More Questions regarding the new site.

I'm wondering how the popular poems/popular quotes on the front page are selected?

I thought I had it figured out, but I'm asking Janis

WTF, Mods. Tell me this was an error from some new mod automaton that Janis has installed:

A violation of P&Q terms of service
Feb 8, 2017
from Poems&Quotes

A moderator has deleted one of your forum posts due to violation of our terms and guidelines. Please, read these terms carefully. A continuous violation of our terms of service will result in a permanent suspension of your account.

My post:

Liking most of the changes, well done, Janis.

The main disappointment is how this poetry site has gone backwards instead of forwards towards freedom of expression. I was hoping to see more formatting tools in poetry (though I would never use them), ways to add hyperlinks in poems, etc.
Instead there are minimum word limits (50 words??), maximum word limits in posts and comments (haven't tested in poems), increased grammatical and dictionary enforcement and no swearing allowed, even in private clubs. Just a bummer.

Also, what's with the dislike button? Does it at least force you to leave a comment ? That sort of enforcement I would agree with.

But overall, can't complain too much. Yet.

Whoa. I have to assume a moderator accidentally clicked "violation" right beneath your post while trying to hit "reply." I believe Janis has not yet installed 'are you sure you want to..." secondary/back up clicks to ensure we don't accidentally penalize members. Let me check it out.

When the site was first changed, I accidentally deleted a whole thread in our club... the "delete" button is right next to "reply" and my fat fingers clicked the wrong thing and *poof*, thread gone forever. Janis changed that now so we get a second prompt asking if we're sure we want to delete a thread.

Edit: I see that your post was deleted as a violation, and I am almost positive it was an accident. It's a pretty big deal when we delete posts. I can't bring it back/remove the violation, which is frustrating and kind of absurd. Going to let Janis know now. Sorry, Abs.

Thought as much, no worries. As long as you mods aren't under some new Janis-induced regime, I can ease my heart about the whole distressing incident. Cancelling counselling sesh now.

Abby, what's the 50 word minimum you referenced?

BTW, I thought I asked you this question in reply to your original post, so it's very possible I'm the errant mod that deleted your post. If so I assure you it was accidental.

Yeah we definitely need the "are you sure", I almost hit "violation" just when scrolling. It's super close, so we are all being very careful for sure!

At least, that's what Janis told us to say before he gave us more cookies. ;)

(I kid, for those of you who don't know me well enough lol)

(thanks for not blowing our cover)

i'm not. :D

"grammatical and dictionary enforcement and no swearing allowed, even in private clubs. Just a bummer"

Agree with Abby, seems to be less freedom of speech. poetry is art and shouldn't be restricted in any way, nor the club forums

Sorry Larry, it's actually minimim 50 characters.
To me, that's still ridiculous. Many of my favorite poems are very short, such as your poem, Jessica (though I think it would still be over 50 characters).
Some awesome poems have a descriptive title with a two-word response as the content.
Even a proper haiku might to be adjusted to fit this criterion.

I asked Janis if he would decrease the minimum character limit to 30 characters. He will not remove character limits completely.

It's a shame that the new format doesn't allow for concrete / shaped poems to look the same on different screen sizes. Is this something Janis can fix?

I'll bring it up with him.

Also, if anyone prefers the look of the website on desktop versus how it appears on mobile devices, if you to go options on your web browser on your mobile device, there should be a checkbox for "Request Desktop Site", ticking that will load the 'desktop view' of the website on your phone.

Just wondered if Janis had answered my question on the first post of this thread?

Also, I've noticed that, on the profile of members who have not signed in for a while eg...Anna Stephens & TJ the last time visited is WAY wrong...it appears Anna last visited 5 years ago and TJ ...7 years...not true. It has been a while for both members but definately not that long.

I notice that Janis has now updated the front page to show the current winners....a relief, I feel, for those members who may have felt short changed that their poem didn't show up when it should have :)

He hasn't yet answered your first question yet.

Regarding the profile 'last logged in', I'm pretty sure it's because of the site turnover, I'm most likely sure there's nothing that can be done (the previous site purged logs of user activity after a certain date, and since Janis updated the site, because of the logs not already being there, it's not displaying accurately). I'll ask Janis though.

Its true I fell like in some ways this website has gone backwards..the layout its just very hard to get used to...but with a 50 word or letter minimum that blatantly takes haiku's away.. for a poetry website to exclude shorter poetry? And what is the specifics on profanity...because a lot of my work has profanity...I really really hope it wasn't deleted but with a few hundred poems..I cant sift through everything I have written...hopefully my work hasn't and wont be deleted because of profanity or length of the piece... I really really love this website...I cant express how much this place has been the only place in the world I can really talk about how I feel, at all... I want to see it succeed and I can see how dead it was, and how a revamp was needed, but I initially came to the thread to find out about the Rhymer tool that used to be at the top of the page... do we still have that? admittedly that needed an update as well but it was still a very useful tool...as well as mentioned above...I think we definitely need tools to write like we used to...perhaps updated but anything really... I don't think PnQ was ever broken, but this doesn't feel like it fixed anything.... the pages are shorter...it now shows just a few of my poems per page instead of back in the day it would should around 30...I dunno guys... I love Pnq whats goin on?

It's no biggy Mark...I was just curious on both counts :)

Where does it mention the word/character count that people are mentioning? I haven't come across this yet.

There's a minimum character count when it comes to posting comments/poems, it must be 50 characters long. It's an issue with posting shorter works haiku/senyrus/syntuits.

Where does it say that? I can't find it.

Try posting a really short poem, like one word long.

OK...this is the message I got when I tried posting a senryu..

Whoops!

Something went wrong. Please try again, and if this error persists, please let us know.

It did, however, post the poem to my account. Now, when I try to delete it, it won't let me and the same message appears.

I did leave a one word comment on your latest poem Mark and that was accepted?

I can't recall if Janis reversed those changes or not, but thanks for testing it out. I'll delete your last poem on our side, and bring it up with Janis.

The Rhymer is on Janis' intermediate list. It will be there.

Janis initially reduced the minimum from 50 characters to 30 characters (including spaces). He may have listened to us to get rid of the minimum entirely.

I'm still unable to delete the poem from my account...any ides?

I'm also not able to delete poems? I first had trouble loading a new poem today, kept getting 'Whoops!' error messages. Repeated it several times, but then found that despite the 'Whoops' error messages, my poem had been put on the site 3 times!!!
Worse was to follow, because I got 'whoops!' error messages when I then tried to delete the extra two poem copies!
I'm guessing this new website is still in development and all these niggly things I'm coming across will be fixed?

I'm seeing some strange things today, but always accompanied by a 'Whoops!, 'report this error' message, and then come the unwanted duplications.
And a message that I just sent out to a poet, somehow got duplicated 4 times, and then a subsequent message explaining to him that this was not of my doing I see hasn't been sent, yet I know that I sent it!
I guess I'm having a bad day..lol!

Peter..

...and also this new software allows one to duplicate poem comments that have been already placed? (I placed a comment on Bens poem, double clicked my enter key and ......... two faithful copies of my comment reproduced itself on the screen!) I can't seem to find a way now to delete this unwanted second comment?!

LOL
Ah the joys of a complex set of software thrown out into the world to net unwary users.

I'll pass these issues to Janis (Mzrk has already alerted him to some of it).

It'll all be good in the end.

Hopefully if Janis is willing to listen to the users, and if the users work together, I am sure you guys/we can figure out all these issues with the website any how to make it refreshed and all that good stuff... I don't know what Janis really wants to do with the site in the first place so I don't know how close or how far away from her vision this website was or has become, or how it will be...

Saphirx,
That really is a great starting point:

"what [does] Janis really want to do with the site"?

"how far away from [his] vision [is] this website"?

To start the discussion, I'll assure you that Janis wants the site to serve the members, to bring other visitors to the site in order to read poetry and to establish and maintain camaraderie.

Now let me ask this question: given that we know there are glitches being fixed and more things in the pipeline (finalizing clubs, various tools), what else should be done by Janis or ourselves to achieve this vision?

If you have a different vision, by all means take the discussion that direction.

Peter,
The good news is that I could delete your duplicate poem (taking the one with no likes or comments). The bad news is that it may have triggered a notice of violation.
Not to worry, the notice means nothing by itself.
Abracadabra and myself have both gotten these violations in error and they are not to be concerned about. We know you are not really making any violations.

Hi Larry,

Yes, I received my violation thankyou! First one ever I've received on PnQ, but as you say, it's just a software error so I'll ignore it of course! lol!
(thank you for the poem deletions.)

Wubba and yourself bring up a similar point and one that I have puzzled on in my mind for a while now.
Firstly though, it should go without saying that we are all extremely grateful to Janis for providing this poetry platform for all of us like minded writers and poets to share our work, and have very useful comments made on what we write by our peers. I know a lot of us get a little concerned at times and frustrated at the time it can take to fix bugs both in the old website and now this new one, which in the grey past, has been known to stretch into many months. Janis clearly has other work to do apart from PnQ, so we are mindful of that and appreciate his time that he is able to assign to his website.
As far as I know, Janis doesn't write poetry, so I have always wondered what benefit does Janis get from providing this wonderful poetry site for us grateful poets?
Also, it may of been mentioned in the past I'm sure, but when this site 'goes down' (as all websites do from time to time), is there any email addresses/contact numbers that one can contact, so as to find out what has happened to the site? I am concerned PnQ could disappear tomorrow for all sorts of reasons, taking with it all our poems and information etc as it goes, and there is no one that one could contact to find out what was happening?
Thanks!
Peter..

There is a group on Facebook Tara started & made the mods admins so we can desiminate info:
Search for "PnQ Community"
It has helped in site outages

We also have alternative means of contacting Janis

Not sure if I'm posting this in the right place. I have recently come back to the site after a fair few years and I'm not sure what's happened! Haha. Do we no longer get notifications when someone has replied to a post or commented on a poem? I used to get a little red one haha.

I don't know about getting a notification whenever someone replies to a post. I don't think. I've ever seen that feature. However, I receive a notification whenever someone comments on my poems or whenever someone private messages me. It shows up as a red number 1, whenever I click on the person icon the one that shows you a bar filled with:

What's new
Latest comments
Private messages
.
.
Contest nominations
.
.
Etc.

You should be able to see yours as well.

We've never had notifications when someone replied to a post unfortunately! When you have a new comment on the poem, you will have little red numbers next to your name in the upper right hand corner :)

How weird. It might be because I'm on my phone. I have to go the long way round to see them. I'll try the main desktop when the daughter is asleep :D

It's about time Peter received a violation...

Darren, have you ever gotten a violation?

Hmmm......

Not yet,

Peter needs one for his dress sense.

But I thought I looked really cool? Oh well, back to my Tailor!