Forum News & Discussion

[Incredible_Serious]

I thought it was odd I was verified as a human lol.

There's a few odd humans here......

[Lowgear]

It's a PITA that takes me longer to get in here! But I understand.

You're maybe seeing a different filter that you have to interact with? This latest one I had to put in place is just for US based traffic, and requires no user input.

Nah, it's justa musta "ensure I'm not a bot" whirlpool thinker swirl that delays entry. It's really not an issue, just delays me from reaching my precious from 5-15 seconds. VPN or not. Anything to protect the site, seriously, I was being a bit of a smartarse.

Ah, alright. I just wanted to make sure nothing else was going on since we have several other countries being filtered as well.

I set it so all US traffic has to go through an automatic managed challenge before entering the site.

I'm 40% Russian! ...but 60% Italian. Verified by AncestryDNA.

Oh? Only the US traffic?... Just letting your Russian and Italian "friends" right on in??

Dunno about users in the more Eastern parts of the globe but I just get a white screen saying, "RC10TALK.COM is trying to determine if you are human". Though, I know people who're still trying to figure that out.

Sets a cookie so you don't have to go through the verification every time. Unless you dump your browser after every session... then it's a little cookie monster. Cookie Monster.jpg

I'm not at liberty to say.

I had it set to re-verify users every hour, but have now changed it to every 24 hours. That should make it far less of an annoyance. I'll try turning it completely off in the next day or so to see what happens. Hopefully by then whatever the issue is will have resolved.

[R6cowboy]

Probably bytedance, gov't pissed them off

[Lowgear]

I had to look that up. I didn't know they were the developers of TikTok.


In other forum news, I've been thinking about all the sub-forums, and if any or all of them should be their own separate entities. The way it is now makes them too inconspicuous to me. They would be both easier to access, and the forum to look more impressive. The downside is it would take longer to scroll up and down the board.

[Dangeruss]

I enjoy a good drill down, keeps pages short yet easy to navigate. But I got to poking around and... I dig your idea. It increases site consistency, less used sub-forms in-sight/in-mind could create new conversations, might attract new members who see a place for themselves here. It's only what, 24 new lines to scroll through? If this were an RC car store who wouldn't like 24 more isles of cars being brought up out of the basement?

How does it affect site maintenance and you? More work? Less work? Same?

[Lowgear]

You hit the nail on the head of my thought process on it. I've never been a fan of sub-forums on message boards as they always feel like an afterthought to me. Like the subject matter isn't important enough to be part of the main index, so lets bury it in a parent forum with a link comprised of tiny little text. It has it usages for minor things, but I think the sub-forums we currently have are more important than that. It also can only improve engagement from casual or newcomers like you also mentioned. They see all the content out in the open, and think "Wow, there's a lot going on here!" and spend more time looking through it. Or it's far easier to spot something they like to contribute to.

As it pertains to site maintenance, it's actually a tiny bit worse having the sub-forums as it's an extra setup configuration. I believe the sub-forums began when a few regular users started complaining about the board being too long, and thus having to scroll too much. I mean is it really that much of a terrible burden? I think the convenience outweighs having to flick your finger on your device or mouse wheel a couple more times.

[Dangeruss]

Hardcore enthusiasts do tend to be of a less-is-more opinion when it comes to growth. If it encourages forum activity and doesn't negatively affect your ability to manage the site, I think it's a good idea.

[R6cowboy]

I concur on having the subforums on their own for the same reasons mentioned. More likely to catch more traffic and interest I think.
I haven't gone through all of them but if there's any which makes sense to leave as-is, please speak up.

[Lowgear]

Alright, I took all the sub-forums, and turned each of them into their own independent forums!

I renamed the Vintage other models section to Vintage other manufacturers section as it's been incorrect all these years.

I also renamed the RC10 Re-Release Forum to the RC10 Buggy Re-Release Forum, and moved it up a notch to under the RC10 Buggy Forum. Now all the re-release forums are under their corresponding originals. This was also done preemptively in case Associated ever re-releases the RC10T.

[Dangeruss]

Look at what you've done to my poor scroll wheel finger!



Sweet work. And quick too. Section 1 and Section 2... max out the available space or is that like a Major League vs. Minor League thing?

[Lowgear]

After making the changes, I realized the super long list of all the manufacturers lumped together wasn't visually pleasing. Not that it was that big of a deal but it also raised a few other concerns. If I left the boards original manufacture list at the top of the new one, the entire list would be out of order alphabetically. If I absorbed the boards original manufacturer list into the new one alphabetically, it would have oddly spread them around it. The best solution I came up with was to break up the list into two separate groups exactly as you surmised. the boards original list of major manufacturers were retained in section 1, and the more minor or defunct manufacturers are in section 2.

I put a lot of thought into it. Likely too much, but it worked out quite nicely in the end.

[Brendan2904]

After making the changes, I realized the super long list of all the manufacturers lumped together wasn't visually pleasing. Not that it was that big of a deal but it also raised a few other concerns. If I left the boards original manufacture list at the top of the new one, the entire list would be out of order alphabetically. If I absorbed the boards original manufacturer list into the new one alphabetically, it would have oddly spread them around it. The best solution I came up with was to break up the list into two separate groups exactly as you surmised. the boards original list of major manufacturers were retained in section 1, and the more minor or defunct manufacturers are in section 2.

I put a lot of thought into it. Likely too much, but it worked out quite nicely in the end.

Thank you for your hard work. A long time ago I was a mod on a fish keeping forum and I know that admins work is 1000 times more involved than that. Just know that it is appreciated.

[Lowgear]

You're very welcome, and I know how appreciated it is which makes it just that much more enjoyable.

I've had an unrelenting interest in administrating message boards for a very long time now. Case in point, I've been continually running them without a break since 2002! My first real go at it was an R/C monster truck forum called Monster Madness. It was located at monstermadness.net which I re-registered again in 2020 for sentimental reasons.

[Lowgear]

It's been several days since I had to enable browser verification for those in the US due to bad traffic hammering the site. Unfortunately it continues as I turned off the filter for a bit to see if it subsided at all, and nope... It looks like it'll have to be left on for the foreseeable future. It only has to re-verify your browser once every 24 hours so it shouldn't really be a bother.

[juicedcoupe]

Not that it's that bad, but it verifies any time that I change data connection. Wifi at home, different data boosters at work.