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Questions about functions and terminology of the site software

Glenn MacGrady

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Background: I'm not a member of any social media site, and never will be, so I may not understand some things that are really basic to those sites and which also may now be in the software here. My personal preferences are for total minimalism. I want to know the least possible about everyone else and the least possible known about me. Although I have always posted under my real name, I am strongly averse to information gathering and sharing software. All I want to do is post on forums, and not have any other sort of "social" interactions beyond that, except for occasional emails. But I'm not sure how to configure things in my profile and account because I don't even understand much of the terminology.

I was poking around in my profile after the big revision of the site and don't understand several things. I just start with a small part of my ignorance:

- What are "subscriptions"?

- What are "subscribers"?

- What is my "visitor message board"?

- What is "reputation"?

- What is "like"?

- Under User Settings > Privacy > Profile, there's a function called: "Customize who can see and comment on things you started, replied, followed and following under your profile." It then lets me choose "Everyone" or "Members" or "Subscribers". I don't understand what any of that is.

Thanks to anyone who understands this stuff and is kind enough to take the time to explain. I'm hoping this thread topic simply helps us all understand what the functions of this vBulletin software are.
 
I understand "members". those that are vetted to post on this site. To me "everyone " is just that. Some guy in Nigeria or a paddler you have met. I am a little familiar with "like"..You found the information useful. Sometimes nice to know when you have taken the time to write something.

I don't clearly understand the rest. But I would like to have control who sees what I post and who does not.

Glenns questons are good ones. See I checked "like"

Well I tried to. Glenn's post has a like and its not mine.
 
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If we could just stay with the basics of the topic, perhaps one at a time, what are subscribe-subscribing-subscribers-subscriptions? On the top right of this page there is an important looking big button that says "+SUBSCRIBE". What is it and what does it do?

Related, I look in my profile and see that I have 101 subscriptions, yet I don't ever recall knowingly "subscribing" to anything. I look in Gavia's profile, who posts more than I do, and I see zero subscriptions. Why?

Finally, on this basic point, suppose someone doesn't want others to be able to look into their profile. Can they block that?
 
If we could just stay with the basics of the topic, perhaps one at a time, what are subscribe-subscribing-subscribers-subscriptions? On the top right of this page there is an important looking big button that says "+SUBSCRIBE". What is it and what does it do?

Related, I look in my profile and see that I have 101 subscriptions, yet I don't ever recall knowingly "subscribing" to anything. I look in Gavia's profile, who posts more than I do, and I see zero subscriptions. Why?

Finally, on this basic point, suppose someone doesn't want others to be able to look into their profile. Can they block that?
In other forums subscribe means being notified anytime someone posts something in a thread you originated or replied to. Its something you can adjust in your profile. I fixed mine too to subscribe to nothing.
 
In other forums subscribe means being notified anytime someone posts something in a thread you originated or replied to. Its something you can adjust in your profile. I fixed mine too to subscribe to nothing.

Thanks for the response. But I'm still confused. I don't recall subscribing to 101 things, and even if I did so accidentally, I have never received any "notifications" about any of those 101 that I'm aware of. Perhaps I don't know what you mean by notifications -- emails? PMs?
 
Thanks for the response. But I'm still confused. I don't recall subscribing to 101 things, and even if I did so accidentally, I have never received any "notifications" about any of those 101 that I'm aware of. Perhaps I don't know what you mean by notifications -- emails? PMs?
neither did I subscribe to 545 things! Default setting when the browser changed.

I want to get rid of them.. 54 pages to click to unsubscribe? HELP.. Glenn sorry I have been no help. I did go to my profile and check the subset Notifications to set them to Personal Messages only but I have to get rid of the other clutter.

You are not alone in confusion. This subscription think makes me cranky.. I would rather the admins set subscriptions to unsubscribe for all members and let us pick what threads we want to follow.
 
Glenn, this might help.

Click on your user name in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Click on User Settings
Click on Notifications
Where it says "Email Notifications" you can select how you want to be notified. I'm not sure how this relates to subscriptions, but I believe it negates any notifications that might be triggered by any thread you've subscribed to. I turned my setting to "Off, through my Message Center only" back when the notification function crashed.
Now under User Settings, click on Account.
At the bottom of the page you can enter the names of anyone you'd like to block, which addresses a question someone else had.
 
Thanks for trying to help, Gavia.

I think the old software must have been full of glitches when Robin took it over. I'm positive I never pressed any button on this site to "subscribe" to a thread or to changes in someone else's profile (of all ridiculous things). I'm not one of those people who need to have a smart phone ring-a-ding me that a new post was made in the pancake thread while I'm sitting in the bathroom at Walmart. I don't even have a smart phone.

Nevertheless, I never got any notifications from all these subscriptions anyway. I just spent time "unsubscribing" all the subscriptions one by one and changed my User Settings as you suggested not to get any further ones.

I'm just astonished that there's not a FAQ or "User Manual" that comes along with this software to explain to users what the functions are and how they work. I was involved tangentially in the transition after Willis died, and as I recall there are two popular free software shells for web forums. This vBulletin is one of the paid license products. One would think that, for the price they charge, they could include a detailed FAQ/User Manual for administrators to post for the benefit of users. I just bought my first MP3 player, a $20 cheapo, and it has a 10 page user manual.

Perhaps the answer is that every nine year old in the world has understood all this stuff since they were five years old using their $600 iDongle, whereas I'm just an old guy who likes old, or at least simple, stuff. Too many things in the modern world are mostly sizzle and little steak.
 
Sorry if some of this is difficult to figure out, John will be helping out to answer some of your questions or pointing you in the right direction to learn about the different functions. The like button is gone, I agree it is not necessary, it's ok on Facebook, but not here imo.
​Some other changes where made this morning and other changes will be coming.
Thanks for your patience.
 
Thanks, Robin. Please don't interpret any thing I may write -- in my sometimes provocative style -- as any sort of criticism of your efforts here. You have been straight up from the very beginning that you are not a techie guy. Therefore, I don't think we expect you to have all these answers. Nor do I think we should have to pay John to answer multiple questions we should be able to answer ourselves.

My main point is that I'm surprised there's not a User Manual in the vBulletin materials that can be set up a link for members. I, for one, enjoy researching stuff and then helping explain it on the internet. That's what I mostly do on the many forums I contribute to on different subjects. The computer application programs I buy commercially usually come with a manual on CD or in a web link. If there were such a thing for vBulletin, I would be more than happy to research the answers to my own questions, and then even help answer them when they inevitably get asked by others.

The most important thing in life that anyone can learn from education is that, forever thereafter, you can educate yourself on any subject under the sun. All you need is the source material.
 
Hi Glenn,

Here is the manual in case you are curious. It's quite long and involved: http://www.vbulletin.com/manual/

I'm with you on the privacy stuff. Sorry about some of the unexpected changes due to the upgrade.

The site was previously running on a mix of 4.0 and 4.2 files. I ran some diagnostics and it came up with a lot of warnings. One of my first steps was to get everything on a single version to fix problems and so we could refer to a manual.

-John
 
I am ferreting around under Subscrptions in my account to delete all 54 pages of them.. The manual doesn't seem to help. From the manual it states there ought to be this option "To access the Unsubscribe panel, click the following: Threads & Posts > Unsubscribe."

Where is it?
 
Can we have the text default size something larger than XXSmall? I am unable to change the text sizes on my trip reports from this crazy small text, any help?

I did try modifiy it on my page selections menu...
 
That sounds like a really good point about the font size. I'll try to make sure that is on our list for the new design.

I'm not sure what to think of the "subscriptions". My guess is that it was around before the upgrade, but I'm not really sure.
 
That sounds like a really good point about the font size. I'll try to make sure that is on our list for the new design.
I'm not sure what to think of the "subscriptions". My guess is that it was around before the upgrade, but I'm not really sure.

The subscriptions appear to be a default setting for every thread we posted in. Glad I only started! Lol
 
That sounds like a really good point about the font size. I'll try to make sure that is on our list for the new design.

I'm not sure what to think of the "subscriptions". My guess is that it was around before the upgrade, but I'm not really sure.
no it wasnt..at least I never saw it.. Now I have 523 subscriptions to delete. That would be just fine IF there was a "delete all" button. There isn't.
The subscriptions took all the posts from the old version and subscribed me to all of them.
 
It would be nice if "Today's Posts" appeared in the sort order indicated. I.e., if sort by = "date - last update" and order = "descending" then the post should appear in chronological order with the newest one first. What I see appears to be random ordering.
 
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