The ALPB Mutual technical support thread.

[George Erdner]

Since the thread that contained mutual technical support information on how to edit when using the quote function, or how to access the ignore function was shut down for the usual reason that threads get shut down, I thought a mutual technical support thread might be at least as appropriate as the ones running for football, baseball, and basketball. And so, I launch this in the hopes that if anyone has a question about some of the undocumented features of this forum, they can ask them here so that those who know can respond.


With any luck, this won't turn into the kind of thread that gets locked down.

[Jay Michael]

The search function has seems to be unreliable.

An example is a search of the word 'pixels'.  A search of 'pixels' with leaving the default '*' in the 'By User' box yielded 14 results.  Knowing that the post I was looking for was by a certain user, an additional search was processed using the users name (name with held to prevent accusations of personal attack) that yielded 3 results ... 2 of which were NOT included in the original search when the user name was NOT used.

What are the capabilities of the search ... and what expectations should users have of this function?

[Coach-Rev]

agreed on that - I often find that no matter what parameters I insert, the search does not yield the result I expect. 

Then again, I am not on the forum enough to where I would immerse myself in the nuances of forum operations.

[Evangel]

This might help:

ALPB Custom Google Search Engine

[Jay Michael]

This might help:

ALPB Custom Google Search Engine

It only produced 2 results for 'pixels' ... less than the 14 for the regular search and not one of the results produced when specifying a User's name in search criteria.

[George Erdner]

Here is a post from one of the closed threads about editing quotes. I've added more information to it. This is just an example I plucked from another thread, the first one I stumbled on with multiple posts. Please, I beg everyone, this is just an example. I'm not pointing fingers or cursors at any individual. This is just one I stumbled across. Some names have been changed to avoid seeing this thread degenerate and get shut down.

I changed the square brackets "[" to curly brackets "{" so that you'd see what shows up in the quote edit window. They are all "nested". The lines with the command {quote, followed by code that provides a direct link to the original post starts the quote, and the command {/quote] turns it off. I've color coded these from the oldest to newest. 

{quote author=Dave Benke link=topic=4723.msg281990#msg281990 date=1355931705]
{quote author=Pr. Don Kirchner link=topic=4723.msg281979#msg281979 date=1355930869]
{quote author=Dave Benke link=topic=4723.msg281970#msg281970 date=1355930133]
{quote author=Pr. Don Kirchner link=topic=4723.msg281954#msg281954 date=1355927482]
{quote author=Mike Gehlhausen link=topic=4723.msg281952#msg281952 date=1355927107]
However, it is violating the First Commandment by bringing false gods before His Face.

{/quote]

Which Pr. Morris did not do.
{/quote]

Accusations that Pastor Morris sinned are over the line, and represent the "not possible at any time" framework of some in the LCMS.  Unfortunately, that framework begins with "you have sinned, repent now," rather than listening to the context, to the guidelines presented by the denomination, or to the totality of the situation at hand.  That to me is a shame.
{/quote]

And even condemnations from a brother who suggested that, since Pr. Morris knew it was a sin and acted anyway, there is not forgiveness!
{/quote]

I didn't know anyone suggested that, but that kind of infliction of condemnation represents to me the tremendous difficulty of conducting fruitful dialog in the Church, and in our LC-MS Koinonia Project.

Oscar' remarks and those awhile back by Scott are to me on point - the "perception risk" in terms of absolute non-participation as it becomes known seems as though it would be "they're so arrogant, they think they know all the answers."  But in the world as it is today the perception is "wow - they have a really tiny version of God, if their representatives don't even bother to show up when the world is in pain."  Who needs them, OR their version of God.

Dave Benke
{/quote]


This is the result of that code:

However, it is violating the First Commandment by bringing false gods before His Face.

Which Pr. Morris did not do.

Accusations that Pastor Morris sinned are over the line, and represent the "not possible at any time" framework of some in the LCMS.  Unfortunately, that framework begins with "you have sinned, repent now," rather than listening to the context, to the guidelines presented by the denomination, or to the totality of the situation at hand.  That to me is a shame.

And even condemnations from a brother who suggested that, since Pr. Morris knew it was a sin and acted anyway, there is not forgiveness!

I didn't know anyone suggested that, but that kind of infliction of condemnation represents to me the tremendous difficulty of conducting fruitful dialog in the Church, and in our LC-MS Koinonia Project.

Oscar' remarks and those awhile back by Scott are to me on point - the "perception risk" in terms of absolute non-participation as it becomes known seems as though it would be "they're so arrogant, they think they know all the answers."  But in the world as it is today the perception is "wow - they have a really tiny version of God, if their representatives don't even bother to show up when the world is in pain."  Who needs them, OR their version of God.

Dave Benke

The HTML code is really simple. Commands in [] brackets turn a function on, commands that star with [/ and end in ] toggle the command off. The syntax "quote author=Dave Benke link=topic=4723.msg281990#msg281990 date=1355931705"  generates the quote box header, which includes a clickable link to the original post. If you trim some of the words down, that clickable link is a direct line to the original source to see the entire post the quote came from. An unscrupulous person might change what he quoted whether he cuts and pastes words or uses the quote function. But that direct link to the source can be a helpful check and balance against such chicanery.

Basically, this shows that one trims blocks of quotes from the inside out in order to go from oldest to youngest.

[George Erdner]

To access the "Ignore" function, these are the commands:

The sequence of commands are "Profile" (at the top of the screen), then pick "Account Settings". From that drop-down menu pick, "Buddies/Ignore List", and then select, "Edit Ignore List".

[George Erdner]

One way to load in an avatar picture.

To load an avatar, you have to simply link to a place where you have on stored. That's the simple part. The complicated part is getting your picture loaded into a storage space. A good place for that is photobucket.com. You can get an account there for free, linked to your Facebook or Twitter account, or just based on your e-mail address. (I recommend the latter). Start an account, and then you can load pictures in there. One you load one, you can click on it and get a list of URL addresses. Load one of them into the avatar link spot in here to have your avatar appear. Please note, the image needs to be cropped to square, or it will appear distorted in the avatar box. There are a lot of steps in the process, but each step is fairly easy and intuitive.

[Jay Michael]

An unscrupulous person might change what he quoted whether he cuts and pastes words or uses the quote function. But that direct link to the source can be a helpful check and balance against such chicanery.

While chicanery may occur, the link enables a reader who desires a more complete context of the text being quoted to easily find that context ... especially as we are discouraging the use of deeply nested quotations.  As long as the links are available, the context can be easily found ... without time consuming scrolling up and down the page. 

If one right clicks on the link, they can open the link in a new tab or window ... thus preserving their place on the thread they are currently reading. Some use this method when responding using the quotation function ... right click on a post you may wish to respond to ... but keep reading down the thread ... if there a number of posts after the post you are inclined to comment on, you may find that someone else has already made your point (great minds think alike) or a subsequent response negates the point you thought you wanted to make.

[J. Thomas Shelley]

The HTML code is really simple. Commands in [] brackets turn a function on, commands that star with [/ and end in ] toggle the command off. The syntax "quote author=Dave Benke link=topic=4723.msg281990#msg281990 date=1355931705"  generates the quote box header, which includes a clickable link to the original post.

One gentle correction:  This forum uses Bulletin Board (BB) coding, not html. 

BB code is written with square brackets instead of the < > symbols.  The main advantage is that one does not have to cap shift in order to do BB coding.

Most, but not all BB codes are identical to their html counterparts.

[SmithL]

What's the BB equivalent to HTML's "A HREF" code?
Thanks

[Steven Tibbetts]

What's the BB equivalent to HTML's "A HREF" code?
Thanks

[ url=http://www.url.com]the page[ /url]

remove the space after the [

[George Erdner]

The tools on the edit screen help in adding in clickable links. If you highlight a word or phrase, then click the button with the icon of a globe and piece of paper, a dialog box opens. Paste a URL into that dialog box, and you have the correct syntax for an HREF link loaded automatically.

[J. Thomas Shelley]

What's the BB equivalent to HTML's "A HREF" code?
Thanks

What Pr. Tibbetts replied....on a closely related note be aware that there is no image posting permitted on this board, so the equivalent of HTML's "img src" is disabled.

[George Erdner]

What's the BB equivalent to HTML's "A HREF" code?
Thanks

What Pr. Tibbetts replied....on a closely related note be aware that there is no image posting permitted on this board, so the equivalent of HTML's "img src" is disabled.

I've noticed that. I've also noticed that when I cut and paste an email that contains a picture of a signature, that signature does appear in the post, though no other images ever do.