Ideas for improving VJ features?

[djcess 0]

can someone please fix the flood control...? thanks!

[I'm Gone 60]

How about not including Off Topics in the Active Topics? So if people want to read them, they have to go there and the people who don't want to read them don't have to trawl through them for info.

No No No!!! The OT stuff is the only thing that makes it interesting for me to hang around, since the immigration stuff is of no use to me. Active Topics should be Active Topics, regardless of the topic. If I can wade through the endless smiley faces and congrats that people post to run up their post totals the rest of you can wade through the OT stuff.

My main conplain is having to hit the Active Topic link 5 or 6 times to get it to load.

[ceriserose 1]

How about removing people who have never posted after a certain time. There's nearly 50 people from 2003 who have never posted - just thought it might free up some user ID's.

Building on this suggestion.. I would think some people just aren't confident enough to post.. some just read and read and read and ingest information ... and ok, some just don't have anything to say.. but still if people update their timelines, it would indicate "participation", thus no reason to remove them.

I would say those who have not updated their timelines create more havoc to the accuracy of stats here.

Gen

VJ's biggest problem is all those damn people who log on every day. It slows the site down. Any way we can disable logging in for everyone but me?

Dude, if I don't get my buzzer coded, you're certainly not getting to be the only one here.

[Captain Ewok 1,900]

How about not including Off Topics in the Active Topics? So if people want to read them, they have to go there and the people who don't want to read them don't have to trawl through them for info.

No No No!!! The OT stuff is the only thing that makes it interesting for me to hang around, since the immigration stuff is of no use to me. Active Topics should be Active Topics, regardless of the topic. If I can wade through the endless smiley faces and congrats that people post to run up their post totals the rest of you can wade through the OT stuff.

My main conplain is having to hit the Active Topic link 5 or 6 times to get it to load.

My main conplain is having to hit the Active Topic link 5 or 6 times to get it to load.

Please do not do this. Wait for the page to load. Hitting the button 5 times will only make it take longer and slow the site down... That query is slower than others so be patient.

[Sheriff Uling 3]

Captain Ewok - Please add the VJ ID to the timelines.

[Captain Ewok 1,900]

Already is linked although the display name will show the names of the petitioner and benficiary versus the member name. They are linked together though and you can view the profile of the member by clicking on a link.

[cheeky^Wolf 0]

How about in the topic list for each forum, having the date the topic was originally started.

That way, if it was an old topic dredged up you would know by the date.

[Marilyn. 340]

I think the search feature could use some improvement, particularly to allow searches for short strings, such as "AOS". I think right now, newcomers have a hard time searching for useful posts. Maybe also an option to search the topic title as opposed to the contents would help. That might also encourage people to write more explicit topic titles.

I agree that the search feature could get improved. When trying to search on forums, we get some weird hits that are not remotely related to the topics one should expect to get as results, even if using two or more words - and not short ones, such as "AOS" and other acronyms. So I tried to use google advanced search to search within a particular forum and that didn't work. Searching for titles could be added too.

When seraching for three letter words you can add a * to the end of it and it should work.... like AOS*, or EAD* same thing works for searches of these too... I-864, I-134, I-130

maybe locking or archiving some of the older material so people won't complain about old topics/polls being resurrected. maybe those topics older than 2 months old and polls over 6 months old for a suggestion?

then people will complain that that poll has been done before etc....

Edited August 26, 2006 by MarilynP

[Mew 0]

I agree that the search feature could get improved. When trying to search on forums, we get some weird hits that are not remotely related to the topics one should expect to get as results, even if using two or more words - and not short ones, such as "AOS" and other acronyms. So I tried to use google advanced search to search within a particular forum and that didn't work. Searching for titles could be added too.

When seraching for three letter words you can add a * to the end of it and it should work.... like AOS*, or EAD* same thing works for searches of these too... I-864, I-134, I-130

Thanks for the tip!

[aussiewench 9]

I think the search feature could use some improvement, particularly to allow searches for short strings, such as "AOS". I think right now, newcomers have a hard time searching for useful posts. Maybe also an option to search the topic title as opposed to the contents would help. That might also encourage people to write more explicit topic titles.

I agree that the search feature could get improved. When trying to search on forums, we get some weird hits that are not remotely related to the topics one should expect to get as results, even if using two or more words - and not short ones, such as "AOS" and other acronyms. So I tried to use google advanced search to search within a particular forum and that didn't work. Searching for titles could be added too.

When seraching for three letter words you can add a * to the end of it and it should work.... like AOS*, or EAD* same thing works for searches of these too... I-864, I-134, I-130

From the time we moved to this site up until I posted the above, I was not able to use the * as it had worked in the old site. I wonder if the Capt'n has now rectified this issue which is why I can now search using the *. Whatever reason, it now works

[mozplay 29]

Suggestions:

1.

Sorry if this has been suggested before, but is there anyway to have people start a timeline BEFORE allowing them to post? Another forum I am on (nothing to do with immigration) won't let you post until you have properly introduced yourself in one area only and then the Admin gives you permission to post on the rest of the site. Even if all they enter is who they are, what they are filing for and where. To me, it seems a little unfair to ask for advice, especially those who have been members for a while, availed themselves of the site info and have gotten to the NOA1 or 2 or more stage, and not even take a moment to fill in a timeline.

2.

Is there a way that the drop down menu at the bottom of the forum pages that let you switch between forums can also be added to the top of the page? I know this sounds lazy - but it does not hurt to ask.

Thanks

Monique

p.s. even if none of these things happen - this is a great site - thanks for all the help so far.