formatting capability, something I asked for in the last upgrade.
B) the text colour, it has contrast with the background and I can finally read the words on a page 
For my money I think we are almost back to a workable forum, I think there are two serious outstanding items
A) the post count, people have lost 1000s of posts and we are quite precious about this.
B) unread post feature, it doesn't work yet
C) no email notifications
EDIT: added C
Rob
I like the red glow (which can be selected for another colour).
I actually like the smaller font - more can fit on the screen, I don't know how it affects pad users, presumably more on the same page is nicer, but makes it more difficult to use a touch screen. (Hint - get a proper mouse and plug it in to the USB-to-go adapter.)
To go with the smaller font, the ability to choose 25 topics on an index page, and 25 (or more) responses on a thread, is superb on such a busy forum.
I don't find the "Go Up" button useful (my keyboard has a "Home" key). The funny one on eBay is a complete nuisance.
The new Blue Left and Right arrows on multi page posts is nice on the iPad.
I'm trying to stay positive about this upgrade but it's getting harder and harder, there are a few outstanding issues that are serious IMO and that don't appear to be being addressed because we're getting (almost) no feedback. We don't even know if they are on the todo list.
It's interesting that this "pro" thread has yet to make 2 pages but on the "con" side there are dozens of threads many of which are dozens of pages. I know it's human nature to complain when something is wrong but stay quiet when it's ok, but still.
Rob
What is telling, is there aren't any more likes.
This has been a nightmare.
I just do not understand the why.
You upgrade to a new system to gain, not retreat.
I don't see any compelling reason for any of this.
I try to be optimistic but this time, it's really really hard.
Hi Everyone,
I will explain the reasons behind the update. The forum update was absolutely needed to allow us in the immediate future to make changes. The old forum code was completely untouchable and very hard to maintain (no git repo from the SMF community and we diverged too much from the codebase). Now we have:
- A complete separate server, used for the Forum only
- An optimized way to serve attachments (with SSD disks)
- We upgraded from php5.3 to 5.4, much more secure and fast
- Upgraded the Mysql from version 5.5 to 5.6
- We are now able to change the code in a quick way, not struggling for changes
Many other features were implemented for moderators so, thanks to their great work, you will see lesser and lesser spam.
There is a long list of bugs and we are solving them one by one day after day. I am asking you to look at the potential fixes we can do in the future and to be patient about current issues. We are trying to provide you the best forum experience.
..
Spam.
May have been suggested before.
Lots of web sites force you to give a valid email address before you can join a forum and you then have to acknowledge a return request.
Lots ask you to respond to a fuzzy graphic of numbers or characters for computer spamming.
Maybe have a time period (24hr) that you have to wait before are allowed to post.
Perhaps this could be used here to help the moderators deal with spammers.
@mastrolinux, thanks for the heads up, I know that changes are not all about the users and it sounds like it will be worth it in the end.
I'll repeat my personal todo list from post #3
A) the post count, people have lost 1000s of posts and we are quite precious about this.
B) unread post feature, it doesn't work yet
C) no email notifications
Any chance these are being worked on?
Rob
Graynomad:
A) the post count, people have lost 1000s of posts and we are quite precious about this.
Is this just from the forums that are read only (2005-2010), as they read zero posts. I don't think they would have added in the structure if they were planning on removing it. Probably back soon.
LarryD:
Lots ask you to respond to a fuzzy graphic of numbers or characters for computer spamming.
We recently had spam advertising Captcha-cracking. I was astonished and saddened by how cheap this is - they were quoting something like 38 cents (I assume US) per thousand. 
(One) Rumour is - they attach the Captcha cracking to a porn site, either in addition to or instead of the real captcha that they have people solve to post comments.
Need I say it, no end of willing volunteers to do that work. :o
(Even if it is not AI.)
This: Google Cracks Its Own Captchas and the fact than Amazon Mechanical Turks exists, will never end the business of human spammers.
Computers are probably better at reading Captchas than humans. Most of them are undecipherable these days.
Correct me if I am wrong, but an email "loop" to register is pretty effective at bouncing (machine, bulk) spam.
I just discovered the "PRINT" button on the top right hand corner of a thread.
With the iPad, it helps with the small font size and displays the whole Code window section.
mastrolinux:
This: Google Cracks Its Own Captchas and the fact than Amazon Mechanical Turks exists, will never end the business of human spammers.
I still think that spammers have a different profile to genuine new users:
- The usually use some "bulk" email address like Gmail
- The post usually has links in it
- It usually does not have any recognizable words about electronics (some do but certainly not all)
- There are usually "giveaway" words like "TV show", "kitchen", etc.
- Some sort of Bayesian filter should be able to identify a lot of it. A while ago Paul Graham (also Better Bayesian Filtering) described how you can use such a filter, because whatever the nature of the site, some words are more likely than others to appear. However Bayesian filters can tend to be tricked by messages that are 90% gibberish, followed by a link to the target site (we have been getting quite a few of these).
Even so, I think that you could test new users for "probably OK" against "suspicious" where even putting any sort of link in the message could be considered suspicious. Then you put those users into a "waiting moderator approval" list.
Here's one that just arrived, for example:
your skin actually helps those problems %uh a lot of times people whose stories winter actually will reduce their reliance museum others explosion more strikes just because changed so Wow and so what do you think is the future organic meeting less where do we think you'll love this going cut I feel like it's just starting to you know it's really getting steamed where do we see it going in the future well hopefully except I'm more than just trend right have played a sense a movement I'm and we can start to see organic I'm being so I'll eat be. am everywhere as opposed to having to go to that and only them or be cheap shots are going online and branch offices a plan with AT&T organic an.
Surely that could be filtered out? It was in Programming, but no key words there like "code" or "loop" etc.
It's pretty common to disable links in the first 5 posts or so of new users. That pretty much eliminates link-based spam.