No Colors Anymore?

[Dave Sinkula]

I fought for and again miss the lack of being able to highlight what I would like to point out using color.

Yes there are the tags, but I used to use magenta for bad and blue for good -- kinda like the old days when red meant delete, blue meant add, and green meant change (or at least that's how I remember it). A single color doesn't do this as well.

Old posts suffer from the lack of it being there. A reply that depended on color may look stupid without color support -- much like some posts that relied on now absent fonts now look stupid without the font.

IMO, leave moderation to the moderators. And don't cripple folks who do their damnedest to use the tools correctly. :(

[Dani]

Color was being WAY overly abused, and we simply don't have the moderation team right now to effectively moderate it. When I found quite a few posts within a single afternoon which all had every single word a different color just for the sake of being nearly impossible to read, I finally just had enough. Perhaps (err, most likely) when we have a really good moderation team in every forum color will return, but as it stands right now, we don't have a single person moderating the entire Site Management category right now, and only tgreer in all of Web Development. You can't say "leave moderation to the moderators" if there aren't moderators available to moderate.

[Dani]

I would like to apologize to our brand new moderator, FC Jamison, who was just appointed this week. I'm sorry I forgot about you! We have TWO moderators in Web Development ... tgreer and FC Jamison.

[Dave Sinkula]

M'kay. You're the boss.

What attracted me to vB forums over c.l.c or Yahoo!Groups were these features you are removing.

[Dani]

I would really like to think it was the people.

[Dani]

* pinged Davey for his opinion *

[Dave Sinkula]

I would really like to think it was the people.

Yeah, there's a bit of that too -- I followed Jul to a couple of sites. Several familiar folks have wandered about. We settle where we can express our ideas in the manner in which we want.

[Dave Sinkula]

...Silencing Narue's replies here may put great information elsewhere.

Enforcing strict rules may lead other great folks to save it for where it is "allowed".

Wrecking beautiful posts may push folks to play where they can do it.

Removing things all the time may leave things as bland as Courier New.

I understand your point. But, as with just about everything, with the good comes the bad.

[happygeek]

* pinged Davey for his opinion *

I think that we are getting there on the moderator front, with a handful of new additions this week, including someone to look after Site Management.

I also think that Dave S has a point regarding the colour bbcode issue, and being flexible with such things, as does Dani with the looking messy when unmoderated comment.

My personal opinion on this one is that I'd consider bringing colour back, but only if properly moderated.

However, I agree with Dave that it should be a moderator decision so how about we put it to the vote over in the mods place forum after a period of discussion there?

[Dani]

This is an old argument around here. :) Dave is the only person who wants or cares about color. Of 100,000 members, he's the only person who seems to have realized color went away. In fact, I suspect he doesn't even use it all that much because color went away weeks ago and he's first bringing it up now.

My viewpoint is that if it is capable of being a negative thing, and it doesn't seem to phase anyone (except for Dave) whether it's here or not, it might as well not be.

But I will definitely reconsider if there is at least a small group of moderators or members who feel as strongly as Dave that the ability to color different words in your post is an essential part of communication. For me, I've never used it before, anywhere, and I don't see how it has a place outside of MySpace.

We've never had color on DaniWeb. Then Dave came along and convinced me to allow it. Reluctantly, I did. I'm now seeing it's beeing overly abused, it's making posts ridiculously hard to read, and I just don't like it. I never ever see it used appropriately. The only times I see posts colored is by the younger crowd who want to play around. So I removed it. Dave is the only one who even noticed.

Sorry ;)

[happygeek]

Ah, right, I didn't appreciate the history involved here ;)

In that case, I reserve my right to change my mind and now think that it's one of those cases that we should leave to public/moderator opinion. If this thread develops into a long pro-colour one then maybe your decision needs revisiting, if not, well, then not...

[Dani]

If this thread developers into a long pro-color one, then I will strongly consider readding color. However, it cannot be because Dave is rallying for votes. :) The people have to genuinely want color.

[happygeek]

That seems fair enough!

[WolfPack]

Dave is the only person who wants or cares about color. Of 100,000 members, he's the only person who seems to have realized color went away.

No I want colours as well. I thought it was a bug in the new BB update, and since I felt that I have been asking too much I kept quiet until someone else put it forward. Have been sleeping for the whole day ofSaturday (went for a karoake until Satruday morning), so I saw this thread only now.

PS:
My head still hurts.

[Dani]

OK, Wolfy. Note taken. That makes two. ... and feel better! Go get rest.

[The Dude]

Maybe you could enable it for the staff accounts only and see how it goes Dani :) (Or is it global??)

[Dave Sinkula]

In fact, I suspect he doesn't even use it all that much because color went away weeks ago and he's first bringing it up now.

Normally (elsewhere), I use it all the time. I find it so much better to understand exactly the point I am making. In fact, if you remove the color from those posts, figuring out what I'm saying is more difficult.

It is true that many people don't know how to use it, but it's nice when it's there for those of us who do.

I can't make the same point using BIU, it just looks dumb. And I still miss fonts, and I still miss sizes. They have a real purpose other than abuse, and lacking them is just lacking. Hadja ever noticed that some of the previous changes messed up most of Bob's tutorials? Some of my posts here used to use elements that are now missing (and I'm not the only one who used color to highlight issues in code), so you have devalued previous posts that might have been more useful to someone seaching.

Heck, if you hate colors, and sizes, and fonts, why not continue on and get rid of BIU, indenting, bulleting and numbering and all that too? Someone's bound to abuse them too.

Let's do the whole thing in plain text. Yeah, let's be usenet. Go Courier New!

[Dave Sinkula]

Of 100,000 members, he's the only person who seems to have realized color went away.

BTW, that's 2597 who have 5 or more posts and have posted this year. (Note the colored text.)

[Dani]

Heck, if you hate colors, and sizes, and fonts, why not continue on and get rid of BIU, indenting, bulleting and numbering and all that too? Someone's bound to abuse them too.

Let's do the whole thing in plain text. Yeah, let's be usenet. Go Courier New!

Don't tempt me :)

[Dani]

BTW, that's 2597 who have 5 or more posts and have posted this year. (Note the colored text.)

That's still only 0.08% :)

[risby]

OK, Wolfy. Note taken. That makes two. ... and feel better! Go get rest.

Make that three. At forty nine, and with twenty-eight years programming experience under my belt, I don't think you could put me in with the "younger crowd who want to play around" but I definitely do think colour has "a place outside of MySpace".

Programming is a complex task for human beans but there are many things that can help when your brain is getting too tired to see the wood for the trees. When trying to understand and debug someone else's poorly formed code very often simple things like giving variables aposite names and applying consistent code layout help enormously. Coloured syntax highlighting can help with that as well.

It's hardly a bizarre idea and not just for code either. I use coloured highlighters to help categorize notes in my daybooks to distinguish problems from solutions etc. Stationery suppliers sell self-adhesive paper spots of different colours specifically to help you categorize things at a glance.

If some posters resort to "colour abuse" surely they are shooting themselves in their metaphorical foot, aren't they? The more difficult to read their posts are the fewer helpful posts they'll get.

[aside]Way to make friends ... Ris comes out fighting in his first post[/aside]

[Dani]

Hi risby! Welcome to DaniWeb. Basically, this is unrelated to colored syntax highlighting, which I agree with you on. The (php) bbcode already exists to color code php/c++ style code, and I'm working on a syntax highlighter for other languages within the forums. Plus our code snippet library already uses syntax highlighting :)

We're just talking about color within actual posts.

I spent about a half hour yesterday working on a means of enabling color only in the programming languages forums, but I ended up getting sidetracked.

[risby]

Hi risby! Welcome to DaniWeb. Basically, this is unrelated to colored syntax highlighting, which I agree with you on. The [php] bbcode already exists to color code php/c++ style code, and I'm working on a syntax highlighter for other languages within the forums. Plus our code snippet library already uses syntax highlighting :)

We're just talking about color within actual posts.

I spent about a half hour yesterday working on a means of enabling color only in the programming languages forums, but I ended up getting sidetracked.

Hi Dani Thx for the welcome and info on php tag.

However, I have to say that the use of colour for syntax highlighting of code was just one example of how colour can be used to organize, clarify and differentially emphasize text. I'd like to use colour in my postings for more than syntax highlighting but I can do without it if the facility is not there.

What is more worrying to me is that removing the color tag option seems like an extremely heavy handed response, affecting all members of the board with a blanket ban, when only a few posters have committed the grave offence of colour abuse. http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b344/risby/afro2.gif

While I can sympathize with your position of having too few moderators to police the acceptable-colour-use policy, such that you can't just ban the offenders, I do find it really difficult to imagine how any use of colour can have so offended you as to require this draconian response. http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b344/risby/nono.gif

I'm really hoping this doesn't put you in a bad mood.

[Dani]

It's not just a couple of members here or there abusing color. It's a problem that I encounter daily in the non-development areas of the site. I would have moderators in the Site Management area acknowledge just how bad the situation is except ... well, there aren't any.

[FC Jamison]

ouch

[Ancient Dragon]

I just tried to use color and found out, sadly, that I no longer works. I tried it four or five times before deciding to come to this board to complain -- and found this thread at the very top!

I don't see what the problem is -- so what if someone wants to waste a huge amount of time colorizing every other word, or even every other letter? Does it impact on the performance of the web server? If not, then why limit it?

[Dani]

A. It makes things very hard to read. B. It makes things look VERY unprofessional. C. 99% of our traffic comes in from the search engines to individual threads and it gives the wrong first impression.

[WolfPack]

Well, you have 4 moderators for the site management section who I think are fairly active in that section.
The number of theads in that section is less than 300 for most forums.
There is a button which you can use to remove all the formatting of text. So it is just a matter of select and click. How many color abused threads are we talking per day here? Is it so bad that 4 moderators cannot handle?
Before the addition of new moderators I was adding code tags for a fair amount of post per day in the C/C++ forums. An year ago, only Narue and Dave were the active moderators of that forum. They must have gone through the same thing then too.
Why do you cripple a forum that has over 5000 threads in favour of a section that in total has much less of a number of threads? 3 moderators of the C/C++ section have asked for the color button to be bought back. What will make you change your mind?

PS:
I just saw the other thread regarding re-enabling of colour. Thanks.

[Dani]

You guys convinced me that it's more than just Dave who wants color (Sorry to single you out, Dave). Color has been restored.

[Dani]

Wolfy, ofyour 3 "fairly active" moderators in the Site Management category:

Shimon made one post in May and before that hasn't posted since April. It's now September.

jewboy hasn't posted in 3 months.

And stymiee is a newcomer who was just promoted to moderator status the other day.

The reason why the category has so few posts is because spam and abuse is such a terrible problem there that over 50% (literally) of the threads have been soft deleted! ... and that doesn't include all of the posts within threads that still exist that have been deleted.