Proposal: Disable the [font] tag

[KholdStare]

I already did, as indicated by post #117. If this discussion isn't about readability, then it's about whether or not someone likes Comic Sans MS, and that's a personal problem not a global problem, so we should not seek a global solution.

This is a forum, not IRC, not free text host, and definitely not Notepad.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by KholdStare

...that's a personal problem not a global problem, so we should not seek a global solution.

Honestly, nearly all global solutions were created as a result of some degree of personal problem/annoyance/issue. The difference is only in how bad the problem is, how often it happens, how many people are affected by it, how influential the people affected by the problem are, and how difficult it is to fix said problem. I'm sure that's not exactly surprising for anyone who's ever worked in any sort of structure at all. A "global problem" (excluding things like a severe data-damaging bug) only means that a lot of people (or a lot of important people) agree that it should be fixed.

In the end, since this is admittedly a low-risk/low-reward (cosmetic) sort of issue (even though I do personally find it annoying), the difficulty to provide an elegant solution in an easy/timely manner is enough to at least put it on hold for now. But it's not like only global issues deserve global solutions. Or maybe it's more apt to say that it's not as if only global issues get global solutions. But the other big reason for that is because, oftentimes, global solutions are a lot less work. That certainly would have been the case here. Just turning the silly thing off is a lot easier than programming a whole new option, adding a database field, changing the profile fetches, having alternate rendering modes, figuring out what to do with the cache, etc. etc.

All that to say, there's nothing wrong with people posting about things they personally find annoying, because that's how a feedback system works. But just because you find it annoying obviously doesn't mean that it'll get changed. But hey, maybe it's worth a shot!

[Solace]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

All that to say, there's nothing wrong with people posting about things they personally find annoying, because that's how a feedback system works. But just because you find it annoying obviously doesn't mean that it'll get changed. But hey, maybe it's worth a shot!

Agreed.

I think the best way to end this discussion (since we've pretty much beaten our opinions to death on it ), is with a friendly handshake. It was a good one, even if it got a bit rough at times. It reminds me why I like this forum - a discussion such as this would have been a lot worse somewhere else.

/handshake

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by KholdStare

I already did, as indicated by post #117. If this discussion isn't about readability, then it's about whether or not someone likes Comic Sans MS

bzzt, worng

try again

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by Cats

No matter how many might want-in-the-future to use it at any given point only a handful of users use it, while a lot more users get annoyed by it.

I'm surprised nobody called Cats on this one. This also seems to be the basis of a lot of other arguments.

It's an unfounded generalization. It seems to be backed by the opinion that "I don't like it/I find it annoying." That remark carries just as much weight as my saying "I don't mind it." Your and my opinions alone are worthless as far as basing generalizations. Make a poll and get a significant number of users participating before you make that statement.

In all my years on this forum (too many) I have never encountered an annoying scenario involving this tag. On the other hand, I've seen much more abuse of the color tags. Based on my own experiences this is much ado about nothing.

Make a poll. Otherwise it just looks like there are three people who have encountered an annoying scenario and perhaps three others who are annoyed with the idea of that scenario. That hardly constitutes a majority, nor does it prove that this is an issue worthy of action. I don't care for the tag, but I see it as being a waste of NightWish's time to try and disable it in a clean manner.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

I'm surprised nobody called Cats on this one. This also seems to be the basis of a lot of other arguments.

Incidentally, this argument was, in fact, addressed repeatedly in this thread. There's no point in getting into it again.

And while, of course, NightWish's time and efforts are very valued and appreciated by all the staff and community, there are other programmers among the staff and mods if need be. That alone shouldn't stop people from voicing their opinions either.

[KholdStare]

I think Ledgem hit the nail on the head. Congrats. [ +1 ]

@relentlessflame: Now that I think about it, you are right. It is still how bad the problem is that matters, however, so I will step down my argument if the majority of this forum hates the font tag, period.

PS: And yes, I do love this forum for its discussions of varying...intensity.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by KholdStare

It is still how bad the problem is that matters, however, so I will step down my argument if the majority of this forum hates the font tag, period.

It's pretty obvious that this is the sort of issue where (for example) 5% hate it, 5% use it, and 90% don't use it and don't care. So you're never going to get a "majority who hate it" (it's not that sort of issue), and of the 90% who really don't care, some are always going to feel like standing up for the people they feel might be inconvenienced (it's like "standing up for the little guy", where the "little guy" is whoever's on the defensive). So although I originally said I'd support it if it were put to a vote, there's no way to get a honest reading here. People who don't really care about fonts either way are muddying it up because they feel incensed that a vocal minority could get their way on something that might inconvenience a few others, even though the importance of the whole thing is minimal to begin with. It's that sort of "moral outrage" that's blowing the issue out of proportion. I mean, it's just fonts; how bad would it really be if they were gone? ...Never mind, forget I asked.

If it weren't sure to cause a holy war, I would have suggested just reducing the amount of font choices, but there's not even a point.

[KholdStare]

Yeah, and how bad would it be if they stayed? I'm definitely not part of the 5% who use it all the time, but that doesn't mean I have never used it or will never use it. There are times when I have used it, and there will be times when I will use it. Usually I am very much open to logical arguments (even from vocal minorities), but when I hear things like, "Ugh, you can't get more annoying than Comic Sans MS," it becomes personal. WK's serif discussion is by far the post that swayed me the most, but then I have to be reminded on every page that Comic Sanc MS sucks for some reason when it's to me one of the most readable fonts out there.

I don't really care about reducing the amount of font choices if we can keep a few good ones. However, I'm pretty sure we will have an argument for whether or not Comic Sans MS can stay, so that's where I think we shouldn't have the discussion. My suggestion? Remove all serif fonts.

[Solace]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

People who don't really care about fonts either way are muddying it up because they feel incensed that a vocal minority could get their way on something that might inconvenience a few others, even though the importance of the whole thing is minimal to begin with. It's that sort of "moral outrage" that's blowing the issue out of proportion.

It's an inconvenience to a minimal amount of people either way you look at it, and so importance of the whole thing in the bigger picture is minimal as well. The fonts could go, there would be some grumbling but in the end it would be no huge loss and people would move on. The fonts could stay, and we'd be at the same status quo, and people would move on. So either way, it's a wash.

The "moral outrage" was directed at the angry and biased opinions that were so prevalent in this thread. I could go on a quote spree and demonstrate this, but I'd rather not dredge this debate up when it's already been done to death.

Since the fonts can't be cleanly disabled and either option (removing or toggling) would increase server load, we're really just back to square one on the subject. We can leave things as is, and one group is inconvenienced, or we can work and try to approach a compromise of sorts that everyone can be mostly satisfied with.

If that's not good enough for some, oh well. Right now those options are about as good as it gets.

[WanderingKnight]

The "moral outrage" was directed at the angry and biased opinions that were so prevalent in this thread.

Hey, everyone is biased. I think that's the point of having an opinion.

And yes, Comic Sans does make me angry (not--if I got angry on the Internet, I'd had killed myself a long time ago out of pity for my pathetic life).

Ultimately, I believe the problem with all of this is actually taking it seriously. Come on, it's a goddamn forum, no liberty is being coerced by stripping out your "right" of using stupidly colored fonts, nor is our (or at least my) dislike towards stupidly colored fonts of such a passionate nature.

[felix]

With regard to the earlier vBulletin technical discussion on disabling it, I will post here since there were several people envolved.

First of all vBulletin (for whatever reason) thinks disabling [font] will not affect older posts. The truth is it does, essentially disabling any of the default bbcode tags will result in all posts showing the code as if it was a undefined tag. With regard to the cache issue, the cache can be reset from: Maintenance / Update Counters / Rebuild Post Cache (it is a little lower down, I missed it at first)

It is interesting to note that the options regarding what can be selected from the dropdowns for [font] and [size] are available as style options (you will find them to be the last on the list) however they are as they say only style options, since vB is pre-processing everything before it even considers the style templates (which -for the most part- it will just pass the raw data to one-specific-template at a time).

A quick & simple solution to the font and size problem would be Css attribute targetting. In other words lets say we trim down the list of available fonts to: font1, font2, font3. We would then target the <font> tag and tell it to display the forums default (with a !important rule attached), and subsequently add one of each rule for each of our fonts, so we could have font[face="font1"] for example. By adding !important the extra selector will gurantee it will overwrite the above set default. Note that it is irrelevent what the font name is, since it will not determine the typeface used (that will be done with font-family).

We could effectively call them Normal, Computer-Code, Improtant-Title and they would work just fine. Actually, this system will work much better then vBulletins idea, since for one we can force other elements in there. For example font-size can be used to prevent abuse. Impact or Arial Narrow are not that bad for a main title since they tighten up the letters and add that well "impact", so we could force a size of 24-28 points to prevent them from being used on anything else. Similarly with code we could make it 9pt (default for some common code editors) and also add a :before with content: 'code: '; just to discourage people to missuses it. More importantly, we can set alternative fonts for different system.

I have looked over the hooks and I can not see much else other then something very messy and sophisticated to get it working. Effectively the output to the templates would have to be reparsed at the endpoints provided; hypothetically. As I see it vBulletin offers support for style alterations so it presumes you would not need anything that could be called a style hook to create a specialized plugin for such a feature. Oh, just in case, when you see some of vbulletins files labeled style.php?v=345834 they are not really processed, the extra query is just to play with your browsers' cache control; so do not give them much thought since nothing useful can be done with them.

Moving on to the color tag...

Obviously disabling or limiting the color tags range is not the issue, the problem here is getting rid of that color picker while still having color. Unfortunately there is no clean way to hide the code since vBulletins' table design is very non-semantic so while the color-picker is marked (its' id is #vB_Editor_QR_popup_forecolor for the quickrely editor and subsequently differes for advance mode etc) it is not posible to actually eliminate it in a clean way since the tiny vertical line between elements is placed in a completly separate td.

This leaves, as the only simple option to remove it, the disable switch in admincp. A simple solution to all of this would be to just be able to add a custom tag called 'color', but vbulletin will not let me, and I've yet to figure out how to trick it to accept it in a clean way... (I have been too busy to look further into the issue, I will get back to it later)

---

replies:

Originally Posted by Ledgem

I'm surprised nobody called Cats on this one. This also seems to be the basis of a lot of other arguments.

It's an unfounded generalization. It seems to be backed by the opinion that "I don't like it/I find it annoying." That remark carries just as much weight as my saying "I don't mind it." Your and my opinions alone are worthless as far as basing generalizations. Make a poll and get a significant number of users participating before you make that statement.

In all my years on this forum (too many) I have never encountered an annoying scenario involving this tag. On the other hand, I've seen much more abuse of the color tags. Based on my own experiences this is much ado about nothing.

What exactly are you trying to say here? The way I first understood it was that you are somehow saying it is impossible to count how many posts there are on animesuki that have fancy formatting and how many do not have it, but then I realised you were actually presenting a even more crazy challenge...

Let me see if I got this right: the w3c and every (respectable) webdesigner out there got it wrong and so they should reconsider their views and instead look onto such splendid examples of "elegance and democracy" as myspace profiles for inspiration of a new better standard for which the rules of accessibility and usability are not determined by years of research but by a crappy poll with people who think placing a 700x500 animated background and having red text, video and javascript that throws a "Hello please vote for me to help my ads" alert, actually know better?

Yes this is no different from a myspace page with the exception they can not set backgrounds. You can be sure the people at vbulletin did not intend for this kind of use, I am sure their idea was people would be smart enough to use it with reason, but guess they got it wrong. You and KholdStare with his dozen so far have yet to give a single valid reason for having your entire damn post formatted and also a reason to justify any sort of "alternative" use (that I have never seen here) that would justify having all of them or any of them; ironically we, the so called evil noisy minority, have given some practical uses for it in our apparent futile attempts to reason with you.

[KholdStare]

Do you want a reason for formatting?

Originally Posted by Klashikari

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[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by Cats

What exactly are you trying to say here?

It's very simple. The fact that you've presented a number of methods of cutting this feature off and none of them entail "click on that box and hit save" means that it's going to be a fair bit of work for NightWish or whoever else gets stuck with it (where "a fair bit of work" is defined as at least one minute or more of unpaid work). Because of this the change should only be made for two basic reasons: either there is a pressing need, or the vast majority of users want the change to be made. So far I have not seen either condition met.

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

It's pretty obvious that this is the sort of issue where (for example) 5% hate it, 5% use it, and 90% don't use it and don't care. ... So although I originally said I'd support it if it were put to a vote, there's no way to get a honest reading here.

It may not be so obvious. As to getting an honest reading, there's always the chance that people will choose not to respond or that they'll respond inappropriately. I would use a poll with the following options (question prompt "How do you feel about the [font] tag?"):

1. I use it and would like it to remain on the forum.
2. I do not use it but would like it to remain on the forum.
3. I do not care either way.
4. I would like this feature to be removed from the forum.

If you really wanted to you could split the "I would like this feature to be removed from the forum" into options for people who use the tag and want it removed and those who don't use the tag and want it removed. As-is it is assume that anyone who does not want the tag around does not use it.

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

People who don't really care about fonts either way are muddying it up because they feel incensed that a vocal minority could get their way on something that might inconvenience a few others, even though the importance of the whole thing is minimal to begin with.

I would agree with your statement that the importance of the issue is minimal. I think it's such a non-issue that it could have been dismissed once it became apparent that this isn't a pressing need to act based on the proposal. The reason I suggest a poll is to be fair and to show whether it's an issue or a non-issue on the forums in a relatively unbiased manner. If it turns out to be an issue by the poll numbers then by all means go ahead and discuss whether the feature should be cut out entirely or just reduced. People have gotten ahead of themselves with this.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

I would agree with your statement that the importance of the issue is minimal. I think it's such a non-issue that it could have been dismissed once it became apparent that this isn't a pressing need to act based on the proposal. The reason I suggest a poll is to be fair and to show whether it's an issue or a non-issue on the forums in a relatively unbiased manner. If it turns out to be an issue by the poll numbers then by all means go ahead and discuss whether the feature should be cut out entirely or just reduced. People have gotten ahead of themselves with this.

Well, really, let's say the poll shows that, hey, it is an issue. Then what? Or, let's say the poll says basically what this thread shows: that most people don't use fonts, but don't want to see them removed for whatever reason (freedom of expression?). Then what? Since the forum isn't run by its members (it's run by a sort of consensus of the admins), all this would do is cause that much more aggravation if/when someone decided to do it, because people would get the mistaken idea that, because the vote went a certain way, that's the way things should be.

Really, all that matters is whether there's someone with the time to make the programming changes required, and whether there's a general consensus among the admins that this isn't a bad idea. And at this point, this public discussion has reached a deadlock. If I just up and decided today "you know what, I think I'll just program the migration script myself, test it, and send it to NightWish" (I mean, this is well within my professional expertise, after all...) and it happened, can you imagine how pissed off people would be now? They'd be outraged because they'll think their vote wasn't respected! And if we had a vote it'd be even worse! In the meantime, this thread has become a rep farm for people crusading against this change (but who don't actually use the feature in question at all).

So really, thread over, I think. It's up to the admins now. If they decide it's worth doing, I'll volunteer my time to make it happen.

P.S. I'm not trying to squash whatever legitimate discussion that could happen, but at this point I think the topic is spent and needs a break. If, however, someone would like to post a new comment that adds significant value to the discussion, please feel free to send me a PM and I'd have no problem at all re-opening the thread. But my feeling is that, for now, we all just need an excuse to walk away.