Boy, I goofed - A few suggestions for site improvement

    Well, I finally done gone went and got myself banned. Silly me. Anyway, I had a few suggestions for the website:


    1) Don't block banned users from seeing the site

    I had an issue with my Kemper and wanted to check something and found that I could not view any posts on the site.


    While I agree it is often necessary to ban people, I think completely preventing their IP addresses from viewing it entirely is not fair.


    After all, where do you read about new firmware updates, bug fixes, etc?


    What if a certain batch of Kempers started catching fire due to some problem with a supplier as an extreme case? And then some user doesn't read about it and everybody in his house is burnt to a crisp.


    Preventing a banned (l)user from posting should suffice, preventing them from viewing the site is draconian.


    2) Profanity filter

    I got banned for a few cuss words in a post. Just a stupid "yo momma" type joke.


    For the record, it's not the first time such language has been uttered on the forum.


    In that regard, it would be great if people wouldn't be banned for swearing. There really was nothing more than a series of cuss words in the post, I hear worse things just walking through the city all day long.


    In that regard, TGP has a great profanity filter that puts a bunch of asterisks to prevent anyone from reading those words.


    Would be great if we could have that on this forum as well.


    3) Get rid of the 60-word thread topic limit

    I discussed this with the Kemper Amps support team.


    They assured me that no user has been ever banned because of posting a thread topic with more than 60 characters.


    But didn't that happen to Sinmix at least once?


    At any rate, Sinmix and the Kemper Amps team had bigger issues, so his is an exceptional case.


    At any rate, on this requirement, wouldn't a software solution be a better strategy?


    I mean just truncate everything after 60 characters. It will save users from having to be warned for posting titles that contravene the 60-character limit.




    For the record, I totally agree with my ban. Beyond the bounds of common decency, etcetera, etcetera. :evil:

    If the 60-character limit can be imposed by a software setting, that'd be the logical solution I reckon, AJ. I suspect however that the character-length provision isn't a standard parameter and would therefore involve "hacking" the code, something a licensee isn't allowed to do.


    I mean, you'd think that if it were a simple matter of setting the limit in a forum-settings parameter field, Kemper would surely have done this.

    Quote from Monkey_Man

    If the 60-character limit can be imposed by a software setting, that'd be the logical solution I reckon, AJ. I suspect however that the character-length provision isn't a standard parameter and would therefore involve "hacking" the code, something a licensee isn't allowed to do.


    I mean, you'd think that if it were a simple matter of setting the limit in a forum-settings parameter field, Kemper would surely have done this.


    Kemper support told me that the limit was set based on user feedback. But I'm sure there must be some logical way of truncating a topic.


    In fact, I'm not even sure how the mods do it? Do they count all 60 characters?


    Maybe we could have a word counter or something like Twitter.


    It definitely isn't rocket scientist.


    I have the feeling that this new website comes from the effort Kemper Amps made to hire programmers earlier this year. Hopefully they can get things fixed soon, such as the ability to post images, and ensuring that clicking on the Kemper logo doesn't give you an error message.

    It's actually the "WoltLab Suite™" linked to at the bottom of the page; Kemper has nothing to do with its creation AFAIK.


    Now, if support told you that the limit was set based on user feedback, it sure sounds like it's definable on their part, in which case, we're in agreement that the software ought to take care of it.


    IMHO, automatic truncation would be sufficient disincentive to advertisers 'cause I'm sure none of them wants to see his carefully-constructed headline hacked. It'd be a simple matter of editing the title until it fits.