Site update suggestions for Danny

STRONGLY ENCOURAGED LOCATION AND PRIUS YEAR/PACKAGE

Danny, users that post questions and add comments without listing their location and Prius Year/Package are driving us crazy. The answers to many questions are sometimes directly related to what you're driving and where you live. They're the first questions Tom and Ray ask callers on Car Talk, competitive sites like the Prius section of TundraSolutions won't let you register without posting your location and the car you're currently driving, yet we're left to play 20 Questions or feel like we're in the Inquisition, by having to pull this information from our members before we can help.

Forget the "privacy" issue raised by some members; they're probably lawyers anyway. The "South Florida" location for me or "New Jersey, etc." for others and the fact that I drive a 2006 Silver Prius becomes "public" information the minute I leave my driveway.

Please make this important value added upgrade.

That's my 2 cents: thanks.

 

Evan,

I always look forward to your answers on this site and I value your input.

I can see how "strongly encouraged" is a better approach than mandatory. I'm also glad you would very much like members post ther location and Prius year/package too.

That's good enough for me. I hope Danny will be able to come up with a solution.

 

well, i think a mandatory "location" button that accepts any input would be fine. that way, regional references could be used.

Northeast, mid atlantic, etc is all fine with me. for the most part that is enough info anyway.

i realize some will use the space to add in additional avatar comments. that is to be expected, but at least the seed for thought will be entered. either way, its bound to cut down on the average 20 posts a week, asking for the information. (depending on how many newbies we get of course)

 

can we have the photo albums back? that would be nice

thanks Danny for all the work you do on the site.

 

galaxee, they never went away


**edit**
ok, posted that one before it was ready.

you can go to http://priuschat.com/forums/album_personal.php?user_id=#

replace the # with your member number

here is mine
http://priuschat.com/forums/album_personal.php?user_id=1455

as you can see, the last pic posted was during the NFC Championship game with was only a few months ago.

 

whoa! nice! i didn't think we could still upload pictures to the albums on the old site. good deal.

thanks Dave

 

I agree with having the old KB here. Several posters ask questions that are best answered there.

I also agree that location and model/year should be "strongly encouraged." Anyone who posts, "MY MILEAGE IS WORSE THAN I EXPECTED, MY PHONE WON'T WORK AND MY DEALER WON'T HELP!!!!!! :angry: :angry: :angry: " can't really expect getting a quick answer without that information.

 

oh great Tony!!....cant believe you did that on a public forum... now there is no way we can keep hiding this from your wife!!

and i agree, i love the member map too, but we should have at least an option to pick just one state at a time...

 

While I agree that location posting sometimes provides useful
information, and that a member can theoretically drop any text
they want in there [such as "Earth"], I don't at all agree on the
"mandatory" idea. And when clowns like Vincent say "forget the
privacy issue", my first response to someone like that, in these
days of horrendous identity-theft and info leakage, is "which part
of FOAD did you not understand?" ... some members may want to
materially participate in the forums but NOT supply lots of details
about themselves, and they should ON PRINCIPLE be allowed to manage
their memberships that way without feeling the need to falsify any
such "required" fields.
.
Security/privacy issues are really at the forefront nowadays, and
I would ask that those be kept firmly in mind moving forward.
.
_H*

 

I came to PriusChat because of interest in the Prius. Some days there isn't anything current about the car, just fluff or flame. I understand this has been the topic of much debate in the past. Would it be possible to have two paralell sections of PriuscChat so that those of us who are not interested in fluff and flame could avoid the constant sifting to find the car stuff?

Allan de

 

Thank you for the response. I don't want to spoil people's fun and some topics fall into a grey area. One option would be to increase the number of topics which show in the "Latest Topic Replies" and include a code which indicates its forum. Another would be to allow blocking of whole forums as you suggest.

It would be interesting to know how many people have left PriusChat in disgust over fluff and flaming. A counter arguement can be made that a good fight always attracts a crowd.

Allan de

 

i would find it hard to believe that more than a hand full have left for either reason.

i do know (i be guilty) that many threads wander a VERY wide topic line, but most are somewhat related and many are very entertaining. if given the choice, i would much rather have the entertainment. that is also why i think the KB should be back and bolstered. that way if all you want is Dragnet (just the facts sir) then you have it.

 

Being one of the more "fluffy" posters, I'm not one to talk. But that's why I went to the RSS feed. That way I can sort by subject and remove "Fred's" or whatever. Somehow I got addicted to Freds in the process tho'.

It'd be nice if the feed kept more than the last hour (so I can turn my laptop off) and accepted a parameter for which subjects came across (so I can cure my addiction).

 

Could you say a word about RSS feed? How do you do that?

 

My 2 cents:

I like Fred's, but I agree that it should be made easier for folks who don't, not to have to be deluged with topics from Fred's. I like Alan's suggestion that the recent topics list and other analogous lists include the forum name.

Location: My suggestion: on sign-up it should be required to enter SOMETHING into the location field, with a BIG notice: "If you choose not to give your general location, some questions you choose to ask may be unanswerable. Current members should also be required to put something in the field, if they have not already.

MY BIGGEST ANNOYANCES ON THIS SITE:

All have to do with how the page fits into the window on the screen. Often it just doesn't fit. There is so much stuff on the left side of the window, and apparently such a large minimum width for the text of postings, that sometimes I have to use horizontal scroll.

Then, whenever someone posts an over-size picture, the entire thread runs way off the screen and I have to scroll horizontally to read every line of every post.

Suggestion: over-size pictures should be shown in their own sub-window with its own scroll bar, so it doesn't force the whole thread to become super-wide.

And one minor item: it used to be that the QUOTE feature included nested quotes, and sometimes that's needed for context preservation. I'd like to see that restored. Also, long quotes used to have their own vertical scroll bars, so idiots that quote an entire book-length posting just to add "I agree", would not force us all to wear out our scroll wheels.

Even with all the above, this is a great site, which is why I keep coming back. Thanks Danny. Keep up the good work.