(Reasonable) Features you'd like to see implemented on RailUK Forums

[ainsworth74]

I would like to see the launch of the 2023 mileage competition soon (not shown on at least my account details page yet). Hopefully I will do the maths for the total miles on each line I have done this year!

We discontinued the mileage competition after 2022 due to lack of interest. So I'm sorry to say that there won't be a competition for 2023 nor 2024!

 

[Statto]

Seems this is one of the few forums now & again the spam bots get through, & it's always in the middle of the night, you know it straight away through the weird thread titles like, hj, & then starts threads in a foreign language, which looks like in Chinese or Japanese, just reported one posting in the Traction & Rolling Stock section right now.

 

[southern442]

Seems this is one of the few forums now & again the spam bots get through, & it's always in the middle of the night, you know it straight away through the weird thread titles like, hj, & then starts threads in a foreign language, which looks like in Chinese or Japanese, just reported one posting in the Traction & Rolling Stock section right now.

There's about 20 odd of these threads now in traction and rolling stock. I was wondering if anyone else was aware.

 

[stadler]

Seems this is one of the few forums now & again the spam bots get through, & it's always in the middle of the night, you know it straight away through the weird thread titles like, hj, & then starts threads in a foreign language, which looks like in Chinese or Japanese, just reported one posting in the Traction & Rolling Stock section right now.

There's about 20 odd of these threads now in traction and rolling stock. I was wondering if anyone else was aware.

That has been going on every single night for months and months. I remember seeing this over six months ago. Every single time when i view the forum at around 02:00 or 03:00 or 04:00 in the morning i see this.

It is the same thing every time. They normally post about thirty to fifty posts in one night. It is written entirely in some oriental language (Chinese or Japanese or Korean) except for the name of a university which is written in the English language.

Every post is identical except for the name of the university which is different in each of the posts. The universities mentioned are in the, UK, Ireland, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and a few other countries. From using Google Translate they seem to be advertising some sort of fake university diplomas and other fake documents to help gain admission to these universities. All the posts seem to contain a contact number for We Chat which i think is some oriental social media site.

I notice that initially the threads seem to just contain two random letters in the title and the content of the posts contain just two random letters too. So you will get something like a post labelled "ab" and then the content of the post will just say "cd" but each thread and each post is a different two random characters. Then a couple minutes later they seem to edit the title and edit the post to all the stuff about the universities written in oriental characters. So i am guessing they are using this method to get around spam filters.

Obviously nobody on an English speaking railway forum is going to be interested in whatever they are offering. Especially when nobody on here can even understand it. So i am guessing it must be bots that are just targeting as many forums as possible. I have similar stuff appear on other forums too. It is a shame there is no way to stop it though. It must get rather annoying for the moderators to have to go through and delete all of that every morning.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

The forum I run started getting Korean spam posts every morning. I fixed it by adding a couple of lines of code to reject posts with Korean characters, but that’s a luxury I have because I wrote my own forum code - it’s not necessarily something that’s easy to slot into a third party system.

 

[Class172]

Seems this is one of the few forums now & again the spam bots get through, & it's always in the middle of the night, you know it straight away through the weird thread titles like, hj, & then starts threads in a foreign language, which looks like in Chinese or Japanese, just reported one posting in the Traction & Rolling Stock section right now.

There's about 20 odd of these threads now in traction and rolling stock. I was wondering if anyone else was aware.

My advice would be to simply report spam threads when you see them (as you have done); one of the forum staff can deal with them when they’re next online. It doesn’t necessarily have to be every thread that needs reporting as we have tools that help to clear out spam threads en masse.

I don’t know what additional measures could be put in to prevent spam, that’s something where one of the admin team might be able to chime in.

 

[Statto]

There could be additional measures to reject the spam bots, such as thread titles must contain 3 or more letters, & reject thread titles with foreign characters in them too, or maybe use ecaptcha images when someone first registers to the forum.

 

[Mojo]

There could be additional measures to reject the spam bots, such as thread titles must contain 3 or more letters, & reject thread titles with foreign characters in them too, or maybe use ecaptcha images when someone first registers to the forum.

These are all already existing requirements. Unfortunately there are ways to get around them

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Once posts get old enough to not say something like "Last Saturday at 14:58", on screens that have space, could the full time be put there?
The time is avaliable by hovering over but I'd prefer it to be there without having to seek it out.

 

[Egg Centric]

Does anyone else have their quick reply formatting options greyed out? Mine have been like this for months. I thought it might be a browser extension but disabling the obvious ones makes no difference.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Does anyone else have their quick reply formatting options greyed out? Mine have been like this for months. I thought it might be a browser extension but disabling the obvious ones makes no difference.

I think you've clicked the "toggle BB code" button (the one on the display that shows as [ ]) and not noticed, that greys out the icons since in that mode you write them manually

 

[Energy]

I think you've clicked the "toggle BB code" button (the one on the display that shows as [ ]) and not noticed, that greys out the icons since in that mode you write them manually

Description: An image of the BB code button circled.


This one here.

 

[Egg Centric]

I think you've clicked the "toggle BB code" button (the one on the display that shows as [ ]) and not noticed, that greys out the icons since in that mode you write them manually

View attachment 152897
Description: An image of the BB code button circled.


This one here.

- thats exactly it - thanks chaps!

 

[Purple Train]

I think you've clicked the "toggle BB code" button (the one on the display that shows as [ ]) and not noticed, that greys out the icons since in that mode you write them manually

View attachment 152897
Description: An image of the BB code button circled.


This one here.

Very helpful, thanks! I did this some time ago and eventually solved it by turning Google off and on again, but that was rather a chore so I'm glad I know how to deal with it when, inevitably, I do it again

 

[Kite159]

Is it just me or is the trick with clicking the little signal alongside a sub forum to mark all threads within that area as read no longer working?

Tried on both Firefox & Chrome

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

I still beg for an updated quote function. The current one is so troublesome.

Is it just me or is the trick with clicking the little signal alongside a sub forum to mark all threads within that area as read no longer working?

Tried on both Firefox & Chrome

Not working for me either.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Is it just me or is the trick with clicking the little signal alongside a sub forum to mark all threads within that area as read no longer working?

Tried on both Firefox & Chrome

I reported that to the Mods Team this morning.

Not working on either my home or work machines, which are on different systems, so it must be something to do with the forum software.

 

[Mojo]

Numerous customers requested this feature be removed as they had inadvertently double clicked within the status indicator or on the forum title.

 

[Mike395]

Hi all,

Apologies for the removal of the semaphore double-click! The addon that we were using to facilitate this also took any double clicks on the forum headers themselves to be a 'mark read' and we were having too many complaints about accidental double taps on mobile, particularly, marking as read.

I'd like to reinstate at some point with just the semaphores themselves having that action, but this would need to be programmed by us so is awaiting the time to do it.

I still beg for an updated quote function. The current one is so troublesome.

Out of interest, what do you find a pain with the current implementation?

 

[Taunton]

I would like to see the Alerts sub-icon, that comes up on the Alert bell icon at the top of the screen, broken down into two separate sub-icons, one for when someone has replied to a thread, and a different one maybe alongside for when someone has quoted you.

 

[infobleep]

It would be useful if their was a page explain the forums points system for violations and what amount of points would equal a ban.

With regards to marking sub-forums as read, I wasn't aware this could be done and despite mostly using my mobile, I've never actually done this, fortunately.

 

[Mojo]

With regards to marking sub-forums as read, I wasn't aware this could be done

This feature didn’t work for Subforums on the homepage, it only worked for individual Forums.

 

[1D54]

It would be useful if their was a page explain the forums points system for violations and what amount of points would equal a ban.

I wasn't aware such a system existed. How do you find out if you are in possession of such points and do they disappear after a certain period of time?

 

[Sun Chariot]

Lots of great ideas already mentioned.

As per post #6, I'd like ability to hide / take myself off threads I'd posted in but which I no longer want to follow (e.g. so they don't stay in "threads with your posts"). I guess my simpler option, is to use "watch thread" and use that menu instead?

I'd like to see a sticky with hot links to useful websites - e.g. the most popular realtime data tracking sites, railtour sites, TOCs and NR.

I'd love to see a glossary or a wiki, to help demystify some of the terminology used by the knowledgeable members. That one could quickly become unwieldy, admittedly - so it might be a wish too far.

 

[ainsworth74]

It would be useful if their was a page explain the forums points system for violations and what amount of points would equal a ban.

It's on the agenda but currently on a time scale best described as "it'll be here when it gets here". Regular users of Avanti may sympathise with this scheduling.

I wasn't aware such a system existed. How do you find out if you are in possession of such points and do they disappear after a certain period of time?

You'd know if you had any

They expire after six months.

 

[infobleep]

I wasn't aware such a system existed. How do you find out if you are in possession of such points and do they disappear after a certain period of time?

You get a message and yes they do disappear after a time.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Numerous customers requested this feature be removed as they had inadvertently double clicked within the status indicator or on the forum title.

Could that not be fixed by introducing an "undo" button for the process?

I have accidentally double clicked before and while inconvenient, I found it worth the time saving compared to now having to use the in-forum button in each section...

 

[infobleep]

It's on the agenda but currently on a time scale best described as "it'll be here when it gets here". Regular users of Avanti may sympathise with this scheduling.

Thanks. I'm not a regular user of Avanti as I usually take longer; slower and cheaper routes and services. This is thanks to this forum and Trainsplit, in equipping me with the knowledge I needed to seek these out. And yes I do book on the Rail UK Web site.

Of course, I have read about Avanti on here and as it wouldn't be fair on my colleagues, to inflect slower routes upon them, colleagues and I will be using Avanti in the coming months. I may yet wish we had taken the slower option.

 

[J-2739]

I would like to see the Alerts sub-icon, that comes up on the Alert bell icon at the top of the screen, broken down into two separate sub-icons, one for when someone has replied to a thread, and a different one maybe alongside for when someone has quoted you.

I agree with this; I've been given too much false hope by what I'd hope to be a reply to one of my messages.

 

[Mike395]

Could that not be fixed by introducing an "undo" button for the process?

I have accidentally double clicked before and while inconvenient, I found it worth the time saving compared to now having to use the in-forum button in each section...

Unfortunately that's far from trivial to implement, the forum software we use has no facility of 'caching' a forum's state for a particular user, which would be needed for such a feature.