A forum to post any bugs you may encounter while using TrekCC.
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First Edition Creative Manager
By KazonPADD (Paddy Tye)
 - First Edition Creative Manager
 -  
1E European Continental Runner-Up 2023
1E The Neutral Zone Regional Champion 2023
#557708
I tried posting playtest results, but it wouldn’t let me due to the title being too similar to existing threads.
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First Edition Rules Master
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Community Contributor
#557728
At the min, is it possible to have the prompt but not enforce it?

i.e. "Hey, you sure you don't want one of these similar threads?", but not "NO YOU MUST POST IN THE ALGORITHMICALLY CHOSEN THREAD."? ;)
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Executive Officer
By jadziadax8 (Maggie Geppert)
 - Executive Officer
 -  
2E North American Continental Semi-Finalist 2023
ibbles  Trek Masters Tribbles Champion 2023
2E Deep Space 9 Regional Champion 2023
#557729
AllenGould wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 6:22 pm At the min, is it possible to have the prompt but not enforce it?

i.e. "Hey, you sure you don't want one of these similar threads?", but not "NO YOU MUST POST IN THE ALGORITHMICALLY CHOSEN THREAD."? ;)
The problem seems to be with the feature on the mobile version of the forum. I have found that if I make a post on mobile and get that message, it won't let me proceed, but if I make the same post on desktop, I can tell the feature to F off.
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By Dukat (Andreas Rheinländer)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
1E European Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
1E German National Runner-Up 2024
#558375
The problem exists in the regular browser version as well.

The only way to circumvent this bloody annoying feature is to post something with an absurd title that does not exist, quickly return to the topic and manually change the topic title.

Annoying as F.
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Director of Operations
By JeBuS (Brian S)
 - Director of Operations
 -  
1E Deep Space 9 Regional Champion 2023
#558480
I've just tried testing this on mobile and desktop and can't reproduce what you seem to be reporting.

If I start a new thread and make its subject similar or identical to an existing thread, it makes the recommendation of 6 other threads. But it doesn't stop the submission of the new thread.

What exactly happens for you folk?



The reason this feature exists is because there is a cost to every new thread created. The cost is time and space. It's miniscule, individually. But in aggregate, it's quite large.

Each new thread increases the time it takes to do things like searches, software upgrades, and other operations. Each new thread also occupies just a bit more memory on the server.

If I had to guesstimate, I'd say at least a third of all threads in our database are entirely redundant. In practical terms: your forum searches could be 50% more accurate / helpful; our maintenance could be faster; etc.

It's not there to annoy you, specifically. But it is there to try to change your behavior. Which I can understand would be annoying if you're dead-set against changing your behavior. It's there to remind you that there's an alternative to creating a new thread for the same topic someone else is already discussing.
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First Edition Rules Master
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Community Contributor
#559449
JeBuS wrote: Mon Jul 26, 2021 4:43 pm It's not there to annoy you, specifically. But it is there to try to change your behavior. Which I can understand would be annoying if you're dead-set against changing your behavior. It's there to remind you that there's an alternative to creating a new thread for the same topic someone else is already discussing.
Is there at least a threshold setting we can tweak so that it doesn't match on a single word? Just added a thread in one of the private forums and while I'm not getting the "refuse to post" glitch, it took me a couple tries to figure out that it's just showing me five random threads with "template" or "question" in the title.

Even requiring two words to match would cut down the false positives immensely. Right now, the new behavior I'm learning is "ignore the big block of text that loads in". :D
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Second Edition Art Manager
By edgeofhearing (Lucas Thompson)
 - Second Edition Art Manager
 -  
Community Contributor
#573869
KazonPADD wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 8:28 am I tried posting playtest results, but it wouldn’t let me due to the title being too similar to existing threads.
This feature continues to cause trouble in the playtest forums, this time on the 2e side. I hope we can, at the very least, disable it for the playtest forums; but, more generally, I think it's actively harmful for this site to have a feature that asks users "have you considered not contributing?" when they try to participate.

Consider the best-case scenario for this feature: someone goes to ask a rules question, gets the warning that similar threads exist, and then searches and finds their answer. That's a terrible outcome, given that rulings change over time, and the answer they find is just as likely to be wrong and out of date. And that's when the feature is working as intended!

What's also possible is a new user bumps into that warning, is frustrated, and bounces right back out of the site. That's a worse outcome - we want people to feel welcome more than we want our forum to be neat and tidy.

I think the actual best case scenario is when the user ignores the warning, posts anyways, and gets an answer to their question. That seems to happen plenty, fortunately, but when a system works best when it is ignored, it's probably time to get rid of the system.
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First Edition Creative Manager
By KazonPADD (Paddy Tye)
 - First Edition Creative Manager
 -  
1E European Continental Runner-Up 2023
1E The Neutral Zone Regional Champion 2023
#577444
Hi, this is still a feature and a massive bug for me. I keep posting threads using dummy titles and then changing them back later. Please can you just rip the whole thing out and let us use whatever titles we want to?
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Director of Operations
By JeBuS (Brian S)
 - Director of Operations
 -  
1E Deep Space 9 Regional Champion 2023
#577445
Turns out there is a bug in the code. Despite setting the Playtesting forums to not do the check, the check would still occur. Seems that the admin panel isn't properly setting the flag in the database which should tell the rest of the software not to do that subject check. For now, I've manually set the value in the database.

I'm hoping the code at least reads that properly now, and stops doing the subject check in the playtesting forums. :cross:
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
 -  
Regent
Community Contributor
#577468
edgeofhearing wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 3:06 pm I just successfully posted a playtest thread without a warning. I'd still love to see the whole title-checking-system stripped out and unceremoniously set on fire, but I'll take what I can get.
Well when they can't even retire the years-defunct Excelsior forum, I wouldn't hold my breath...
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#578100
edgeofhearing wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:58 am
KazonPADD wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 8:28 am I tried posting playtest results, but it wouldn’t let me due to the title being too similar to existing threads.
This feature continues to cause trouble in the playtest forums, this time on the 2e side. I hope we can, at the very least, disable it for the playtest forums; but, more generally, I think it's actively harmful for this site to have a feature that asks users "have you considered not contributing?" when they try to participate.

Consider the best-case scenario for this feature: someone goes to ask a rules question, gets the warning that similar threads exist, and then searches and finds their answer. That's a terrible outcome, given that rulings change over time, and the answer they find is just as likely to be wrong and out of date. And that's when the feature is working as intended!

What's also possible is a new user bumps into that warning, is frustrated, and bounces right back out of the site. That's a worse outcome - we want people to feel welcome more than we want our forum to be neat and tidy.

I think the actual best case scenario is when the user ignores the warning, posts anyways, and gets an answer to their question. That seems to happen plenty, fortunately, but when a system works best when it is ignored, it's probably time to get rid of the system.
Late but QFT

The monetary and maintenance costs of redundant threads, all added together, are insignificant next to the potential of alienating even one possible new user in our far-too-small community.

(I say this as someone who uses forum search CONSTANTLY)
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First Edition Rules Master
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Community Contributor
#578299
I don't mind the site doing a "hey, this looks an awful lot like an existing thread, why not post it there instead?" nudge, but currently it's not remotely smart enough that we should be letting it *force* the change.

Hopefully that's an option in the settings?
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