Welcome to the OutlinerSoftware.com discussion forum. Here is some basic info to get you started and some idea of what will be added shortly.

Anyone can browse the forum. To post, you must register and then login. You must be approved before your posts will appear; this will happen soon after your first post.

The forum is currently "plain text" - you can't post HTML or any formatting at this point. Web addresses will automatically be turned into links, however.

Once registered and logged in, you can post new topics or reply to individual messages within a topic. When replying, you can post a standard blank reply or choose to post a quoted reply - this is like replying in an email program that quotes the message you are responding to so you can reply inline to previous comments.

There are a few tweaks and design changes to be made. After that, here is what will be coming up (in no particular order):

- user account edit (so you can change your password, etc.)
- password reset (in case you forget your password)
- preview of message before submitting post
- ability to edit your own posts
- RSS feed of new posts
- optional email notifications of new posts
- ability for members to export all messages to a downloadable text file
- ability to choose your time zone and display messages in your own time (all times are currently displayed as GMT)

Let me know if you encounter any problems or have suggestions.

Thanks,
Chris

Hello Chris,

This looks like a nice place for discussions; good job!

Cheers
Alexander

Chris,

Many thanks for setting this up, It all looks very good.

Graham

Chris Murtland wrote:

Welcome to the OutlinerSoftware.com discussion forum.

Chris, site is looking good. Many thanks for all your work.

Daly

Hello Chris

Excellent job so far. The design is light years ahead of ye olde outliners.com.

A question if I may? At the top level of topic listings, is it planned to include some info about the replies? I wouldn't have known Graham had replied to you, until I scrolled to the bottom of your original post.

Thanks

Jack

Hello Chris and Everybody!

Many thanks, Chris, for your work. It is so good to this forum again up and running!

Please find some comments below:

Chris Murtland wrote:

The forum is
currently "plain text" - you can't post HTML or any formatting at this point. Web
addresses will automatically be turned into links, however.

For me, plain text is OK. It is even easier to store the snippets I need in my favorite netXtract KBase manager.

- user account edit (so you can change your password, etc.)
- password reset (in case you forget your password)

This would be very important because of security reasons...

- RSS feed of new posts

If it makes no difference for you and others, could you please make the above your first priority? I like this feature very much...

- ability for members to export all messages to a downloadable text file

Would it be possible to export ALL or SELECTED topics/messages?

And one more: information on the number of replies in each topic on the topic list would be of great help.

With best regards.

Wojciech

Jack,

Yes, the main topic list should show the name of the person who made the last post; currently it's showing the person who created the topic. The topic with the most recent post will show at the top of the list. I'll also add the number of posts in a topic in this view.

Chris

Jack Crawford wrote:

A question if I may? At the top level of topic listings, is it planned
to include some info about the replies? I wouldn't have known Graham had replied to
you, until I scrolled to the bottom of your original post.

Thanks for the comments Wojciech (and everyone else).

Wojciech wrote:

>- user account edit (so you can change your
password, etc.)
>- password reset (in case you forget your password)

This would be
very important because of security reasons...

Yes, this will probably be the first thing I add.

>- RSS feed of new posts

If it makes
no difference for you and others, could you please make the above your first priority?
I like this feature very much...

I hope to add this one very soon.

>- ability for members to export all messages to a
downloadable text file
Would it be possible to export ALL or SELECTED
topics/messages?

At first, it will probably just be one file with ALL topics/messages. Down the road, the export could be expanded to let you select a range of topics or export topics based on a search.

Chris

Good work, Chris. This is looking excellent.

Now that we have three sites (one defunct, of course), the next thing to decide will be when and how to direct people to outliners.com's permanent replacement - which I assume will be this one.

Automatic re-direction from the original outliners.com would be a good solution, if Dave Winer would do that for us. As for the yahoo groups site which, thanks to Steve Cohen, has been - and continues to be - a great fallback site, traffic on that will probably dwindle naturally as people migrate over here.

We could also do something more proactive - e.g., individual emails to recent contributers to outliners.com. Incidentally, I tried to contact Stephen Diamond about this site via outliners.com's membership email service, but apparently it is not working. If anyone else has his address, could they let him know, please?

Derek

Automatic re-direction from the original outliners.com would be a good solution,
if Dave Winer would do that for us.

I suggest to wait with this at least until the Outliners.com archive is available at our new site! Until then a simple link placed at Dave Winer site should be better.
W.

I want to first fix any bugs preventing people using certain browsers from posting. Then I'll take a break from making any more changes here and get back to seeing what can be done with the file I have of the outliners.com messages. I wasn't very encouraged by my first quick attempts to make it into something usable.

Chris

Thanks, Chris. I can see the posting buttons now. :D

Thanks to Chris and others who have helped to resurrect a great discussion forum!

This site has been and will continue to be a great site for information sharing.

Hey Chris,

I'm new to the forum and made a first post months ago, but it never showed up, and I didn't receive any feedback over it being rejected for posting either. Any idea why that would be the case?

Seeing as only the same few names seem to be posting here all the time, I wouldn't be surprised if this was some elitist forum that doesn't "let in" new members. But if that is the case, a message warning of this fact would be better than silently rejecting someone's posts.

"Elitist"? Hardly. Sometimes the initial post from a new member gets missed. No doubt Chris will take care of things.

Lucine wrote:

I wouldn't be surprised if this was some elitist forum that doesn't "let
in" new members.

Lucine wrote:

I'm new to the forum and made a first post months ago, but it never
showed up, and I didn't receive any feedback over it being rejected for
posting either. Any idea why that would be the case?

The fact that your post show up here suggests that you've already been approved as member. So welcome and post away.

Hi Lucine,

I apologize for missing your first post. The number of spam registrations/posts has really gone up in the past year, and sometimes I miss legitimate first-time postings as a result. I do plan on improving the spam prevention and making some other improvements, but haven't had much spare time lately.

Welcome to the forum!
Chris

Lucine wrote:

Hey Chris,

I'm new to the forum and made a first post months ago, but it never
showed up, and I didn't receive any feedback over it being rejected for
posting either. Any idea why that would be the case?

I registered recently and posted, it did not show up. Being an ex coder, I felt it was a sys glitch. I posted again fairly immediately and it showed up immediately and knew I was right.

Also yesterday in a thread two users posts were DP'ed (not a porn term, forum jargon for Double-Posted), just the usual occasional glitches with almost all forum wares.

This outlining field is a fairly small interest area. It is not exactly a forum for gamers or dating or cars or politics etc or whatever is popular with billions online these days.

It seemed obvious to me even before the admin is fairly out of free time, like so many of us, but genuinely interested in providing a space for members having something to say about outlining. So any lurkers having to wait for approval or having to re-post, do persist.

I've noticed the double-posting glitch generally happens over slow internet connections. No idea why that should be, but it's not a major issue.

I had two posts that doubled, but I think the problem was external to this site. Note well, lest I forfeit status as a (l)user, I must deny any culpability.

In defense, I've found my trackpad changes it's demeanor a little when the battery runs low. I swear sometimes the haptic click-back gets delayed just enough for me to try again.

The reaction time of a cheetah can be such a burden. Fortunately, age will cure that before long. Sigh.