The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

A few tips from posting to the openSUSE forums, learned from banging my head to the wall too often.

• They are at https://forums.opensuse.org/forum.php
• The forum software can be very slow at times taking ~tens of seconds for loading a post:
  • loading multiple posts or pages of posts you are interested in multiple tabs speeds up your reading a lot
• Answers on the post often are along the form “has been answered before” without pointing to the actual link, even if the post is marked with a read icon, for instance in [WayBack] No option to “keep me logged in on this device” with Novell/openSUSE login?
• Your email is not your username, so do not use it during logon: [WayBack] Lousy log in
  • Be sure to read any forum FAQs, for instance [WayBack] openSUSE Forums FAQ: not logged in
  • Logoff can be very soon, not minutes any more, but certainly not 8 hours either: [WayBack] have to login evry few minutes – Page 2
  • Keeping a window open to force activity and disable auto-logoff fails in many browser including my Chrome on Mac OS configuration
  • There is no auto-logon
• The search function in the forum is horrible.
  • Google searching within a subforum fails because of how the forum software is structured: site:forums.opensuse.org/forumdisplay.php/690-How-to-use-the-forums
  • This sort of works: site:forums.opensuse.org “How to use the forums?” “logged”
  • Google search is always at least few days behind
• The forum software is proprietary (vBulletin – Wikipedia) and has a
• When writing/replying to posts:
  1. Edit your answer off-line, because
     • you will automatically be logged off even if the forum indicates you are still logged on (there is no count down of the activity timer), see
     • when you re-logon, your carefully edited text has been lost from the cache
  2. Never use formatting, either auto-introduced, or introduced while pasting, avoid BB-code
     1. Reasoning
        • The text-based NNTP/e-mail back-end of the forum does not support formatting well
        • The HTML editor will without warning interpret all kinds of character combinations
        • Those character combinations will be turned into images
        • You cannot post too many images at once
        • When you re-post, often your post text has been lost from the cache
        • The forum editor often gets confused by formatting
        • Pasting by keyboard or middle-mouse-button often includes formatting, even: [WayBack/Archive.is] forum: how do get rid of all formatting while pasting? – Page 2
          • This happens even when copying from the console: [WayBack] forum: how do get rid of all formatting while pasting?
     2. Though the forum supports BB code, NNTP news readers do not, and the added formatting gives quite a mess
        • If you insist using it: [WayBack] vBulletin.org Forum – BB Code List
     3. Use the text (“Source mode”) version of the editor, by first clicking the left most button: “Source”
        
        • After this, the third and fourth button get greyed out:
          
     4. Remove formatting button is the second from the left (in both text and WYSIWIG mode): “Remove format”
        
     5. If you are in WYSIWIG mode, then always paste using the third button from the left that strips formatting: “Paste as plain text”
        
     6. NEVER EVER paste with formatting with the fourth button from the left: “Paste from Word”
        

–jeroen