Arrowhead and point typology area

[gregszybala]

Browsing through this section to see what damage done, overall not as bad as expected. One thing though, all the stickies no longer are and it appears I can't make them so.

Any suggestions?

[painshill]

Hi Greg

I began re-setting some of the stickies across the forum before my admin rights disappeared but can no longer change anything. I thought I had assigned rights for Moderators and above to also do that in the Information Center but I can no longer see the back end, so I can't check... and in any case a stranglehold has been exerted over everyone's rights by the developers, so that may well have been changed.

If you still have the option, you will see a little document icon with a pen across it at the top right of the forum category (next to the word "Filter") and a tick-box to the right of each post in that category. Mark the post you want to stick via its tick-box and then select "Stick Topics" via the document icon. You can do that for multiple posts by ticking several... if you can see those options.

[gregszybala]

Thanks Roger, I thought it should be in the document icon with the pen, but the option for Stick topics isn't one of the options available to me.

[Hoss]

Greg next to the document Icon I can see a little gear icon. If I click that I can see the sticky. If you run across anything that needs a sticky send me a link I can remedy that.

[painshill]

Greg next to the document Icon I can see a little gear icon. If I click that I can see the sticky. If you run across anything that needs a sticky send me a link I can remedy that.

The gear icon is only available to Administrators. The "sticky" option should appear in both places for them if the permissions are properly enabled.

[gregszybala]

In the gear icon, I see:
Move topic
Close topic
Unapprove topic
Copy topic
Delete topic

In the document icon, I see:
Mark this channel read......................View selected posts
Delete posts..........................................Sel ect all
Undelete posts.....................................Select none
Approve posts......................................Invert selection
Unapprove posts..................................Select unapproved posts
.................................................. ..............Select deleted posts
.................................................. ..............
.................................................. ..............Selected Posts with Attachments

[painshill]

Sorry... Hoss is correct... I am having to rely on my memory of what I could previously see. The "Stick Topic" option is indeed in the gear icon only (but for Administrators only) and not in the document icon.

[gregszybala]

So moderators can't moderate and or tweak posts on the site. Why does that not surprise me.

[CMD]

Do you see an edit icon at the bottom of everyone's post? I know I can edit into anyone's post.

[gregszybala]

Yes, edit icon is there

[painshill]

Hi Greg

vBulletin came “out of the box” with a set of defaults. All software for setting up forums tends to have some common terminology… so for example, both Kunena and vBulletin have “Moderator” and “Administrator” groups… but the terminology doesn’t necessarily represent the same set of permissions as a default. Think of the defaults as a “suggested starting point” that can be customised according to individual needs. So, the differences we had to cope with were:

1. The default (starting point) permissions were not the same. That is, what a Moderator could do in Kunena for example was not necessarily the same as what a Moderator could do in vBulletin on freshly installed software.

2. We had previously customised the user-group permissions (eg Moderators) in Kunena, so vBulletin needs to be customised in the same way if we want to get back to how we were.

3. We had also customised Kunena to provide forum areas for discussion by the Admin and Mod groups that were private from ordinary members. In addition, we had areas of the forum where specific permissions applied to particular people… the Information Center for example. Most of those specific permissions still need to be re-set.

4. vBulletin has a lot more features than Kunena and so there were (still are) lots of new things on which we needed to make a decision about who should be able to do them. That is, were the default permissions for those new features what we wanted or not? That review has not actually taken place and in some cases the features are not fully enabled.

5. Because there are a lot more permission possibilities in vBulletin, they are sometimes “grouped”. So, a single tick in the Control Panel may relate to a “bundle” of several permissions. Because of that, an element of “compromise” may be needed and the permissions may then only approximate to what we had in Kunena rather than be exactly the same. I was previously aiming to achieve the closest to "status quo" that I could and not take anything away from anyone.



Are the forum permissions now set to how we had them in Kunena? No. Are they actually what we want to run the forum properly? No. Is the permissions hierarchy in vBulletin actually working properly? No (in my opinion, based on previous unexpected behaviour and conflicts). Is it being worked on by the developers? Apparently so, but in the meantime they have re-set some of the changes previously made and blocked any further adjustments. What is today’s status? I haven’t got the faintest idea and am no longer in a position to advise… never mind change.

[gregszybala]

Thanks Roger for the explanation and thanks Matt for offering. With this explanation and the one you had done previously my understanding of what is compared to what was is much better. I would like to help in what limited ability and capacity I have and seeing posts, pictures etc. that need tweaking, and being able to assist as a moderator, one would think would be a priority to the developers and technicians involved. I understand that there are major hurdles yet to be accomplished before that can even happen yet. What is surprising though is vBulletin seems to work fine in forums like Tnet and Arrowheadology (excluding the loss of their like button recently) but we can't even get close to that here yet. The site works, but it doesn't work. Many loose ends, many things that seem ridiculously hard to configure or change.
Since the change we are still a one page forum, since the change you still have to log in to the site through the backdoor of the old site, since the change, nobody can place their location under their avatar, since the change we have this ridiculous orange bar that tells us how wonderful we are and since the change I still don't see Arrowheads.com at the top of the page, I see vBulletin. A lot of loose ends and we can't help and remain clueless.

[painshill]

Thanks Roger for the explanation and thanks Matt for offering. With this explanation and the one you had done previously my understanding of what is compared to what was is much better. I would like to help in what limited ability and capacity I have and seeing posts, pictures etc. that need tweaking, and being able to assist as a moderator, one would think would be a priority to the developers and technicians involved. I understand that there are major hurdles yet to be accomplished before that can even happen yet. What is surprising though is vBulletin seems to work fine in forums like Tnet and Arrowheadology (excluding the loss of their like button recently) but we can't even get close to that here yet. The site works, but it doesn't work. Many loose ends, many things that seem ridiculously hard to configure or change.
Since the change we are still a one page forum, since the change you still have to log in to the site through the backdoor of the old site, since the change, nobody can place their location under their avatar, since the change we have this ridiculous orange bar that tells us how wonderful we are and since the change I still don't see Arrowheads.com at the top of the page, I see vBulletin. A lot of loose ends and we can't help and remain clueless.

That just about sums it up. The additional disadvantage we had versus other sites running vBulletin was that we were switching from one platform to another (and simultaneously moving to a new server). vBulletin is not only more sophisticated than Kunena but it handles the data in different ways... so many things that related to the data in Kunena were not recognised by vBulletin. The tag that makes a post "sticky" is just one example. All of those tags were lost when the data was transferred. Tags indicating a member was banned were lost. The fields relating to information in member profiles didn't map across from the old forum. Text formatting, line spacing and special characters were not recognised. Internal hot-links on the new forum still point to the old forum. If you find items on the new forum via Google, the link doesn't always take you to the right place, etc etc.

[CMD]

Yes, edit icon is there

I guess my only point being why would we have the ability to edit the posts of others? If all our moderator "tools" were gone? That's a moderator tool, unless all members can also edit my posts. Which is likely, now that I think about it, lol...

I'm still clueless, and just stumbling along. See arrowheads.com at the top, not vBulletin. Not sure what "logging in by back door" means. I just log in on the new home page.

I have to admit, it's been awhile now. Does not feel like the same site at all. It really isn't feeling right in some bottom line sense. Some of the bells and whistles are nice, but it's true there are a lot of technical problems, but maybe a sense of people posting in a "treading water" state of mind. Trying to keep something afloat that really doesn't want to float anymore. New folks are showing up, and enjoying what they find for the most part. This old timer is getting pretty tired, on the other hand.

[painshill]

I guess my only point being why would we have the ability to edit the posts of others? If all our moderator "tools" were gone? That's a moderator tool, unless all members can also edit my posts.

Charlie... no-one is saying that all the Moderator tools have gone. They haven't. The point is that Moderator permissions in vBulletin were not aligned to the same level as in Kunena. They needed to be customised to get back to "status quo" and that proved to be rather difficult. The developers have intervened and put a stranglehold on any further changes. I believe (but don't know) that they set Moderator permissions back to the default level (ie vBulletin's idea of the "suggested start point" for Moderators).