SuSanA - Forum Kunena Site Syndication http://forum.susana.org/ Mon, 20 May 2013 07:55:37 +0000 Kunena 1.6 http://forum.susana.org/components/com_kunena/template/default/images/icons/rss.png SuSanA - Forum http://forum.susana.org/ en-gb internal message function now operational - by: muench http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2113-internal-messages-internal-short-messages-are-now-possible-between-users#4297 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2113-internal-messages-internal-short-messages-are-now-possible-between-users#4297
I have good news for you today: There was a user request last year to add an internal e-mailing function to the forum (see above). I am happy to announce that this has now been added. From tomorrow morning (European time) onwards it will be possible to send other users short (!) direct messages, which they will receive in their inbox (hopefully not in the spam, as the sender of this e-mail is “SuSanA Forum”).

What is this for? So that you can:
  • Thank someone for their post and make sure they see your thank you (there is also the like-button below a post).
  • Ask someone for their e-mail address
  • Alert someone to a post that you have made and that they should see.
  • Alert someone that they should perhaps read a specific post (e.g. if they were mentioned) and reply on the forum.

What is it not to be used for:
  • Any type of annoying e-mail, spam, advertisement, bugging, etc.
  • Content discussions – rather have content discussions in the open please so that all can benefit! (that's why the message is limited to a maximum of 360 characters)


How do I use it?

  • Simply click on the green “CONTACT” button below the person’s photo that appears on the left side of the person’s post (see e.g. below my photo to the left of this post). Then you get to this page where you can write your message:




    • Or find the user in the user list and then click on “CONTACT” under their photo of their profile page.

    This is the link to the user list (you can get to it from “Forum tools”, then “Statistics” at the top black bar):
    forum.susana.org/forum/categories/userlist

    Obviously, you need to be logged in before you can make such a contact (and before you can even see the “CONTACT” button below the photo).

    This is the fine print:
    ++++++
    This page allows you to contact another forum user directly. Your message will be sent to the other user’s e-mail address.
    To prevent abuse your name and e-mail address will automatically be sent to the other user and we will log all communications to protect the users from spam.

    We will ban any user who abuses this function.

    +++++++++++++

    We hope that you will enjoy this new feature! Feedback welcome as always.

    Oh, and we have also built in an “opt-out” function - we have thought of everything! If you really, really don’t want to be contactable via the internal messaging function, then please select “No” in the tab “Forum Settings” inside your profile where it says “Allow users to contact me”. The default setting is set to “Yes”. See screenshot below (but be fair: if you think you might want to contact other users in the future, then do allow them to contact you, too…):



    You get to your profile settings from the top black bar (see "My profile"), when you are logged in. This is also where you set your photo, personal text and signature, by the way.

    Feedback? How about you try it out immediately to get used to it and to thank your most favourite user for his or her valuable contributions over the months and years.

    Regards,
    Elisabeth
    (and the rest of the team who worked on this new function (Steffen Eisser, Trevor Surridge and Dorothee Spuhler))]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Thu, 02 May 2013 20:34:30 +0000     Have you had problems with attaching files to your post? - by: tmsinnovation http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3494-have-you-had-problems-with-attaching-files-to-your-post#3494 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3494-have-you-had-problems-with-attaching-files-to-your-post#3494
    A few users who recently updated their Firefox browser ran into some difficulties whereby they could not attach any files to their posts. We have since fixed this, but are happy to hear about any other difficulties encountered in this regard.

    You should be able to upload upto 20000KB (approximately 19Mb) and the following file extensions are supported:
    txt
    rtf
    pdf
    zip
    ppt
    doc
    pptx
    docx
    xls
    xlsx

    Kind regards
    Trevor]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Thu, 14 Feb 2013 20:12:40 +0000     Re: using e-mail to write on the SuSanA discussion forum - by: muench http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3019-using-e-mail-to-write-on-the-susana-discussion-forum#3332 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3019-using-e-mail-to-write-on-the-susana-discussion-forum#3332
    There could still be some technical hiccups depending on the e-mail client that you use and maybe some other settings, but please do try it out and if there are problems, then please e-mail the secretariat, and further improvements can be made ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

    Please also see here my other post on some more information about the new digest function which has been much improved and was launched two days ago:
    forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-sugg...12&start=12#3331

    Example how the new forum digest looks like in a Gmail e-mail account (note the text in blue "click here to reply by e-mail" directly under the green title of the post):]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:51:40 +0000     Re: SuSanA discussion forum digest (e-mail alert): set your own frequency now - by: muench http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/1601-susana-discussion-forum-digest-e-mail-alert-choose-your-own-frequency-now?limit=12&start=12#3331 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/1601-susana-discussion-forum-digest-e-mail-alert-choose-your-own-frequency-now?limit=12&start=12#3331
    I am coming back to an earlier discussion we had on the forum digest (e-mail alert) and how it could be improved.
    Remember we had a poll on how often the forum digest by e-mail should come out (daily, weekly or monthly). In the end we had set it to twice a week without giving a choice.

    Good news: The IT developers of the SuSanA forum have now programmed a new digest function and you can now make your own choice on how often you want to receive the forum digest by e-mail!
    To do so, please simply login here:
    www.susana.org/lang-en/login

    Then click on "change your details" (see bottom left) and then you get to this screen (using me as an example):


    I think that is really good news! I have immediately changed mine to daily (also good for reading offline). Thanks to the SuSanA secretariat (Trevor Surridge) and Steffen Eisser (IT) for making this happen. I would have given the glory to Trevor to announce it himself but he is off sick this week, unfortunately.

    Second improvement: you can now click on "reply by e-mail" on any of the posts inside of the forum digest. Maybe some people may find this convenient, because again the e-mail can be written offline.

    Note this functionality is not yet quite perfect: it does not work when you try to add attachments, when you forward on another e-mail or if you use hidden images in your signature for example. But please try it out so that we can iron out any further bugs we may find.

    Your feedback...?? Oh and if you don't do anything, then you will continue to receive the e-mail digest twice a week as a default (unless you had opted out of it).

    Cheers from Rabat,
    Elisabeth]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:43:05 +0000     Re: How to deal with multiple languages on the forum and in the digest? - by: susanaforum http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2379-how-to-deal-with-multiple-languages-on-the-forum-and-in-the-digest?limit=12&start=12#3189 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2379-how-to-deal-with-multiple-languages-on-the-forum-and-in-the-digest?limit=12&start=12#3189
    First of all we are very happy that this new tool is getting so much attention in this short time period.
    But this is a tool from google so we do not have any direct influence on how it translates or which languages are added.

    Google translator has a learning algorithm, so the more people use the editable translation function where you can type in sentences and translate them, the faster the translation algorithm learns. Over the past year or two the improvement between the translation between certain languages has been remarkable. We hope that google will add additional languages to this translation tool to open up the forum to an even larger audience.

    Kind regards,
    SuSanA secretariat.
    [posted by Agazi Medhanie and Trevor Surridge]]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Tue, 22 Jan 2013 08:16:41 +0000     Re: How to deal with multiple languages on the forum and in the digest? - by: cecile http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2379-how-to-deal-with-multiple-languages-on-the-forum-and-in-the-digest?limit=12&start=12#3175 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2379-how-to-deal-with-multiple-languages-on-the-forum-and-in-the-digest?limit=12&start=12#3175 I just checked the discussion forum in French and selected English. I worked well for the translation of the text (the title is not so well translated but good enough to know what the post is about. I also tried from French to Portuguese but it just translated a couple of words here and there.
    As far as the other categories are concerned (translation from English to French), it is brilliant, I think this is a major improvement to break the language barrier and to have access to information and experience !
    Cecile]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Mon, 21 Jan 2013 10:20:12 +0000     Re: How to deal with multiple languages on the forum and in the digest? - by: F H Mughal http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2379-how-to-deal-with-multiple-languages-on-the-forum-and-in-the-digest?limit=12&start=12#3172 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2379-how-to-deal-with-multiple-languages-on-the-forum-and-in-the-digest?limit=12&start=12#3172
    F H Mughal]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Sun, 20 Jan 2013 11:25:06 +0000     Re: How to deal with multiple languages on the forum and in the digest? - by: muench http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2379-how-to-deal-with-multiple-languages-on-the-forum-and-in-the-digest?limit=12&start=12#3168 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2379-how-to-deal-with-multiple-languages-on-the-forum-and-in-the-digest?limit=12&start=12#3168 You mean you went to the French category in our forum and tried to translate it to English, i.e. this page:
    forum.susana.org/forum/categories/44-for...ench-speaking-people
    ?

    I think this needs a little more programming because the button is probably based on English as the base language but here it would need to be French as the base language.
    I will ask Dotwerkstatt, our IT developers.

    But for the English page it works brilliantly, don't you think? And it will only get better and better because Google Translate is continually improving.
    Soon, many translaters will be out of jobs.

    Elisabeth]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Fri, 18 Jan 2013 12:14:31 +0000     Re: How to deal with multiple languages on the forum and in the digest? - by: christoph http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2379-how-to-deal-with-multiple-languages-on-the-forum-and-in-the-digest?limit=12&start=12#3165 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2379-how-to-deal-with-multiple-languages-on-the-forum-and-in-the-digest?limit=12&start=12#3165
    Christoph]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:44:44 +0000     Re: constructive text critics - by: jkeichholz http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3103-what-makes-a-post-good-and-interesting-and-attractive#3163 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3103-what-makes-a-post-good-and-interesting-and-attractive#3163 AquaVerde wrote:

    Anyway if difficult sanitation details or ideas are only boring, because of text lengths, then bad luck & so be it...

    In my e-mail Outlook client, there is a folder dedicated to your e-mails. I still have all these mails you've sent me since we first communicated via EcoSanRes. I've read them. They are long.

    Chris Anderson, curator of TED, came up with the email charter: emailcharter.org/
    I think I've mentioned this before.

    I used to write longer emails in the past. Often people wouldn't respond. I then discovered Twitter in 2007. Twitter helped me in keeping things short. I then kept my mails shorter. People started replying more often because I started respecting their time.

    I know it may sound arrogant and I am not in a position to tell you on how to communicate. However, longer text is often ignored because the attention span is limited. How many of the readers here have a zero inbox? How many are able to share their knowledge with the community during office hours?

    So if time is a limiting factor, reading is optimized and eyeballs are scanning for content that is easy to digest or with scientific news. Activists like you and me who knock on doors need to find smarter approaches. It is against this background that I understand your use of CAPITAL LETTERS. => www.google.com/search?q=capital+letters+shouting

    AquaVerde wrote:

    How could forum-users "copy and past" from word-docs direct in the message box without loosing the word-formats?

    I am afraid this isn't possible. You may want to search for an offline "BBEditor" though which is what the forum uses (BBCode => en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode).

    @Elisabeth: we could also include Google+, btw. I am also fine if Twitter and Facebook aren't part of the forum.


    bests,
    jke]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Thu, 17 Jan 2013 20:02:55 +0000     Re: constructive text critics - by: dorothee.spuhler http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3103-what-makes-a-post-good-and-interesting-and-attractive#3161 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3103-what-makes-a-post-good-and-interesting-and-attractive#3161 This may help to focus on key findings/questions in the post and providing further information by indicating where to find them in the attached document.
    Attachments can though only be accessed by people who have logged in (?), but if these are relevant documents for a larger public, they could be integrated into the SuSanA library and then inserted through a link.
    Dorothee]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:11:56 +0000     Re: How to deal with multiple languages on the forum and in the digest? - by: susanaforum http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2379-how-to-deal-with-multiple-languages-on-the-forum-and-in-the-digest?limit=12&start=12#3125 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/2379-how-to-deal-with-multiple-languages-on-the-forum-and-in-the-digest?limit=12&start=12#3125
    By public demand we added a new feature to our forum: see the new button on the top right which says "Select language" or the same in your language, if your computer has a different language than English (e.g. in my case it says "Sprache auswählen" in German). This feature is based on Google Translate. See here a screenshot of the language selection:






    That will allow everybody to understand, answer, communicate and reply to any posts that
    are already made or will be make in the future no matter in which language it is authored.

    We hope that will help to destroy the barriers called "foreign language" and bring us closer together to discuss about the current topics.

    Try the new feature and let us know if you find it useful or not.
    We are thankful for any critics wheather they are positve or negative to make that forum more user friendly.

    Long live Google Translate, what an amazing tool!

    Kind regards,
    SuSanA secretariat.
    [posted by Agazi Medhanie]]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Thu, 17 Jan 2013 14:08:42 +0000     Re: constructive text critics - by: muench http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3103-what-makes-a-post-good-and-interesting-and-attractive#3113 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3103-what-makes-a-post-good-and-interesting-and-attractive#3113 "too long". They are only "too long" if they are waffly but that is rarely the case, I find. Quite the contrary. There are some people who really put effort and thinking into their posts and many people benefit from their experiences (e.g. Christoph P., Doreen, Sjoerd, Florian, Marijn, Julius, Jonathan, Chris C., Emmanuel - thank you all!).
    A long post is also easy to read if the author uses bold, colours or subheading to structure the text. Or includes photos or graphs (I often try to include photos in mine).

    I actually find the opposite almost worse: Very short Mini-posts which just say "Thank you" or "Yes, I agree". Please don't make those posts but rather simply click on the "Thank you"-button that is under each post (you have to be logged in to see it). It is otherwise a hassle to see these mini-posts e.g. in the e-mail alert.

    People who prefer short communications can use LinkedIn or Twitter... Actually we discussed yesterday with our IT developer that we could maybe link the forum better to Twitter and Facebook by including a Twitter- and Facebook Share Button under each post. He is checking if that is possible. Then we end up with the best of both worlds. This would mean we have in-depth conversations here on this forum, coupled with the option of easy and fast sharing on social media channels.

    Regarding the capital letters, I agree with Jürgen. Maybe what he meant was not to write a whole sentence in capital letters, but an occassional word is fine (althouh making it bold or underlined is more elegant). If a whole sentence is written in capital letters is "sounds" like someone is shouting or angry. But we hardly ever have this on this forum anyway.

    Regards,
    Elisabeth]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Thu, 17 Jan 2013 12:28:14 +0000     Re: constructive text critics - by: AquaVerde http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3103-what-makes-a-post-good-and-interesting-and-attractive#3112 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3103-what-makes-a-post-good-and-interesting-and-attractive#3112
    Thanks for your constructive text critics.
    If for campaigning web-forums (political) I am agreeing with you, in very specific forums with some times difficult science details, I am not agreeing. Anyway if difficult sanitation details or ideas are only boring, because of text lengths, then bad luck & so be it...

    Take it easy
    Detlef (Troll

    Jürgen: How could forum-users "copy and past" from word-docs direct in the message box without loosing the word-formats?]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Thu, 17 Jan 2013 11:38:17 +0000     Re: late Introduction by AquaVerde (Detlef SCHWAGER) - by: christoph http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3103-what-makes-a-post-good-and-interesting-and-attractive#3111 http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-suggestion-box-and-questions-about-susana/3103-what-makes-a-post-good-and-interesting-and-attractive#3111 and of capital letter use at for me it is a way to express what I think is important without doing anything else

    Thanks for the hint about long posts, never thought about that.
    CP]]>     Suggestion box and questions about SuSanA Thu, 17 Jan 2013 10:31:37 +0000