WAD Xenforo posts - EMAIL delivery failure

[Steve Fabian]

Message posted by Steve Howe in the "TCMD14 & free for JUNCTION's" thread today at 7:51 AM has not yet been delivered. This is VERY slow even if the TOD is local, not that of the author (located in the UK).

Why cannot Xenforo obey the default time representation set for both Windows and for JPsoft products? Mine is ISO 8601 format.

How do I know whether posting time displayed is local time of poster or local time of reader?

Displaying posting time as "18 minutes ago" is wrong for a page which is not refreshed for more than 60s, unless the page is actively updated every 60s even when the browser is in the background.

 

[TEA-Time]

That post reads 4:51 AM, which is local time for me because I have my timezone set in my profile on this board. I believe you get either the local time of the website or GMT if you don't have that set. That e-mail was delivered to my Gmail account immediately after the post was made. The latest time in the headers is 04:51:30 -0700 (PDT). I'm in -0700 MST all the time here in Arizona (which doesn't observe daylight savings time, except for the Navajo Nation).

Due to how the downloading and displaying of web pages typically work, it's pretty much a given to me that any displayed time difference is as of the loading of the page. Few sites actively update time differences.

 

[Steve Fabian]

My email account is part of a website I own, hosted by GoDaddy.com, and accessed exclusively through Outlook Express. But the post never arrived. I just start OE on my other machine, where it was off for two days (and my OE preferences are never to delete mail from the server just because one client machine received it), received 9 new posts (including yours), not Steve Howe's.

My Forum preferences did already contain US ET (currently UTC-5.00). Apparently you agree that displaying "18 min ago" is meaningless UNLESS all Xenforo webpages potentially containing dynamic data are actually dynamic pages - which I seriously doubt. If there is anything dynamic my guess is that it is restricted to posting and profile changes.

 

[TEA-Time]

Perhaps Stephen's landed in the spam folder on the server and OE doesn't see it? Are you using IMAP? If so, I believe you should be able to see all folders...

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the whole "ago" thing, especially when it's rounded to an hour or more! I'd rather see an actual time and date stamp and then consider myself intelligent enough to do the math myself. :)

 

[rconn]

The XenForo email notifications are sent immediately. What happens to them after that is up to your email server.

The message times are set by XenForo and cannot be reconfigured by JP Software. If you want to make a feature request, you know where to do it -- this forum is for Take Command issues.

I'm not interested in continuing these arguments over the email notifications. I have said repeatedly that it is what it is, cannot be extended or modified, and if users continued to complain about it I would remove it.

So I'm removing it now.

 

[Steve Fabian]

Most of this thread was not about email notifications, but Xenforo's failure to display the actual time of posting.

Your reaction to the report that a specific post was not emailed is comparable to somebody refusing to use TCMD because they downloaded a copy whose upload was incomplete and thus failed. If we do not know there is something worth looking at in the forum we will not look at all. You are asking us to go to the TV studio to listen to the news, instead of having it delivered.

 

[Charles Dye]

You are asking us to go to the TV studio to listen to the news, instead of having it delivered.

Odd analogy; one need not go to the TV studio to see the news broadcast, any more than one must go to the printing press to read the paper. Television, for all its very real failings, is 'delivered' at the speed of light....

 

[TEA-Time]

So I'm removing it now.

No complaints with the e-mail deliveries from me! I was just informing Steve of what I saw with that post. I like not having to regularly visit the forums to keep up with the threads.

Please put it back (and ignore Steve. ).

 

[rconn]

Most of this thread was not about email notifications, but Xenforo's failure to display the actual time of posting.

Your initial message (and title) complained about not receiving an email notification, and also about the way XenForo time-stamped email messages.

You filed this as a bug -- but neither issue constitutes a Take Command bug (and so doesn't belong in this forum), and both are complaints about (different aspects of) the XenForo email notification. I've removed XenForo email notifications, so neither issue is relevant now.

I told you on numerous previous occasions that I would remove the email notifications (used by < 1% of forum users) if people continued to complain about the (mostly trivial) aspects of it that I can't control. Since you continued to complain and file "bug" reports, I can only assume that you find it unusable in its current format, and removing it isn't going to present any burden to your forum usage.

 

[WavSlave]

Rex, I really hope you'll rescind that decision. Email is how I stay up with the many interesting conversations that happen here. Sure, I occasionally notice when a message or two that I might have expected to receive didn't arrive in my inbox but I don't care. I know that if a glitch [might have] happened, the forum itself is always here to provide a complete copy of the thread(s) in question. I admit that it's far easier for me (and many others, I suspect) to peruse my inbox rather than browsing the forum, which I'm far less likely to do. I realize I'm only hurting myself by not visiting the forum "in person" but I'm used to doing things the way I'm used to doing them. Maybe (?) it would be better for you or Charles or any other moderator to simply ignore or outright delete any post that strays off topic. I'd bet that this already happens with some spam posts. Just consider XenForo-related posts as spam and treat them the same way.

Again, please reconsider the disabling of all email notifications. The lesson for the rest of us is to keep posts strictly about TCMD and/or TCC and not mention any perceived failures of the forum software itself.


Respectfully,
Dan McMullin

 

[rconn]

The email notifications have been an ongoing irritation for me because:

1) I added them solely for the benefit of a tiny but extremely noisy group of users who were unable or unwilling to use the web interface, and
2) I told everybody (over, and over, and over again) that it was completely unsupported, and
3) I don't have the source code for the XenForo forum software and email notifications and cannot change them, and
4) It's not a Take Command issue, and doesn't belong in the Support forum, and
5) I've repeatedly said that ongoing complaints would lead me to drop email notifications as far more trouble than they're worth, but ...
6) People continue to file (often inaccurate or misleading) "bug" reports here about XenForo and email notifications (frequently poorly disguised requests for new features that there's no way for me to implement). And when I repeat #1 to #5 (as I already have dozens of times to the same users), I get further complaints.

I have no problem if people want to make requests or complain about the forum software. They can post them to the Open Forum; they don't belong in the Support Forum labeled as bugs. If I think the requests are good ones, I'll forward them to the XenForo forums where there is a miniscule chance that the XenForo developers might decide to implement them at some point (unlikely to be in the near future).

If I decide to reenable email notifications (I'm still far from convinced that's a good idea) it'll be with the understanding that "bug" reports like that will either be moved elsewhere or simply deleted.

 

[K_Meinhard]

Rex,

If I decide to reenable email notifications (I'm still far from convinced that's a good idea) it'll be with the understanding that "bug" reports like that will either be moved elsewhere or simply deleted.

I feel that this is simply a childish spite reaction and you shouldn't treat people who gave much of their time to help you and your program(s) along in this way. Still more, you "punish" us all for what you perceive as a misdeed by one, and that's not the behaviour I expect from a reputable company.

I, for one, wont tolerate being treated in this way. If you stand by that decision (to remove email notification) I think its time to say Goodbye for me to JP Soft. I think if that tiny and extremely noisy group would do the same the forums will be much poorer.

 

[rconn]

I feel that this is simply a childish spite reaction and you shouldn't treat people who gave much of their time to help you and your program(s) along in this way.

There would be more force to your argument if it weren't for the several hundred emails preceding it where the topic was already beaten to death. If the users (not just one!) for whom the email notifications was enabled refuse to accept the restrictions inherent in email notifications, my only choices are to either remove the notifications, or simply ignore and/or delete further messages on this topic. Which choice is preferable?

 

[Steve Fabian]

Odd analogy; one need not go to the TV studio to see the news broadcast, any more than one must go to the printing press to read the paper. Television, for all its very real failings, is 'delivered' at the speed of light....

Yes, TV is delivered, so my analogy is not very real - I was referring to what good TV news would be if if it were NOT delivered, as is becoming the case in many areas for those who do not have cable access. Or my old analogy, if mail would never be delivered but would always have to be picked up by going to the post office, just to find out there is none. And using a browser requires many times more data transfer for the same information than a mail client, which has a simple protocol to determine what, if anything, is new. Now if someone wrote a SIMPLE program to query the Forum website to see what is newer than my last access...

A very important reason for receiving all posts by (e)mail is that my email is stored on my system locally. I can access it whether or not I have access to the Internet! This is particularly relevant to those who provide service to clients (whether corporate in-house, repair business, or just helping friends). In some business environments you are disconnected from the Internet, only intranet is available.

Yes, I am aware that with the proliferation of wide-band internet access the old "time-share" approach is making a come-back, just replacing the old telephone line access with the 'net, but IMHO it is a great waste of the power of the local computer, esp. when you run server-side programs from your workstation - it is using a tiny fraction of its computing power, while waiting for the availability of computing power on a shared resource. In fact I had long been advocating distributed databases (just as long as physical protection of the locally stored data is commensurate with its nature), with each transaction just validating that its local data is current. This matches the principle used my many browsers to verify that the locally cached copy of a web page to be displayed is not obsolete, and downloading only if it isn't. A browser-based forum cannot do that. It increases the internet traffic and the load on the server tremendously!

 

[Charles Dye]

I, for one, wont tolerate being treated in this way. If you stand by that decision (to remove email notification) I think its time to say Goodbye for me to JP Soft. I think if that tiny and extremely noisy group would do the same the forums will be much poorer.

Well, I'll miss you, Klaus. You often have useful and informative things to say.

That said, I have to empathize with Rex's pique about the incessant forum complaints. Every hour he spends diddling* with the forum software is an hour not spent working on the software we love -- and that he gets paid for. AFAIK, nobody ever paid Rex a dime to run a Web forum.

Come on, folks. Are you here for the medium, or for the content?

* Verb replaced.

 

[K_Meinhard]

Well, I'll miss you, Klaus. You often have useful and informative things to say.

That said, I have to empathize with Rex's pique about the incessant forum complaints. Every hour he spends diddling* with the forum software is an hour not spent working on the software we love -- and that he gets paid for. AFAIK, nobody ever paid Rex a dime to run a Web forum.

Come on, folks. Are you here for the medium, or for the content?

* Verb replaced.

I haven't complained for a very long time. Why should I suffer from Rex pique? There are a few of us who prefer email notification, and as far as I guess these few a responsible for more than their share of bug reports, suggestions, forum participation and free customer help. I am not used to being treated in this way, and I don't intend to start now.

That said, you should consider that a support forum is an essential piece of customer care today. So Rex' "diddling" isn't all due to his good heart. We've made many suggestions which actually enhanced the forum experience. So if Rex has a short fuse regarding email notification, surely he can tell that to the person he has a problem with by private email without throwing a tantrum in the forum.

 

[Charles Dye]

I haven't complained for a very long time.

I'm not accusing you of it. Sorry if it sounded that way.

 

[K_Meinhard]

I'm not accusing you of it. Sorry if it sounded that way.

No, Charles, I didn't feel accused by you. I felt unjustly cut of from a service I didn't complain about (lately).

But since forum emails seem to continue to reach me, let's lay this thing to rest.

 

[Steve Fabian]

I apologize for posting my original message in this thread as a bug, and not distinguishing between issues that relate only to email reports and issues that relate to both email and browser access.

I also appreciate that email notifications are continuing.
--
Steve