Technical Support Forum Latest Posts 2008-06-19T04:58:46Z E-Democracy.Org Forums http://forums.e-democracy.org http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/edem-support/messages/posts.atom GroupServer http://forums.e-democracy.org/favicon.ico problems since upgrade? http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/72SUQjMdyJbuyJ0Rjx6Tjn Dan Randow, Forum Manager, Canterbury Public Issues Forum /p/danr 2008-06-19T04:58:46Z
Michael,

> desire is the Chicago Region Forum to be visible and joinable by anyone

I have made that the case.

> intent for Chicago team is to switch to invite only and not visible (tho
> on this latter point not 100% sure)

It's invite or request, and messages not visible, now.

> mainly I am concerned about people being able to follow my link, and
> sign themselves up on the civic forum --- I've already posted it on
> twitter and a few other sites

We found and fixed a separate problem (to do with caching). I tested
joining chicago and it works fine.

Our sincere apologies to all about this.
problems since upgrade? http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/5H9DvofRy8DhtIYu209fxu Dan Randow, Forum Manager, Canterbury Public Issues Forum /p/danr 2008-06-19T04:10:40Z
Hi Michael,

> I tested about an hour ago, and things appeared to be working as they
> were supposed to, but friends testing elsewhere ran into same problem
> described above - which again, I replicated.

When you said that registration was working, I assumed that Tim or Steve
had made the change that I suggested, which was to make the messages
visible to the public in both groups.
   http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/chicago/
and
   http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/chicago-team/

I now see that the messages remain visible to group members only. This
(and not the upgrade) is almost certainly the cause of the problem.

As chicago has no messages, would it be ok if we set the visibility of
messages to 'everyone'?

In the case of chicago-team, do you want the public to be able to join,
or are you planning to invite people? The group is currently set to be
'joinable by anyone' while the messages are visible to 'group members
only'. The registration system is (correctly in this case) preventing
the anomalous process from occurring. There is simply no point in having
messages visible to members only, if anyone can join.
problems since upgrade? http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/7hJdAq7dSISiOfeuc87lwL Michael Maranda /p/michaelmaranda1 2008-06-19T04:01:59Z
I tested about an hour ago, and things appeared to be working as they were
supposed to, but friends testing elsewhere ran into same problem described
above - which again, I replicated.
problems since upgrade? http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/6sOWtfY6SX6jXmaWMnCCWF Michael Maranda /p/michaelmaranda1 2008-06-18T19:45:26Z
Since the weekend a few people have tried to subscribe themselves to the
Chicago Region Civic Forum, and the Chicago-Team steering committee forum as
"new users" of the platform.  In each case the following type of error is
generated:



There were errors

Group Identifier
    Group identifier 'chicago-team' not found



(group identifier being different for the two cases)

I am able to replicate their error.

Prior to the weekend I had conducted test of the same mechanism with out this
failure.

We're gearing up our recruitment phase, and I'd like t be able to point
newcomers to a place where they can subscribe to forums without such error.

Let me know is this issue is known, or a better way to allow new people to
self-subscribe

Thank  you
Where's the WiKi? http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/3ZPxelWGguknWPzmixaMfI Madeline Douglass /p/madelinedouglass 2007-07-10T02:30:03Z
I'm getting a file not found 404 response when I click this link.

http://e-democracy.org/wiki/Minneapolis
RSS Feeds http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/6mhAS4cp0Xh1PA3ndWjuRV Steven Clift /p/stevenclift1 2007-03-14T21:50:25Z
It is my understanding the we now have ATOM feeds.

This bug would be most appropriate:
http://www.feedicons.com/

Steve
^               ^               ^                ^
Steven L. Clift    -   -  -  W: http://publicus.net
Minneapolis    -   -   -  -   E: <email obscured>
Minnesota  -   -   -   -   -   - T: +1.612.822.8667
USA    -   -   -   -     Skype/MSN/Y!/AIM: netclift

Join Democracies Online: http://dowire.org
Start an Issues Forum: http://e-democracy.org/if
RSS Feeds http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/7C72vyJ8dcMU0Wc9iA7Z43 Tim Erickson /p/timerickson1 2007-03-14T16:48:19Z
>> There ought to be an RSS icon on most every page where it might
>> make sense leading to the feed, if one really wanted people to
>> take advantage of it.  In my mind, one would want people to use
>> RSS, as it's highly efficient and likely to capture a larger audience.

I just got this offline comment about RSS feeds. I've put, "looking at how to
better use RSS feeds" on our site on our list of things to do.

If anyone else has ideas or comments about RSS feeds or ATOM feeds, please let
us know.

This person originally suggested that we did not have an RSS feed. When I
pointed out that we do have it, he ammended his comment to suggest making it
more visible (very legitimate point).

Thanks,

Tim Erickson
Double Postings http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/7eJOXQnHjvArANeK8Xm03 Tim Erickson /p/timerickson1 2007-03-08T17:36:22Z
In the last 24 hours, I've gotten one or two reports from participants who say
that they are getting two email copies of each post.

I'm wondering if anyone else in this group has experienced a similar problem.

Please, contact me privately or in this group.

Thanks,

Tim Erickson
E-Democracy.Org
Creating a New Forum http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/5lAKXXS5YnoESaRwWkYepa Dan Randow, Forum Manager, Canterbury Public Issues Forum /p/danr 2007-03-06T02:34:36Z
Hi All,

While I am normally one of the people helping Tim to get the site
working, today I am a customer of E-Democracy.Org. I am in the process
of starting a forum for my local province Canterbury, in Aotearoa  New
Zealand.

So, today I created my forum!

   http://canterburyissues.org.nz/

I had a few issues, as listed below. Tim, I won't make you report the
"interface" and "start a group" issues back to me, unless they appear on
your priority list :), so I have added them to our to do list.
Dealing with Excessive Quoting http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/2ivI9tAy9lQ9urk9nNuBsh MJ Ray /p/mjray 2007-03-06T00:52:47Z
Tim Erickson <<email obscured>> wrote:
> > http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/post.html?id=153650
>
> Is it a "bug" or is it a "feature?"
> [...] In the meantime, its always
> possible to find the hidden text, behind the little arrow.

It looks like a bug in two ways:

1. Is it always possible to find the hidden text?  I can't see how to
show it in my non-JavaScript browser;

2. it looks like it fails more often for correctly-quoted
(interspersed) messages.

I suggest collapsing *each* quoted block after 4 lines.  I think this
should be fixed quite soon, as the Javascript-requirement is an
accessibility bug.

If you want to be really harsh, reject new messages with excessive
quoting, like NNTP servers used to do.

Hope that helps,
Dealing with Excessive Quoting http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/2MA5itN67ZxIv3kpefhZM1 Tom Coady /p/tomcoady 2007-03-05T17:22:00Z
On 3/5/07, Tim Erickson <<email obscured>> wrote:
>
> Is it a "bug" or is it a "feature?"


This is a feature on gmail "conversations".
I think it always works. But then google only employ doctors.
Posting Photos http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/6nxjSlpjJSHx3ckJryYD7N Bill Kahn (D) /p/billkahn 2007-03-05T17:19:17Z
Tim's photo certainly was a shock. Do you always wake up female, Tim?
That sort of leads to a concern some might have: objectionable
materials. I am okay with a female walrus posing as a human male, but
will others be so?

I can only recall one complaint of objectionable material on the St.
Paul Issues Forum, but I guess the potential is there for abuse of
some kind (like I said, I'm okay with Tim Erickson's material, but in
St. Paul? Who knows?). The rules already forbid attachments. We seem
to need a new rule.
Dealing with Excessive Quoting http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/16ZZyLecevKMzzU7710dLm Tim Erickson /p/timerickson1 2007-03-05T17:16:55Z
> I've been noticing that some messages
> end abruptly before they should and an ASCII box appears ...so some
> text
> is getting erased or cut off from certain messages.
>
> http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/post.html?id=153712
> http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/post.html?id=153691
> http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/post.html?id=153650

Is it a "bug" or is it a "feature?"

Its actually intended to be a feature, but we'd like your input.
Those of you who use the web to read our forums.

One of the problems with reading email listserves (mailing lists) on
the web, is dealing with all the (sometimes VERY long) quotations
that many people leave at the bottom of their email messages. Our
software, Groupserver, tries to address this on the web site, by
automatically HIDING text that looks like "quoting" at the bottom of
a message.

Its a really cool feature, but sometimes it makes mistakes.

In the examples here, the software made mistakes in what it hid:

  http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/post.html?id=153712
  http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/post.html?id=153691
  http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/post.html?id=153650

In the future, we hope to improve the ability of how the software
recognizes what to hide and not to hide. In the meantime, its always
possible to find the hidden text, behind the little arrow.

   Is this a problem for users?
   Is it something that users just need to get used to?
   Or is this something that needs to be fixed fairly soon?
   Does anyone have any ideas for clues that we might provide
      participants to recognize what is happening here?


Thanks,

Tim Erickson
E-Democracy.Org
Posting Photos http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/2WbyI5UbVfQNMFiRlgGpXz Tom Coady /p/tomcoady 2007-03-05T16:46:06Z
On 3/5/07, Steven Clift <<email obscured>> wrote:
>
> In the next round of feature requests (which we will need to raise
> money for from participants) I'd like to see automatic thumbnails
> generated from photos that are inserted into the post/topic.


Should be doable using imagemajik

Also: can we post PDFs/Word docs.
Hopefully the former counts as an image ;)
Posting Photos http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/5fFc754N3JcEWCiUeUrk3m Steven Clift /p/stevenclift1 2007-03-05T16:29:53Z
I too am a big fan of this feature.

Let's start using it.

Tim, why don't we recommend publicly that all uploaded pictures be
reduced in size to less than 500K with none left above 1MB?

In the next round of feature requests (which we will need to raise
money for from participants) I'd like to see automatic thumbnails
generated from photos that are inserted into the post/topic.

Cheers,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org
^               ^               ^                ^
Steven L. Clift    -   -  -  W: http://publicus.net
Minneapolis    -   -   -  -   E: <email obscured>
Minnesota  -   -   -   -   -   - T: +1.612.822.8667
USA    -   -   -   -     Skype/MSN/Y!/AIM: netclift

Join Democracies Online: http://dowire.org
Start an Issues Forum: http://e-democracy.org/if
Posting Photos http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/5TSQk3vRfOkyuALIfp7FsO Dave Garland /p/davidgarland 2007-03-05T16:05:26Z
On Tue,  6 Mar 2007 04:23:03 +1300 (NZDT), Tim Erickson wrote:

>Attachments (or photos) are NOT delivered to group members via email. HOWEVER,
they are stripped from the incoming email and automatically added to the groups
files section - AND a link to the file (or photo) is inserted into the email
message.

As an email subscriber, that works very nicely.  (And it's good to have
the reference pic, in case I ever meet you on the beach.)

I trust you've built in some checking to prevent those 8 megapixel
pictures that camera owners don't seem to know how to size for society.

At the same time, I'd like to renew my plea for email to add a header
line with the group as the "reply-to" address.  Since it's a public
forum, it seems to me that replies to the group should be the default.
Just about every other mailing list I subscribe to (these days, most
seem to be yahoo groups) does it that way.  And I'm forever hitting
reply (my mailreader, like all civilized mailreaders, does NOT default
to "reply all"), sending my post, and then wondering why it hasn't
appeared.
Day and Time Stamp of postings http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/6AZ5tnoli3znhFVuCqIzHu Tim Erickson /p/timerickson1 2007-03-05T15:57:16Z
Mon. March 5th, 2008

>> "It appears to me that the dates are one day off.
>>  For example, there are postings there today marked
>>  3-5-2007, even though today is 3-4 2007."

This problem has popped up again.

A couple of people have contacted me to report that the time & date stamp on
posts to our forums appear up to 24 ahead of what one might expect them to be.

While, we've run into this problem before and been able to fix it pretty
quickly, this time its trickier. Due to a change in how we've structured our
site, its harder (but not impossible) to keep track of all the various time
zones that are participants are in. We will soon have forums in New Zealand,
the UK, and the United States.

We are planning to address this problem. BUT - the fix is going to take a
significant amount of work, so I'm asking for your patience on this one.

As a short term solution, we might change the display for recent posts to
something like:

   posted 3 hours ago
   posted 2 days ago

Instead of indicating the exact date and time it was posted. Once posts are
over 7 days old, we could use the DATE stamp and it would be less confusing to
people.

How big of a deal is this to participants?

Any comments?

Thanks,

Tim Erickson
E-Democracy.Org
Posting Photos http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/HQZmZYQ5xK3pd1fW1RepM Tom Coady /p/tomcoady 2007-03-05T15:26:33Z
On 3/5/07, Tim Erickson <<email obscured>> wrote:
>
> What do folks think about this feature?


Brilliant! I was thinking of sending BH a shot of the new private security
guards in their luminous jackets but could not be bothered to sort out the
hosting and linking of it but this would be perfect, thanks.
Posting Photos http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/7xZv7lAAaTc7fwtma6dVNw Tim Erickson /p/timerickson1 2007-03-05T15:21:41Z
> Don't know if this is possible or not, but since we've been
> discussing McMansions on e-democracy.org/mpls this week, I had
> the idea that people might be interesting in sending in photos
> of the structures...could a folder be set up in the Files sections
> and then...say jpgs of a certain size posted there...?

> What about captions (with Addresses) would we have to use
> a photo editing program to add those to each photo or be
> able to embed photos in a page?

I'm repling to this message, that is almost a month old. Because, it highlights
one of the cool new features of our software that has not yet gotten much
attention. I'd love to hear some feedback on this.

For the first time EVER. You can now send attachments directly to
E-Democracy.Org groups (via email) that are hosted on Groupserver, including
photos.

Attachments (or photos) are NOT delivered to group members via email. HOWEVER,
they are stripped from the incoming email and automatically added to the groups
files section - AND a link to the file (or photo) is inserted into the email
message.

I'm attaching a photo of myself, just after I got out of bed this morning, to
this message to demonstrate. Follow the link for a real shock! (suitable for
all ages)

What do folks think about this feature?

Tim Erickson
E-Democracy.Org
E-Democracy.Org Technical Support Forum http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/5ySwoBmbnxduH2d6kAKBF1 Tim Erickson /p/timerickson1 2007-03-05T15:08:07Z
I'd like to let the 44 folks, who are members of this group, know that I'm
about to take this very lazy and seldom used forum and make it the hub of
public discussion about technical issues that participants are experiencing as
a result of our recent upgrade.

This will mean that for at least a short time, this particular group will be
experiencing more traffic than usual. I'm not sure how much more traffic.

We welcome all of your participation in this discussion. However, if you would
prefer to NOT be a part of this discussion - you have several options:

   1) Unsubscribe or Leave this group
      (send an email to the group address with the
       word "unsubscribe" in the subject line. Be sure
       to spell it correctly and do not include the
       quotations marks).

   2) Vist our web site and change your email
      preferences to DIGEST.
http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/edem-support/email_settings/index.xml

Please, let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Tim Erickson
E-Democracy.Org