Old boards are now "officially" closed and are in archive status, so I thought it time for a new thread now that most kinks have been worked out and to get the GIANT FIRST POST off the front page. See below for a brief Q&A. Also use this thread to report any technical problems you run into.
Special thanks to Secret for their help in getting these new boards set up.
Why new boards? The old boards were super susceptible to CP and spambots, driving away users. These new boards incorporate cloudflare security features (which includes blacklist of known-bad IPs) and start off with massive IP range bans to combat that. Plus, the different posting layout will confuse the automated bots that target kusaba/futaba boards.
So no more spam? There will still be spam, but the frequency will be far lower. In addition to those new features, some mods that were board-limited are now global and we have janitors as well (some global, most focused on /baw/). Make sure to report any spam you see.
Why is this layout so thin? That's how Secret likes their boards, I guess. To actually make use of your widescreen monitor, use the "i am gay" style at the bottom of the page.
Will the layout stay this way? No. Anonex is working on a new layout for these boards. It will be ready September 2nd (next week.)
Where is the Subject field? It had to return to its home planet and died along the way.
Why do I get "board does not exist" when trying to post? This happens when you try to upload a file too big for apache. Not sure of the exact size, but probably 7 or 8 MBs or more.
What happened to /diy/, /op/, /pkmn/, and /mspa/? These boards have been dropped due to extremely low posting rates compared to the rest of the board. Their content can be posted on the relative interest board, and /diy/-related things can be posted to /baw/.
There is only one problem still left. I cannot simply open a thread in a tab or window, without quoting the first post. For example, this very thread (pic related).
If I could open new threads without quoting, that would be swell.
>>392663 If you middle-click the "view X omitted posts" it will open in a new tab, but outside of that it's just clicking on the reply button. Secret has said he won't make anymore functionality changes, only bug fixes, so while I agree that's annoying it is what it is.
>>392665 The CP itself was almost exclusively /baw/, though every so often would pop up on other boards. So if you didn't visit /baw/ you wouldn't have noticed. The pharma spam, however, was fucking everywhere. In both cases, the mod panel took forever to load/ban/delete, easily 5 or more minutes for a single post to successfully be banned and deleted.
Is there any way to get the "i am gay" feature to extend to the very border of the window. The worthless empty space just bugs me.
Also, when I browse on my phone, extending threads sometimes cuts out some posts near the end of the thread. Like one post before the 3 preview posts isn't there.
>>392705 >implying /durp/ will return >>392660 >What happened to /diy/, /op/, /pkmn/, and /mspa/? >These boards have been dropped due to extremely low posting rates compared to the rest of the board. Their content can be posted on the relative interest board, and /diy/-related things can be posted to /baw/. Post count was low everywhere so we've culled the boards for now. If rates pick back up, especially concerning those topics, we'll revisit the possibility of re-creating them.
They could come back as short-term boards. For instance, with ORAS coming up we might put /pkmn/ back up in October-ish in anticipation of the increased activity, then take it back down in Jan/Feb if count rate drops again.
Are all the links on the front page going to be changed to point to the new boards at some point? I find it odd to have to go through one of the older boards to reach the newer ones.
Also, is there a way to open just the last 50 posts of a thread like in the old boards that I'm missing? If there isn't one there, could someone please implement one?
I really preferred how text was managed and laid out on the old board. Better on the eyes to find things faster with a mix of small and larger fonts.
Old - font for showing files names/info was smaller, you could see more of it. You could see longer file names before they trail off to "...". Showed the original uploaded file name, plus the new numbered file name it has once uploaded to the board.
New - font for showing file names is bigger, you less alot less of it. File names trail off to "..." much faster. Its a pain to always scroll over to see the original file name. Shows the original uploaded file name, no longer shows its newer name you have to scroll over to see it in the status bar.
On that subject, what's with the random hash of numbers and letters now for uploaded hosted images? Its like a booru, all original info is lost and its impossible to copy and paste original file names because of the issue I just described above. "Save with original file name" fails to do so, it just saves the file with its messy hash.
I also wish OP image has larger thumbs like the old board as well.
>>392797 truncated name length is just a board variable and if anonex wants to change it he will save with original filename works in all modern browsers, stop using netscape from 1995 thumbnail sizes are a variable that anonex will change if he wants to
>save with original filename works in all modern browsers
Odd little technicality on that: Firefox's functionality for the "download" variable in links only works when the file's URL comes from the exact same domain as the site from which you download. That's why the "download with original filename" bit from most 4chan extensions doesn't work on Firefox: 4chan stores images on a wholly different domain (i.4cdn.org). It works here because plus4 stores images on the same domain (boards.plus4chan.org). Mozilla did that to offer at least a minor level of security against malicious downloads.
>>392801 it's sensible probably, and a minor headache at worst for developers, you can use Access-Control-Allow-Origin on the secondary server to allow cross domain requests
>>392809 i didn't do anything and i don't notice anything different. yesterday at moose's request i added a link to baw on the boards.p4c page in case anyone winds up there somehow
YouTube link posting is fucked. It takes a hell of a lot longer for a post with a YouTube link to go through than it normally does, and when it does go through, the http part of the link is stripped and there's no link/embed.
so after fucking with it for like a half hour i decided to see if it's broken on starchan too, and lo and behold it's not. so it's something to do with plus4 and who knows why it suddenly stopped working here
/baw/ seems to be broken for me on Firefox. It just comes up as a blank white page. Works on Internet Explorer, and the other boards load fine on either.
>>392855 Works fine for me at the moment. Maybe you have some overzealous adblock or something? Tried the usual cache clean I guess? I have had issues with non refreshing pages, but never had a blank page.
max image res should be koba default which is 9k x 9k i don't think anyone really needs to upload anything that large but it can be changed if anonex wants to
I love the new board design, but it's difficult for me to distinguish threads from posts. So I was wondering, could the OPs be moved slightly to the left to help distinguish threads from posts?
>>393107 At this point there's probably not going to be any further layout changes for some time. If someone wants to go through making a complete CSS file, and it's agreeable, perhaps we can get secret to put it up as an option.
>>393157 Save a page, remove all CSS files, make your own until it looks how you like. The catch is that it will need to handle what the boards can do, which isn't always on the page you save. But just use the declared rules in one of the existing sheets to know what you need to fill out (like machine or futaba, not i am gay).
>>393277 all the style code will be going away when anonex writes his thing, so i'm probably not going to add a bunch of stuff that's going to just get trashed anyway. there are 10 boards so even if you visit them all, setting your preferred style on each is not a gargantuan task
>>393507 That site, from what I gather, is a site where you upload images and get a cut of ad revenue if enough people view the pages. Someone was uploading stuff and making a spam thread to try to get people to visit.
It is now part of the spamfilter and is an hour's ban.
>>393880 Cloudflare and their blacklist is how we avoided bots for the most part, so even if he was around I doubt it would happen. Sorry, anon. You could try contacting cloudflare directly (I don't know how) about the issue.
>>393882 Yes. Thankfully, the smaller thumbnails make them fairly obvious without the "models" being as obvious, and they don't post as fast as the old ones did.
>>393925 The move didn't guarantee no CP, just made it easier to deal with and less likely. The change in layout and form setup messes with the standard bots, so they at least had to put some effort into modifying them to work here or just pay someone in Africa a few cents to post it instead. More importantly, the mod panel is actually responsive, so once a mod or janitor gets on they can take care of it quickly; the old mod panel had slowed to a crawl to just deleting the image could take three minutes or more. Also we had fewer mods and no janitors.
I'll talk to Secret about possible extra stuff when a post is reported as "illegal" and give some janitors larger board coverage.
>>394121 All that can be done at the moment is reporting them until a Janitor or Mod can get to them. I'm open to suggestions; so far the IPs are fairly spread throughout the world so it's not as easy as banning a country. If the posting speed picks up they can be pushed to page 2 to kind of hide them until a mod/janitor can get to it, but that's kind of a catch 22 as the CP will scare people off...
(Also this thread is un-pined so others can hit the top, but it will "float", meaning it won't fall off the first page.)
Would it be possible to: - make all OP posts with less than two words have to be manually approved by a mod? - have all threads from a unique (new) IP have to be manually approved? (annoying, but could be a good move) - have a function where if a post reaches 'x' reports, it gets automatically hidden for staff review? (although that could be abused) - anonymously report their IPs to CP investigators?
Note for the first two, it would have to be silent so the posters don't catch on immediately.
>>394153 >make all OP posts with less than two words have to be manually approved by a mod? >- have all threads from a unique (new) IP have to be manually approved? (annoying, but could be a good move) I've considered the first; it would be a good thing to combine with the second to lower the chance of real posters getting caught. Unfortunately, both of those require secret to implement, and he's busy with other projects at the moment. I can certainly ask him, though. These have their own pitfalls, of course, and it might not be just word count since that would be a game of cat and mouse.
>- have a function where if a post reaches 'x' reports, it gets automatically hidden for staff review? (although that could be abused) It can be, but it's not out of the question. Perhaps paired with some other criteria (e.g. posted in the last Y hours, no replies, no other posts from that IP, etc.) Part of the problem would be figuring out what X would be to lower the possibility for abuse while still making it worthwhile. That's all moot, though, as it still requires secret. :(
>- anonymously report their IPs to CP investigators? They're part of a botnet (a few have made non-CP spam posts) and the links likely lead to malware (CP makes for great extortion), so at best we'd be ignored and at worst the FBI would try to control out shit.
>>394153 >- have all threads from a unique (new) IP have to be manually approved? (annoying, but could be a good move) This one sounds too much like downvoting which is one of the things I really fucking hate about Reddit, so no thanks.
>>394166 That one sounds absolutely nothing like downvoting; it sounds like logging in if anything. Did you mean to quote the one below it about reporting? Assuming you did mean the reporting idea, we could just ban anyone who abuses it as a downvote feature (and isn't lodging false reports a ban anyway?)
So there's nothing new that can be done about the bots posting that sort of content? Since the increasing frequency is becoming more than a little disturbing.
Hello, anon here who was a regular for a while. I left this place for a long time, came back and saw the site was undergoing changes, left for a while longer and have now come back again to find that nothing has really improved. This style is terrible, it's hard to distinguish one thread from another and it just looks like a glorified mobile version of the site. The old style was perfect, why change it? Is it going to be this way forever?
Well, to answer your questions, see the first two posts in this thread.
>>394218 Captcha isn't an effective idea. Not only does it piss off users, but it is easy to avoid even with bots; you can pay people to solve them for you. (http://expertdecoders.com/, for one example. Can be incorporated into scripts, $1.38 USD for 1000 captchas, and 12 seconds average to solve a captcha)
>>394219 Captcha is a double-edged sword. It's easy to get around if you want to pay up (>>394298) and not worth the hassle to regular users when the spam level is still extremely low, even for our slow boards. The only reason it's a larger problem is because the spam is almost exclusively CP. It requires secret (busy) or anonex (sleeping) to implement it, in any case.
There are a few things that could be done now, without any modifications to the existing board software: Not allow JPG images to start threads or not allow any images when starting a thread, for instance. But this might just be a case of cat-and-mouse: if we're being specifically targeted, they'll just adjust their tactics. It can also cause annoyances for regular users.
>>394293 >Is it going to be this way forever? Anonex is working on a new layout. So, yes.
>>394297 You can use Ctrl++/- (or scroll wheel) to adjust the text size.
>>394304 For some reason I can't view spoilered text on mine. I have to copy and paste which is kind of a pain on an iphone, but it isn't too big of a deal.
Sooooo let's say there's a simple change that can be made to the boards that would stymie the CP, but would also inconvenience users when making new threads in some circumstances. It could also be worked around by the person behind the CP, depending on how much attention they pay our specific site; however, the change is easy to revert if that happens, and the work-around for the person behind the CP would be easy to block, changing the inconvenience. It could wind up being an arms race of sorts.
What do ya'll think? Would it be worth that trouble to see if it handles the problem? If it does, at some point the change would be reverted once we've been CP-free long enough, so it's not a permanent thing.
>>394352 Captcha isn't a consideration at all right now. To explain further, the current idea is to further limit the types of files that could be used to start a thread (but not in posting a reply.)
>>394397 I hope he awakens again soon and brings a better layout. It feels stupid to actually type this, but I find the current site layout so unpleasant to use, that I've virtually stopped visiting this place, even though I don't want to stay away. Like how I love cherries but they make my mouth itch enough to keep me from eating them.
>>394422 What do you want done to the layout? It's way better than kusaba's style. And if you want it changed so much just write a user stylesheet? It's a fucking message board, what else could you even want it to look like.
>>394425 >complaining about website layout >knowing nobody will cater to your specific desires >refusing to look into user stylesheets when told to oh plus4, never change
>>394426 Nah, I'm just saying that if someone unobservant enough to no see user stylesheets mentioned the however many times before, there's no way they know browsers well enough to have learned about them on their own, so at least act like they're a new thing to them instead of like they already know but are too lazy to use them.
>>394598 We're still on plan b. I quietly reverted the changes last night to see if they had given up on us (they haven't). The changes are now back in place, and will stay in place for longer this time.
I can't seem to be able to post pictures from my phone. The file select dialogue will come up but when I click on a file the filename bar doesn't populate and after that I cannot get the file select window to open again
When will we get bigger filesize limits for mp3s? It's not like there's a horde of people posting that would drown the site in traffic. I just want you guys to hear all the weird shit I got.
