Suggestions for the RC India forum/website

[anwar]

I was trying to take from the SMF (forum software) contributions, as the licensing is clear.  There are others too.

[anwar]

Ok, got couple that seem to fit the conditions.

   using  : rofl :  without the spaces.

   using : hatsoff : without the spaces.

Thank you SLS for forcing me to think about "intitle:" search in Google

[AEROVISHWA]

yep you got that,.....!! 

[anwar]

A small feature addition... the join date (month + year) has been made visible for everyone on each post.

[anwar]

One more small update... all emails posted in public are now rendered with Javascript, so that spam bots cannot harvest mails directly from the site. 

A small negative/side effect of this is that emails may not display properly if you are browsing with javascript disabled, or if your browser does not support javascript (probable in mobile devices).

[anwar]

OK, the reputation system is pretty much ready to go (barring unforeseen issues).  Everyone starts now with 100 "Reputation Points", and that can be seen in your Profile page.   100 Reputation "Points" equates to 1 Reputation "Power" and that is what is shown below your name in every post.  1000 Reputation "Points" will add one more "reputation bar" below your name in every post.

The most interesting thing about this is that when you give someone reputation, the actual number of points they get is based on your reputation !  So if someone with higher reputation gives a reputation to someone else for any post, the receiver will get more points !

Multiple people asked about how the reputation system works.  In addition to the above details, please note the following :

1.  Each new topic adds 3 reputation points, and each post adds 1 reputation point.

2.  The blue heart icon is used to give reputation to others, so it will NOT be displayed against your own posts (since it does not make sense to give reputation to yourself).

3.  If a member does not pick himself a group (Plane Lover, Car Lover etc) during registration, then the use is placed in a "Default Member" group for sometime, but an automated job moves such members to "Plane Lover" group periodically.

[abhay]

I think, it should be mandatory to fill up the age for every forum member..

Reason being, being an Indian, it seems really confusing to me whether to represent a member by "buddy" or "sir" who is not in personal touch.
I mean, it feels really embarracing when you call a person by name, who is much elder to you, just misinterpreting him as of similar age.

Its an indian forum. And english language lacks only this capability.

[SunLikeStar]

I would never fill up my age and get people to call me sir/uncle/bhaiya  

I mean, it feels really embarracing when you call a person by name, who is much elder to you

Why should you feel embarised Calling sir is just an imperial thing left in India by the british. Go outside India and start calling people sir and they would think you are a fool and some might even get offended. I call every one by their first name who is not my relative, and as far as I have seen, people really appreciated it. There is a fellow flyer at our field who is 75+ and I always call him by his first name 'Ranjit'.
Also the company I work for spends decent amount of time/effort/money to train people to call everyone by first name. In fact you are held responsible if some one calls you sir, and you get some cabin time with the HR manager

[CrazyPilot]

Can be agree on making it optional?

[abhay]

Even i am not going to call anyone bhaiya, chacha, etc..

I agree with SunLikeStar to some extent.But the moment you get to know people personally, you wont like to call them by just name. you will definitely add some suffix or prefix.
I think you have been in corporate world for a long time, so you wont feel it.

I knew that many people will not agree with my point because there is s solid reason, i.e. globalization of english language.And calling a person by name is globally accepted. Even i will follow it when ill go outside india. but at the moment forum belongs to india.

My thinking might be due to the locallity and environment i have been brought up in.But still i would like to keep up with my request, until one gives me a solid reason.

[SunLikeStar]

You don't have to change your ways, I was just explaining my case My point is some people might not agree with making age compulsory.

[anwar]

On an open forum like this, there is nothing wrong with calling someone by first name or by "Sir" or even "bhai" (regardless of age).  As we get to know people, one may change from calling someone by their first name to "sir" or "bhai" or something like that (or it can go the other way around); but that remains a personal choice.

We give more respect to some people than others due to a variety of reasons... "age" is only one of them (although it is probably the biggest reason in our culture).  As a matter of policy, we will not request people's personal details to be made public on this forum (earlier thoughts on privacy were stated in this post : http://www.rcindia.org/rc-india-forum/suggestions/msg63414/#msg63414).

[abhay]

I agree..

[asinghatiya]

I have a few observations and small suggestion. 

Observation:
I am not sure about the total number of members at this forum but observing from quite some time that very few of them are active. 
People prefer to respond on the posts by their known once. 

Suggestion:
Can we have an open chat module along with main board wherein online members can talk with each other in public or in private, this will make this place more live and dynamic.   
Two possible Chat rooms 1)Newbies 2) Advenced. 

[iamahuman]

I believe we have had this request before but Anwar gave an answer. It was on the lines of this..... A chat room beats the purpose of the forum which is sharing of information. I'm not sure many would use the public chat when a private chat is on hand. I would like a chat room though. And I would prefer we stay in a mixed group as we are. No need to have separate rooms for " newbies" and " advanced" members.

[anwar]

Online chat ?

http://www.rcindia.org/rc-india-forum/suggestions/msg18574/#msg18574

[CrazyPilot]

Online chat ?

http://www.rcindia.org/rc-india-forum/suggestions/msg18574/#msg18574

IMHO online chat would be very helpful in some cases we have seen lately. The idiotic response of some members can be avoided if we had an option to chat. like asking pics for items for sale.

[anwar]

Can't that be done quite well over PM ? 

[asinghatiya]

Anwar Shabh, before Blackberry Messanger people use to send messages via sms only. Once we upgrade to BBM, the convenience of a chat module was felt and inconvenience involved in writing sms'.

My humble submission is that Chat would enable all the online members to contribute and interact in a better way. You will agree to the fact that many members came online everyday but didnt contribute or post anything because in static forum like this you need to draft your thought 'well' before posting it which is quite a hassel.  Chat will make it more fluid and dynamic.

When we say Chat first impression came to our mind is either of Yahoo or Gtalk but we can have an innovative chat module unlike these traditional once which will solve the purpose of making the forum more live.

All the posts on this forum are like high quality literature  about Aeromodelling compiled by experts and if we add chat that will fulfill the gap of non participative members.

To start with, as a pilot project you may like to activate chat module in select topics like chatter zone or for sale threads and monitor the impact.. .. I hope the above is in order, btw this is a pure suggestion and I am a non technical person so not sure abt the time and financial involvement in this module and  you are the best person to judge this.

[anwar]

The whole point is that chat will NOT make the forum alive or active... it would only work the opposite way   This is the reason why pretty much all other (big?) forums do not have this feature.  Plus if people do want to chat, they have everything from BBM to MSN to GTalk to Facebook !

Some people publish their IM (instant messenger) information in their profile here.

[asinghatiya]

in that case, you are the best judge.  ......

[SunLikeStar]

Any chance of having reason for edit field when editing posts?

[anwar]

This can be added... I need to look into a package conflict, and possibly tweak the mod source code a bit, as it seems incompatible with the existing list of mods.

[FlyJoe]

Jus a suggestion coz of a observation made a lil while back -

Can it mandatory where bank details (counterfoils , transaction nos, Transaction Ref:) should be sent as attachments via PM?
Where we use the insert image option. and avoid posting them on the thread...

Maybe this is a rule already - I didnt run a search.

cheers

[dst161]

Is it possible to bookmark a specific reply of a topic?

The reason I am asking this is that there is a lot of important/informative information on this forum spread across many topics.

More over many topics have plenty of replies spanning across pages, I am sure there are many of us who want to bookmark specific replies in a topic or else it becomes hard to search the reply in a topic where there a many replies across multiple pages.

Please let us know if bookmarking a reply can be made available.

I am sure all the members will love it.