Bug 6834 - Bug in Mageia infrastructure that leaves forum requests untreated/undetected
Summary: Bug in Mageia infrastructure that leaves forum requests untreated/undetected
Status: REOPENED
Alias: None
Product: Infrastructure
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Others (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All Linux
Priority: Normal major
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Forums Team
QA Contact: Forums Team
URL: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Forum_todo...
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2012-07-20 14:02 CEST by thomas bjo
Modified: 2013-12-02 10:21 CET (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:
Source RPM:
CVE:
Status comment:


Attachments

Description thomas bjo 2012-07-20 14:02:25 CEST
Description of problem:
Eager forum members are pro actively making suggestions and providing necessary documentation. 
This is mostly in vain and without any reaction whatsoever. 

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Se: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Forum_todo_and_open_points

How reproducible:


Steps to Reproduce:
1.Make a specific suggestion in the forum
2.Wait for a reaction and preferably an action
3.One year later: Continue waiting...
Comment 1 Barry Jackson 2012-07-20 15:04:27 CEST
+1

CC: (none) => zen25000

Comment 2 Florian Hubold 2012-07-21 22:10:10 CEST
+1

But as those open points are tracked in the list you posted, and need to be discussed and prioritized first, closing this bug as it will solve nothing. The bug is not in the infrastructure, but in the needed resources (forum admin)

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
CC: (none) => doktor5000
Resolution: (none) => INVALID

Comment 3 thomas bjo 2012-07-22 15:31:14 CEST
Seen from the outside this is clearly an infrastructure bug. There is no Admin that implements the suggestions or gives response.
The Admin does exist and according to forum posts is perfectly capable to implement them. There have been offers in the forum by members to implement the BBC code if given the admin rights temporarily for 10 minute or so ( so the needed resources were offered). 
This was countered (by wobo) with an explanation of this PHPbb implementation being a complicated git version that requires special skills.
I just don't believe that to be true for BBC-code even if I will buy it for major hacks.
So if the Git version of the Board is preventing an upgrade and implementing mods - it is a structural problem. The benefits of having the Git version are supposed to make upgrades easier AFAICT.

And then there is the lack of pro activity because someone is waiting for some council or whatever to decide something - which is an infrastructural problem.

If this is the case it can be solved by a new pro activity action rule:

If you can implement - just do it. All suggested BBC-codes should therefore be implemented.
If the councils and groups and persons etc do not like them they can always meet, prioritize and decide to remove them.

I can only speculate here so forgive me for that, but the results are plain for everyone to see.
Absolutely nothing that the contributing members have suggested (and provided the code for) is implemented. Clearly no one feels called to do it - if this is not an infrastructural problem - What is it?

I will repeat it here: If this is a capacity problem then give me admin rights for one hour - If I have failed to implement all BBC-code by then - I will personally come back here and apologize.

https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=35
Manuel Hiebel 2012-07-22 15:46:31 CEST

QA Contact: (none) => forums-discuss

Manuel Hiebel 2012-07-22 15:49:39 CEST

CC: (none) => maat-ml

Comment 5 Barry Jackson 2012-11-12 12:42:06 CET
Re-opening as still nothing happened after 19 months.

Status: RESOLVED => REOPENED
Resolution: INVALID => (none)

Comment 6 Marja Van Waes 2012-11-12 14:29:21 CET
(In reply to comment #5)
> Re-opening as still nothing happened after 19 months.

(In reply to comment #2)
> 
> But as those open points are tracked in the list you posted, and need to be
> discussed and prioritized first, closing this bug as it will solve nothing. The
> bug is not in the infrastructure, but in the needed resources (forum admin)

Past summer we've had someone - st3ve- who had time to work on patches, but lack of a VM and of a cleansed data dump from the forums made it impossible for him to really do anything.

This is all due to lack of man power, (also in sysadmin team, btw).

st3ve is still around, btw, but has less time now.

CC: (none) => marja11

Comment 7 Barry Jackson 2012-11-12 14:38:37 CET
I understand the manpower issue, however why has this offer not been taken up?

Quote from #3 :-
"I will repeat it here: If this is a capacity problem then give me admin rights
for one hour - If I have failed to implement all BBC-code by then - I will
personally come back here and apologize.

https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=35 "
Comment 8 Marja Van Waes 2012-11-12 14:52:10 CET
(In reply to comment #7)
> I understand the manpower issue, however why has this offer not been taken up?
> 
> Quote from #3 :-
> "I will repeat it here: If this is a capacity problem then give me admin rights
> for one hour - If I have failed to implement all BBC-code by then - I will
> personally come back here and apologize.
> 
> https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=35 "

In the current setup, forums admins don't have full admin rights.

Some time ago it was decided that sysadmin team would move the forums to a VM, to make it possible for the forums admins to have full access. 

However, sysadmin team has for a too long time had a very heavy workload. I don't know how close or how far they are from doing this, I only know that each of them is important to me and that I don't want them to collapse under their workload.
Comment 9 Maat 2012-11-12 15:48:08 CET
Let me explain this "BBCode issue" one last time:

Have a look at : https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Web_Forums_hacking

The BBCode spolier is put in "to consider" state and this is for a good reason.

The js/css BBCode spoiler you plan to introduce is far less powerful and if we add it it will interfere with code highlighting features we need and plan to implement.

The spoiler thing is good for movies dedicated forums but we are not operating such forum. Our needs are much more complex. Example on absoluteanime forums:
http://www.absoluteanime.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=95&t=30329

The spoiler, if used with big long code, will not implement easy to use scrollbars nor allow to schrink comments for example.

More : Compelling contributors of helpers team to click to view code will be a big loss of time for them: To save one click to people coming from time to time on the forum we would force helpers to spend their time opening those spoilers :-( 

So definitely i'm not in favor of this as it is currently proposed because it does not fit our needs.

=> Propose something that will deal with lengthy code, highlight it properly taking in account the various possible languages, allow sélection for copy/paste, and offer options for users to choose if they want to hide or not the code sections by default and i'll accept with joy and gratefulness to add the feature :)

But that would be a little bit more complex than copy/pasting 3 lines in admin board

Yes we lack man power... but not to the point we cannot copy/paste 3 poor lines. If that was not done the reason was simple : what was proposed did not fit the needs of a linux community forum.

Now if you want to help... git code is there git://git.mageia.org/forum and patches are welcome and code reviews and ideas... :p

You can too subscribe to mailing list and try to recruit PHP/PHPBB hackers for us if you can :-)
Comment 10 Barry Jackson 2012-11-12 17:37:44 CET
(In reply to comment #9)
Hi Maat
Thanks for the long explanation, however I really could not care less about spoilers.

Looking down your long list I cannot even find a reference to the one major bug that concerns me. The one that loses a reply when a link is clicked.

I first requested this on April 4 2011 in the first reply to the topic about bbcode recommendations  https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?p=167#p167

This morning I spent half an hour making a carefully worded reply to a forum post, to which I added a link from my notes. I was short on time I admit, but during a final preview of the post I clicked the link just to check it was still valid. I lost the lot and swore I would never post in the forum again until this bug is fixed. 

Please don't bother explaining to me how to avoid this happening, as I already know - it's just too easy to forget that in just one forum, one wrong click loses all your work.

Can this particular bug be given priority to avoid this happening as it is not just an enhancement - it is a really annoying bug that has driven people away.

As I understand it, this probably falls into the "not to the point we cannot copy/paste 3 poor lines" category ;)

I will open a separate bug report if that is what's needed

As regards helping - I will really only just have the time to maintain my current packages for the next 12 months or so.
Comment 11 Marja Van Waes 2012-11-12 18:57:39 CET
Just to make things more clear: barjac requests to let any link you click on in the forums, open in a new tab by default ;)
Comment 12 Maat 2012-11-13 08:55:20 CET
Ok. Seen that and understood.

Thanks Marja for the wiki example.

So phpBB forces that during page header generation :

        header('Cache-Control: private, no-cache="set-cookie"');
        header('Expires: 0');
        header('Pragma: no-cache');

Which prevents the browser form using its local cache to save content typed in forms and give that back to users after changing the url and coming back

I must admit that i considered the "no cache" behavior of browsers as the standard and never relied on such "side-effect" feature to protect my work

For lenthy posts i work them in a text editor and once ready i paste them in the form.

Just for a side note phpbb allows also to save drafts though i never used this feature :)

Now that said let's try to see if we can do something.

Forcing all URLs to open in an other tab would deprive users who do want to open them in the same window (they exist, i'm one of them ^^) of their liberty to do so.

Now you can middle-click or ctrl+click or right clic + open in new tab 
(in a smartphone or a tablet : long click)

So if we go this way we will have you happier and other starting to get angry ("why do this fscking forum starts opening all links in new tabs or windows ?")

We can start a vote on that but my vote would be "no" because of the above reasons (and because that would need to rework all the html template to add target="_blank" on every link and because target="_blank" is not XHTML STRICT compliant and is not encouraged by W3C so we'd have to switch to old XHTML TRANSITIONAL or struggle to use target add-on to XHTML DTD :-()

Trying to hack this "cache hating" behavior of phpBB would be better imho: solving your problem while saving users liberty to use the board as they wish

There are about 10 files to patch... but i thing only 2-3 files are really needed for post content backup&restore

Let's just test before deploying it : we need to check that there are no painful side effects on board features and security

If sysadmin team can dedicate a test VM for that purpose i can patch phpBB quickly but you'll do the tests o:-) 

Ok with that ? sysadmins too ?
Comment 13 Barry Jackson 2012-11-13 11:26:19 CET
It may be worth looking at how Mdv do it because their forum has never lost me a post (over 2000+) and does not AFAICT annoy anyone.

I notice that clicking links *outside* the Mdv domain open new tabs, but clicking links from the assortment in the forum header opens them in the same window, however one is still allowed to go back into the post you were editing without issue from all links.

Likewise with bugzilla - I never lose Mageia bugzilla posts that I am editing. For example I just went into Mandriva forum, edited a post, did some tests and came back here without any holding CTRL or centre click gymnastics - it just worked ;)
Comment 14 Marja Van Waes 2012-11-13 12:03:12 CET
(In reply to comment #13)
> It may be worth looking at how Mdv do it because their forum has never lost me
> a post (over 2000+) and does not AFAICT annoy anyone.
> 

I came up with the Mageia wiki example, because it uses the https protocol, too and there you can start editing a page, go to a page outside the wiki and return to find the page you're editing just like you left it.

The Mandriva forum doesn't use https and all other https sites I visit don't allow caching.
Comment 15 thomas bjo 2012-12-03 13:11:33 CET
The cosmetics of "we could start a poll" after 19 months of inaction is almost offending.

I would prefer the simple and honest closing of this bug as WONTFIX.   
Non of the BBC-code "simple 3 liners" will be implemented.

They are suggested by people that do not see the bigger plan for this board if I have understood this correctly.

The behavior of cookies in browsers due to the phpbb header cache  seem to be somewhat "off bug" too. 

Just as a digression: isn't this done with sessions like this?:

define('IN_PHPBB', true);
$phpbb_root_path = './Mageiaforums/';
$phpEx = substr(strrchr(__FILE__, '.'), 1);
include($phpbb_root_path . 'common.' . $phpEx);

// Start session management
$user->session_begin();
$auth->acl($user->data);
$user->setup(
Comment 16 Nicolas Vigier 2013-09-21 16:19:21 CEST
Closing.

Status: REOPENED => RESOLVED
CC: (none) => boklm
Resolution: (none) => INVALID

Comment 17 Florian Hubold 2013-11-29 17:07:42 CET
How is this report invalid?

The problem described in the initial post still exists, nothing is resolved from that open points list.

Just because it was assigned to sysadmin team doesn't mean that it should be simply closed without doing anything.

Status: RESOLVED => REOPENED
Resolution: INVALID => (none)
Assignee: sysadmin-bugs => forums-bugs

Comment 18 Marja Van Waes 2013-11-29 17:25:03 CET
(In reply to Florian Hubold from comment #17)
> How is this report invalid?
> 
> The problem described in the initial post still exists, nothing is resolved
> from that open points list.
> 
> Just because it was assigned to sysadmin team doesn't mean that it should be
> simply closed without doing anything.

Well, maybe he read your comment from when you closed the bug over a year earlier:

(In reply to Florian Hubold from comment #2)
> +1
> 
> But as those open points are tracked in the list you posted, and need to be
> discussed and prioritized first, closing this bug as it will solve nothing.
> The bug is not in the infrastructure, but in the needed resources (forum
> admin)

That list hasn't helped much, that is true
Comment 19 Nicolas Vigier 2013-11-29 17:45:50 CET
(In reply to Florian Hubold from comment #17)
> How is this report invalid?

Because a report with a title as vague as "Bug in Mageia infrastructure that leaves forum requests untreated/undetected" is just trolling and doesn't help anything. 

Keeping bugs open only when there is something to be done clearly defined would make this bugzilla more useful.
Comment 20 Florian Hubold 2013-11-29 19:46:49 CET
That's not trolling, that's the users perception. Maybe you just don't get that part of the community if you don't use the forums that often.

Last time we checked the volunteers who wanted to help improving and changing the forums, working on phpbb mods and so on couldn't start as a clone of the forum / forum VM has not been provided by sysadmins, so currently nobody can work on forums code without proper testing environment.

This is not fingerpointing, just saying.

This definitely counts in my book as a bug against Infrastructure, which should be sorted out, but hasn't been in the last 18 months, and forums team cannot help with that. So the reporter has perfectly described the issue, now it should be up to Mageia to adress this issue.
Comment 21 Florian Hubold 2013-11-29 19:54:23 CET
Put more constructively, who's currently able to implement items from the long list of proposals from https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Web_Forums_hacking#Working_on_forum_code

without a forums VM and a cleansed data dump of the international forum ?
Comment 22 Nicolas Vigier 2013-11-29 20:20:46 CET
(In reply to Florian Hubold from comment #20)
> That's not trolling, that's the users perception. Maybe you just don't get
> that part of the community if you don't use the forums that often.

This is not a question of users perception. There's nothing constructive in this bug report, no task clearly defined, so better to keep it closed to avoid polluting the list of open bugs.

> 
> Last time we checked the volunteers who wanted to help improving and
> changing the forums, working on phpbb mods and so on couldn't start as a
> clone of the forum / forum VM has not been provided by sysadmins, so
> currently nobody can work on forums code without proper testing environment.

Nobody provided the script to dump and filter the forums DB. Nobody wants to do anything and expect sysadmin team to do everything. I personally have no interest at all in doing anything which involves dealing with forums team given the usual tone in the discussions, and it seems nobody else wants to do it either, so it's not likely to change soon.

> 
> This is not fingerpointing, just saying.

No, this is fingerpointing, as usual in forums related discussions.
Comment 23 Marja Van Waes 2013-11-29 20:43:41 CET
(In reply to Nicolas Vigier from comment #22)
> I personally have no
> interest at all in doing anything which involves dealing with forums team
> given the usual tone in the discussions

Even if I'm not in forums team any more, I very much regret anything that made you, maat, ashledombos and many more including myself feel mistreated.

Removing you from the cc of this bug because I think your decision to stay afar from forums issues is correct.

Removing myself, too, because I'm not the right person to solve any problems between sysadmin team and forums team.

CC: boklm, marja11 => (none)

claire robinson 2013-12-02 10:21:14 CET

CC: (none) => eeeemail


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