Gather's Daily Help Forum - February 11, 2009 - Have a Question, Suggestion or Idea to Share? Need Help Getting Around the Site? Seeking Clarification on Gather's Community Guidelines or Publishing Guidelines?
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Comments: 85
Can't it be changed to an option of photo view or DSC?
If it is supposed to be that way I have no problem with it, but it concerns me a bit since I didn't read anything about that change...it leaves me wondering if the moderated submission is working like it is supposed to when others post to me group, or any moderated group.
The first dimension is width, the second height. So the ideal size for a group banner is 990 pixels wide by 220 pixels tall. In the case of images you would upload for a group background, the 300 pixel figure is for width. There is no limit for height, and in fact some of the best looking background images would be very tall.
That was an intentional change with this release. Group owners no longer have to approve their own content, if their group is set up to be content-moderated.
Also, you can also now grant individual members of your group permission to post without the need for moderation, by locating the member in your group and clicking on their member settings.
Thanks for your feedback on how photo uploading works. I will bring it up to our development team for reconsideration.
Keep in mind that before you click "Share and Continue" and the photo goes live, you can change the rating and commenting options to disallow comments and ratings. Once you feel your photo is "ready," you can edit it to turn comments and ratings back on.
When I'm uploading photos, I keep a separate window open to "my pictures" so I can see the thumbnails and the photo number. You might want to give that a try.
Loving all the new updates and slowly getting to talk to new members about them as they play around with them, figure out what's different and what's not.
That said, I would like to respectfully request that royal purple be added to the template colors with the next update. I see all my groups in purple :)
Thanks
Royal Purple... duly noted! And thanks for your feedback!
That means that you've reached your limit for how many pings you can send in a certain amount of time. These limits were put in place to stop "ping spammers." The limits are higher for new members than for older members like yourself. Can you approximate how many pings you sent (in what amount of time) before you saw that message?
Good Job!
That does work, but is also inconvenient. With the old upload it was a nice feature to be able to see your photos before uploading.
No comments or complaints about this update yet. . . I won't have time to tinker with it today because of class and work.
I guess I worded that wrong. The limits are stricter for brand new members, than for older ones.
I'm going to see if that's something that we can change, so that thumbnails can be viewed once again. I agree that that's the ideal way to browse one's photos.
I have a tutorial I would like to publish on adding content to the rich HTML modules, but I do not know which providers are 'trusted' for flash content beyond Polldaddy and Photobucket.
Have you added new providers (widgetbox, etc.), and if so which ones?
Also, I have a tutorial for using and capitalizing upon inbound RSS feeds. Is this type of content appropriate for the new groups.gather.com group?
Thank You!
I'm checking on your first question...
For your second question, yes, that would be great for groups.gather.com if the focus of the tutorial is utilizing the RSS module in groups. If it was just a general RSS tutorial, with only a mention that you can also do it in groups, then that might not be appropriate.
That's a great point and something I noticed myself. I also noticed that while you can select an option to broaden the listings in the "recent posts" module to show a few lines of lead-in text, that option is not available on the "featured" module. I'll let our dev team know that this might be something they want to address.
Why is this a problem to me? Because I accepted some old photos and expected them to go back where they were before the owner re published them probably into an album.
What ever happened or why my new group now has a ton of one person's photos on page one. I only allow a couple of photos at a time to be fair to everyone who belongs to my group. Is it fair that one person now has 50 photos on the first two pages and someone who followed the rules is on page 3 or 10 with their one photo?
Is there a button I can push that will make them all go back into the date published?
Sorry I pushed the panic button
Check out this article. It describes how widgets can now be embedded from SpringWidgets, WidgetBox, and Google Webpage Gadgets.
Also, I have two related questions:
a) Can these widgets also be added to post content?
b) Some widgets, while not their primary purpose, allow for the capturing and tracking of anonymous user data (geo location, ISP, IP address, browser config, etc.). Does this change also remove the restriction on this type of tool in the community?
Thanks again.
Forget question A. We do have the ability to now add widgets to posts.
Also, I noticed you address the text missing from featured articles which I think should be there, but also is there no history beyond ten; no view all for featured posts?
Chuck, thank you for trying to fix that. I do not know how to set the HEIGHT or TALL in Picasa. It only allows for one specification. Any Picasa users?
If I set 900 Wide it will give me 500 tall for example. Or something like that.
Perhaps a minute between pings. Look at the clock when you click SUBMIT the ping and then send the next one on the next minute.
It certainly does work against trying to send a 100 pings a day.
The "recent photos" module on your group homepage will always display the photos in the order they were added to the group, but if you click "view all" to look at the whole collection of group photos, you have several options for re-arranging them - including "date created."
I'm waiting on a response for you...
Those groups were ones without any icons uploaded to them. What was missing was the "Gather heads" placeholder icon. That glitch should be fixed now, but let me know if you still notice it occurring.
I'm going to find out if the "view all" link was left out by mistake from the Featured module. You can still look at all of the features in a group (beyond 10) by clicking the "featured" link, in the row of navigational links found beneath the banner.
Glad you're enjoying the new groups format otherwise!
Can you point me to where you attempted to add this link? Which group? Do you still have the link embedded somewhere?
Deleting a full album and all its photos is a large task technologically, so I think that you may have timed out due to some general site slowness that we've been noticing. Please try again tonight, and tomorrow if necessary. If it still does not work, then get back to me with which album(s) you're trying to delete.
Thanks Chuck!
Yeah, I had a lot of pictures I wanted to weed out. There have been people saying that my pics are slow to load so thought maybe it was the "volume" of pictures affecting that. They are pictures I want deleted anyways so thought it would be worth trying.
Thank you!
I am also missing articles from one of my groups. Only 2 or 3 are showing, and only four photos, and 1 video...
Allowing widgets does not mean that Gather permits the collection of anonymous user data by members.
If you have concern that widgets used on Gather could -
"...allows members to add a component to their content that will identify what rating was given during their visit...and who gave that rating.”
Kevin (''SiteWizard'') V. , Feb 11, 2009, 12:01pm EST
please open a case with the Support Team and include details about your concern. This is not our perception.
No problem. I featured an article that was originally published Feb 4, then couldn't find it in the FEATURED posts list, because the FEATURED posts fell according to original publication date.
It used to be this:
When you feature something, it showed up on FEATURED posts according to how recently it was FEATURED, not when originally published.
When you admit something into the group, it showed up according to original publication date.
I think the way it used to work was better, because people could go in and check THEIR FEATURES without having to scroll back pages to get to their FEATURE.
Do you see what I mean?
Some widgets have the same inherent capability as a 'hit counter'. In that you can view anonymous data for web visitors that view the page where the widget is installed.
Therefore, do widgets that have this ability violate the Terms of Service?
If not, then members can use this data in the manner I described in my comment above.
Something's definitely going wrong there. Unfortunately, with more critical issues to deal with at the moment, it's unknown we could investigate. Would you mind leaving at least one of the albums completely alone, so that we can look at it later?
Please be more specific by telling me exactly which groups are missing what.
rookies.gather.com
aircraftships.gather.com
huntingshooting.gather.com
Missing content-
huntingshooting.gather.com
I could not replicate what you described about Featured content only appearing in the module in the order of original publication. When I just tested this, I was able to bring an older post to the top of the features list, because I featured it after featuring newer posts.
But I do see what you mean regarding posts in the "recent posts" module only appearing in the order in which they were shared with the group. This was an intentional change, at least for how it looks in the module on the group homepage. When you click "view all" posts, you can re-order the list in several different ways, making for easy browsing.
Thank you. Can you also link me to any content that you are sure was in that group, and now mysteriously is not?
I do have another issue that I have been having since maintenance the other day sometimes even after refreshing Nothing appears in my feeds to look at my friends content, I know this is impossible as with over 1,00 friends somebodu published something somewhere. IT is still happening periodically , the only thing that works is if I come back about 30 minutes later. Annoying, originally I could not comment but only occassionally this has come back . But even this morning my content feed said there was nothing to see, I sent you a copy ofthat page and you did respond for me to give you more details, I hope this is enough info. for you
Have to think on that one... get back on the article.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?memberId=24066&articleId=281474977201517&nav=MyGather
This article was in there at one time... Is this enough? Need a photo?
I also know that I had 32 posts to approve in my group All things Blue last night and they are all gone now!!! Fortunately I did approve the latest phots & videos last night before I had to retire but all the latest submissions for approval are MIA
http://www.gather.com/viewImage.jsp?fileId=3096224744498516&nav=MyGather&memberId=24066
Here is a photo too....
Please click here and compile all of your information from the many comments into glitch reports for me? That way we can much better track the status of these cases.
I really appreciate it, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible when I have your reports.
Thanks for the positive feedback! We're glad you enjoy the new groups format!
Using this URL (the one for 'sort by number of comments'):
http://commentspeedway.gather.com/viewPostsByGroup.action?num=20¤tPage=1&grpId=3659174697247372&format=gallery&monthOffset=0&nav=Groupspace&start=0&sortBy=numComments
I went in and removed the content on page 1 (the content with the most comments), then refreshed the page to see ...
"No posts have been shared to this group. Share a post to this group now."
Of course, the content on page two remains on page two, and so forth. In short, content on these pages is no longer truly dynamic, which is bad, because these pages are the only mechanism for surfing through a group's content. How often are these listings updated?
(And, while we're on the subject, is there any way we can get 'Most Ratings' and 'Most Page Views' added to the dropdown again? And since we're adding reconfigurability to the group displays (up to ten features or down to one instead of four), can we add an option to change the number of items displayed per page into a future upgrade? Being able to work with 100 articles, or photos, or mails at once would probably make a lot of people happier.)
Anyhow, I digress. Next up is the subject of 'improvements to the invite process', which didn't make it into the tech demo; it looks like inviting current Gather members to groups improved in some areas, but got worse in others, both because of changes to the functionality, and the lack of functionality of these changes.
The obvious change, of course, is that we have gone from multiple individual search options to three (search by last name, first name, or username have been condensed into 'search by member', for instance). That isn't technically so bad, though if you specifically wanted people with the first name of Austin, for instance, you might get annoyed at the number of people with a username or last name that includes Austin.
Second, and more egregriously, the 'select all' option has been removed -- so if you want to invite fifty people to your new group that aren't your friends, you'd better be prepared to click an extra fifty times.
(As a side note for the record, if you want to get onto the top 100 groups of Gather, you would need over eight hundred members -- which means that it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume you might have to go through this process sixteen times for eight hundred clicks, assuming every member actually accepts your invitations.)
This is compounded by the fact that the new scripting occasionally fails (I've tried in Firefox and gotten the classic 'A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.' error, and on Opera it occasionally locks up the browser entirely) while attempting to add people. This happens most frequently if you click another user while the 'orange flash effect' is still occurring on the previous user.
Finally, regarding a problem that's been here since the previous upgrade, upon sending these invites, you are (still) booted to the group page, instead of being able to invite more people via another search.
So in short, in order to invite fifty fellow Gather members, you need to:
1) Click Invite to Group.
2) Click Invite Gather Members.
3) Type in an interest (or, if you're looking for more generic members, type in a few random letters for the member name).
4) Click on the first name to get them into the 'Invite To Group' section.
5) Repeat step 4 an additional 49 times (or less, if there are less people in the list.) Be advised that clicking occasionally results in delays, and clicking rapidly -- say, faster than once per two to five seconds -- will likely break your browser. As a rule of thumb, don't click until the orange 'pretty light' effect of adding something has gone away, and your browser probably won't lock up.)
6) Add a personal message. (Granted, this is a long-overdue fix -- the personal message actually works now.)
7) Click 'Send Invites.'
8) Want more than fifty possible new members? Hit the Back button, then proceed from step 3.
The loss of the 'select all' function effectively makes this process much more cumbersome, a problem which is compounded by the fact that (due to the 'flashy orange effect') you can't really add multiple people quickly. This means that groups that allow group-mailings will become much more popular, as they will become the only reasonable way to send an invitation to a new group to a large number of people reasonably quickly.
Anyhow, the group layout improvements are welcome, and breaking down 'content settings' into 'feature and remove' was also very helpful, but these are the major concerns that come to mind (and I'm sure we'll all come up with more over the course of the week.)
The Community Guidelines state:
"Only send friend requests and group member invitations to people I know or have communicated with on Gather. I will not engage in spamming in any form, such as friend requests, invitations to groups, or private messages."
Therefore, if I locate members having an 'interest' that matches the topic of my group, would I be violating the TOS by inviting them to my group if I have not previously had some contact with them?
aprilscontent.gather.com
members: 1 open it.
Also, it turns out that you can't actually view any pages past 25 in groups - or at least I can't, if Comment Speedway's "Most Discussed" is any indicator.
Case in point:
http://commentspeedway.gather.com/viewPostsByGroup.action?num=20¤tPage=26&grpId=3659174697247372&format=gallery&monthOffset=0&nav=Groupspace&start=500&sortBy=numComments
Page 26 of 1399 -- No posts have been shared to this group. Share a post to this group now.
I know Comment Speedway has more than 500 posts in it (it has over 25,000), so... yeah, this definitely needs to be fixed. Apparently, whatever code shows only pages 1 to 25 in the Shared to Group mode only allows you to access pages 1 to 25 in all other modes as well... or whatever it uses to cache those results does so for only the first five hundred...
And yet-another-unhelpful-request -- seeing as how this is a group-centric upgrade, and seeing as how when you click on an article from a group you see the group's top-bar (home, featured, posts, and the like), why not add in the 'feature' and 'remove' options (up in that space where we'd typically see 'edit' and 'delete' and 'spotlight' if we happened to make the article? It might not sound like much, but it would make a lot of group owners (yes, including myself) very happy to be able to feature or remove an article while viewing that particular article.
Wow those were long comments. You've identified a few things that sound like real functionality glitches, and a few more things that may have been intended changes (I'm not aware of every minor detail that's changed). I've sent your feed back to Development so we can get some clarification.
Your group aprilscontent.gather.com looks great. I had no problem seeing the group, including the RSS feed. Where exactly does your computer freeze up. When you try to look at the page? Or is it when you try to edit something? Are you still having this problem?
I'm sorry, but you'll have to give me more information. I don't know what "Done" button you're talking about.
I can't send group mail to Gather Broadcasting. When I unjoined from the group and tried to join again, I got an error.
And, I can't leave group comments either, it's goes to an error too.
Fix these problems, they are ticking me off.