Talking Tropics Forum Format for 2006

[caribepr]

All I know is...I trust the mods to do whatever is the best thing to get us the most information in the most efficient way possible.
Sometimes when it's quiet, that doesn't matter so much but when YOU are in the crosshairs or potentially in them, info fast is what is wanted. I AM one of those dial up people and when I have to watch my screen jump twenty times while I'm trying to read the last message because someone has quoted someone else 17 times with a huge graphic in it to say Oh WOW, I become a little testy.
The idea of thumbnails is great, but I like links a lot myself as it goes to a new screen and I can keep doing whatever I am doing and decide if I want to wait out the whole thing (or go to another less used site where I can just see THAT, which most of us have in the dozens).
Anyway, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it Thanks for all the good work, ladies and gentlemen!

[Jim Cantore]

the 10 page rule is working out nicely I think

[bvigal]

I'm with caribepr on this - everything she said, including thanks to our great mods!!!

Especially enjoyed her observation about those who hit "reply" button to big pictures, just to say "wow", ROTFLMAO, that is soooo trooooo MJ!!

A prob with live links I haven't seen mentioned yet, sometimes users put in live links to products (like a satellite view) and when you read the thread 15 days later, what they wanted you to see isn't even there anymore! Much bettr to "snapshot" what makes your point and put it on something like imageshack. Why jam up the bandwidth with something that's only good for a couple of hours?

[whereverwx]

Also, staying on topic may improve the coherence and clarity; as well as reduce the amount of topics.

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

Do you think it would be a good idea once the hurricane season starts to up it to 20 or 25 pages? Or would that still be to much...

[Scorpion]

25 pages would be better. 50 would be preferable. We didnt have that many problems last year.

[whereverwx]

I really don't think that will make a difference. All we have to do is reduce the amount of off topic discussions in the topics. In both 91L Invest topics combined, I counted about 90 off topic posts--posts that don't have to do with 91L.

[wxman57]

.....

Another thing that will change is the posting of images.Some members post images that are very large that we have to scroll to look at them at the post.What we will say to the members is to post links to the images to not hurt the bandwidth of the site.

This was brought up last year. Unless the images are located on the S2K server, there is no increase in bandwidth from simply putting an image in a post. The image is being loaded from the server where the image is uploaded, not the S2K forum server. The only thing the S2K server is loading is the text above/below the image.

However, it can get irritating when people quote a post with an image and fail to remove the image link from the quote section. That can make the web page load slowly for those with slower connections, but it's not putting any additional load on the S2K server.

[KWT]

Personally talking from experiance I think 20 pages limit is better for this sort of forum.

As we've seen with a INVEST thread, we cleared 10 pages in just 4hrs, now imagine a Katrina like storm close by to landfalling in a mahjor area and you'll fill it out in 20-40 mins I'd guess.

I think off-topic posts don't help though either, something to look into?

[senorpepr]

.....

Another thing that will change is the posting of images.Some members post images that are very large that we have to scroll to look at them at the post.What we will say to the members is to post links to the images to not hurt the bandwidth of the site.

This was brought up last year. Unless the images are located on the S2K server, there is no increase in bandwidth from simply putting an image in a post. The image is being loaded from the server where the image is uploaded, not the S2K forum server. The only thing the S2K server is loading is the text above/below the image.

However, it can get irritating when people quote a post with an image and fail to remove the image link from the quote section. That can make the web page load slowly for those with slower connections, but it's not putting any additional load on the S2K server.

It can have an indirect impact on the server. When hundreds of people open up a given thread, the server has to open up each post within that thread. Secondly, as the graphics load for each of these hundreds of people, the graphics' servers slow down, causing the imagery to slow at loading. This is extended by people quoting imagery as well. This slowness tends to make people mash the refresh button, sending us back to the start, putting unneeded stress onto the server.

I agree, it's isn't a huge impact on the servers -- but it's annoying!

[KatDaddy]

I for one think this is great idea. Remember things going very fast during the peak of the season and digging through a 47 page thread is a waste of time. A new thread is always eye-catching and when it counts we need and want the last info ASAP.

[george_r_1961]

The staff made a good decsion; obviously they cant please everyone. Lets cooperate with the mods and admins in keeping Storm2k the best weather group on the web!

[cycloneye]

The staff made a good decsion; obviously they cant please everyone. Lets cooperate with the mods and admins in keeping Storm2k the best weather group on the web!

It's understandable that not all the members will be 100% in favor of these new measures that we are taking to try to run Talking Tropics as smooth as possible especially when things heat up bigtime in the Atlantic tropics.So far so good as a saying says in terms of the 10 page new rule and the posting of images since this announcement has been up.

[caribepr]

I'm noticing a MUCH better ease in reading threads, due to people respecting the better use of images, and not quoting with images. Thank you all (not just mods, but all posters who put in images!) so much for this! It makes reading the threads 95 percent easier for me and I sincerely appreciate it! As we approach June 1, the difference is already obvious and will be a huge help.

[MGC]

IMO, the quote option should be disabled during the season. The quote option addes considerable length to threads. Also, how about allowing only one image per thread. Say we are talking about the radar presentation of a particular hurricane. No need to post 50 different images, plus when you quote the same image reappears. This is redundant and eats up bandwith.....MGC

[gerrit]

Another suggestion could be to reduce the size (both in pixels and in Kb) of the avatars. Some of them are over 200K!
Apart from the big size, animated avatars in are annoying for a lot of people..
[edit] I found one that's over half a Meg!! [/edit]

[Derek Ortt]

how about a very simple rule

No Hotlinking, as you are eating up bandwith of someone else's server.

I know I dont really like when people hotlink nwhhc products (especially this season since I am finally adding the state borders to the forecast graphics, making the images even larger in size). A link is much easier, this way when someone opens the thread, the resources will not necessarily be chewed up, unless the person wants to click on the link.

[SouthFloridawx]

But, I like my animated hurricane avatar...

[gerrit]

But, I like my animated hurricane avatar...

You could consider putting it on your desktop

Seriously, there are still lots of people who are on dial-up. ( I'm one of them: no way to get DSL or cable where I live ) and those big avatars increase the loading time like crazy.
Most of the times I turn images on an image laden site off, so I get a chance to read the content...

[clfenwi]

how about a very simple rule

No Hotlinking, as you are eating up bandwith of someone else's server.

I know I dont really like when people hotlink nwhhc products (especially this season since I am finally adding the state borders to the forecast graphics, making the images even larger in size). A link is much easier, this way when someone opens the thread, the resources will not necessarily be chewed up, unless the person wants to click on the link.

I noticed a related note on Jonathan Vigh's model guidance page,(from which people frequently post model forecast graphics)

(As of June 1, 2006), new web usage guidelines will go into effect: specifically, it will be prohibited for other web servers or local pages served by those servers to automatically upload images from this page unless the owner of that server has obtained express permission. In the past, certain web pages have frequently loaded images from this page from each local instance of the page (for instance, every 2 minutes) -- this is a big waste of bandwidth, so I will be contacting the owners of offending servers or selectively denying access to those servers on a case by case basis.