Thanks for posting. I would like to know more about your response. Have a very good day!
-it!
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Honestly, it doesn’t matter. No harm done. If the whole topic is spam, it will be deleted along with all replies. If it’s a single spam post, then any direct replies which now lack context are usually removed to avoid confusion, even if the replies were harmless or even generally helpful.
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Thanks, Loki, good to know. Is the ‘probing’ you mentioned just the spammer getting acknowledgment by email that a post was established by the bot? Something they can follow up on with more spam?
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A spam probe is a post that, while it doesn’t contain any explicit spam itself, is determined to have been generated by an entity that has been determined (using the tools we have available) to be a spammer. They are posting seemingly innocuous stuff to “probe” our defenses.
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The issue of duplicate display of the origin post when clicking the embedded reply (load parent post) link has been resolved.
I’m still waiting on info on whether there will be any option to display the full list of users (rather than just the top 24) displayed in the topic summary bar.
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Discourse has gotten back to me about whether it’s possible to display more than the 24 top frequent posters from the topic summary. Unfortunately, the answer is no, there is no option to customize that number. They have put it on their list of possible future enhancements, so we may see it show up some day. That’s all for now.
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How helpful or useful would it be to create a set of tags for popular ISPs?
I see a lot of posts that seem to (or at least try to) narrow a problem to a specific service provider or that provider’s equipment (like the [apparently known] issue with certain Xfinity gateways or presumed problems with certain AT&T modems/routers). Lots of posts mention other popular providers: CenturyLink, Spectrum, Starlink, Verizon Fios, etc., so there’s clearly thought that the provider is potentially one of the (many) relevant variables when trying to isolate and troubleshoot an issue, and having an ISP tag might help attract the eyes of fellow Forum users who are customers of the same ISP.
This could cause more trouble than it’s worth, though:
- It would require new topic posters to choose the correct tag (which often doesn’t happen enough already).
- Where do you draw the line? Which ISPs do you include or exclude, and how do you decide?
It’s probably not worth doing. I’m just asking the question.
Things to consider:
- Will people actually use/apply or think to use an ISP tag when it is relevant?
- How will they know when it is relevant?
- Will people add an ISP tag to a thread that is actually a general issue not specific to a particular ISP? If so, will that get other people to dismiss that thread and/or start a new duplicate one instead?
- Will this add more work to mods unnecessarily, or be useful to them in some way?
- How often would people search by ISP tag filters? Would this limit them from finding solutions that general threads might address instead?
Of course, we do use tags for iOS versus Android, and it’s similar in some ways I guess.
And that, my friend, is why you are the Maven here!!!
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Ah, thanks buddy. 
I try to be useful.
Though, I have to say that I don’t know all the answers to those questions. I think Loki and the other mods would have to answer some of them amongst themselves to see if it would be as useful as the iOS/Android tags have been, or if it would not be necessary. I was just trying to think up some of the best questions we should consider in whether or not it would add value. I’m okay with either outcome depending on whether it makes the mod’s lives easier in some way or not.
Even if it doesn’t get added, I love when people post new ideas to consider like this and hope nobody hesitates to just ask such questions for consideration. I like when people have ideas they share.
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Same, but I started with only two bullet points to consider. Gotta start somewhere, eh? Might as well provide at least some of my own counterpoint even as I ask the question.
It was just something that occurred to me earlier because there are definitely a lot of posts that seem to be ISP-specific in at least some way, and there seem to be users who have lots of useful and valuable experience dealing with particular ISPs. I don’t know if doing anything like this would be of any meaningful benefit to the community as a whole, though, so I just thought I’d ask, because it didn’t seem like an idea that had been considered before.
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You (and only a couple of others) have always taken the time, no matter how long it took, to ensure I ended up successfully resolving whatever crazy issue I was experiencing at the time. I also worked QA, as the QA manager for a software company for 20 years, so like you, I’m very versed in t-shooting and narrowing down the cause/effect/solution of issues.
I’ve learned so much from you that I’ve become a master of my small bevy of devices. I have around 20 cameras in 2 locations 100 miles apart, 2 doorbells/chimes, and the Wyze car that I’ve mounted 2 cameras on. I also use MacroDroid (thanks to SlabSlayer) to monitor the Wyze notifications and do specific actions which is extremely helpful.
I didn’t mean to start rambling, I just wanted to reach out and say thanks for everything you do.
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As long as we’re giving thanks, I want to recognize this:
That was annoying the 
out of me, so I’m sincerely thankful to our Administrator for staying on top of that and getting it resolved. 
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Interesting idea, but unfortunately I’m not in favor. There could be some benefit, but I don’t think it outweighs the hassle it could create, specifically:
Let’s say we pick the top X ISPs. Invevitably, someone will come along and complain that there isn’t a tag for their ISP and we’d have to explain why not or adjust the tags. Not worth the hassle.
If someone thinks their problem is related to just their ISP, then I think the ability to search for the ISP name in the text of posts covers the need pretty much as well as a set of tags would.
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Same. It’s easier to ask a user for info related to what might be related to their issue than add more complexity to creating a topic.
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I don’t think that’s unfortunate at all. I’m not really for or against the idea myself at this point (though I might have a different opinion in a community where users were more diligent and disciplined about tagging, etc.; you can’t really account for that as Moderators, though, and the freedom we have to make mistakes is just another of our fallible human traits). I just thought I’d ask since it occurred to me and hadn’t seen the question posed before.
I like that we don’t feel forced to agree and can voice our opinions here.
I think this seems like the right way to go, too. Even though it can require some extra work—someone asking follow-up questions to get more detail about a problem might need to consider that the ISP could be one of the confounding variables—I’d prefer not to make the tagging system any trickier than it already is. I think the question is just part of my thinking with an earlier point:
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24 posts were split to a new topic: Possible disabling of Reply by Email feature
What happened to the “in progress” page?
So there is a page called “In Progress” on this forum. I noticed today it’s not accessible. Does anyone know what happened to it and why it’s not accessible any longer??
Please post a link to the page in question.
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