Topic: If we want a proper testing of Epochtalk, we need at least the Beta site back! - page 2. (Read 1420 times)

A few things I've noticed:

-Image drag/drop is glitchy with multiple images. When dragging/dropping 2 (or more) images (back-to-back), the [img] tags get created, but in preview it usually doesn't show the 2nd image at all, if you post it, it clears out the 2nd [img] tag. I've found I had to hit 'enter' at least once or twice between each drag/drop to get it to post correctly.
-Also related, drag/drop of one or many images with no text doesn't allow 'send reply' to be hit.

-No drafts capability for new messages.

-Also with new messages, when moving to 'preview', the window gets the focus (hitting the delete key will close the window, wiping the message). Same thing happens when switching back to 'compose', the window itself stays with the 'focus', not the text box, and hitting the delete key (thinking you're deleting text) will close the message window entirely, wiping the message, due to the aforementioned lack of draft capability.

-New threads or replies by the user themselves shouldn't be seen as "new" under recent threads or other areas.

Ok, here's what's going on. It does save an empty signature but doesn't update the profile page so it still shows the signature after I hit Save. The signature goes away if I refresh the page. Still a bug IMO. If I change a signature to a non-empty one it shows up immediately.

Some other stuff:

No e-mail notifications for PMs.

PM red tag on the envelope doesn't go away after I read the PM or even reply to it. Need to do a hard refresh of the page to get rid of it.

@ mentions don't go away unless I manually remove them.

The log out in new tab issue happens only in Tor Browser so far. Tried Firefox - doesn't log out.

Watchlist shows threads I replied to. Should only show when others reply.

How do I run unit tests? I made some code changes, need to verify it doesn't break anything.

Hey ! You copied my avatar ! Not cool dude ! )

I saw that earlier today also. Was added on the to-do list. Not sure what caused it yet
Oh well... back to the drawing board !
 

You guys are doing an amazing job. Thanks for that time and effort, I wish more people knew what was going on here and can join the process. I think theymos should reward you guys somehow.

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Let me add one thing as well.

Something is messed up with the avatars.

On the main page you can see the "last posts by: iasenko" and I have your avatar.
tried to zoom it
When you open the section, is my avatar there ... :O

Just a random number I guess. Could have been 100k ... dunno. Anyway there needs to be a limit in the code. For the time being it's 25k. Mega easy fix tho


Yup
With sig

Without sig (empty)



Interesting behavior! Will try to test/replicate first and them inform the guys.

Thanks again for the feedback! Really appreciate it ! 

Why limit it at all? Let the admin decide if it should be 64k or 10MB.


Tor Browser. Are you saying you can save an empty signature?

As for the tabs, technically it doesn't log me out in the current tab but the new tab is not logged in.

The logic is there. They have sorting in member search and in admin panel. Will be added for threads also


This is new ) we're on it !


That really does sound useful. Will talk with the guys about this. See what can be done.


Split and merge not available yet


We'll have a meeting on that front and discuss what to do about that


Will change limit to 64k. Until then it can be changed from the source-code.
modules/ept-configurations/routes/update.js
modules/ept-frontend/client/admin/settings/general.html


Sorry but I don't have the above issues on my end.
What browser do you use ? Weird that it logs you out in new tab. Never happened to me (yet)

BBCode issues

Chipmixer signature - completely broken:


Edited 2020-11-30 to fix a broken image

My data tables from https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/yobit-signature-campaign-participants-2020-01-23-5220231 - less broken but vertical spacing is off even inside "pre" - unacceptable:


Edited 2020-11-30 to fix a broken image

Trust list from LoyceV's site: http://loyce.club/trust/2020-02-22_Sat_06.05h/BBCode/234771.txt - broken:


Edited 2020-11-30 to fix a broken image

Some other problems:

• Post size is limited to 25k characters - less than the current Bitcointalk limit of 64k.
• It's impossible to remove a signature. Saving an empty signature doesn't work.
• Opening forum links in new tabs logs me out. I use tabs a lot so that's a major deal breaker.

The display part needs to use the exact same bbcode-to-HTML process and same CSS for legacy/migrated posts. Using stuff like "pre-wrap" will not work.

A new fancy editor can be used for new posts. Trying to edit old posts could come with a grave warning that it's a one-way conversion from old bbcode to the new whatever (Markdown/bbcode/HTML hybrid apparently is the target judging by the readme).

Perhaps users can be given a choice to use a plain textbox to alter old bbcode if there is a need but I don't think it has to force everyone into a spartan mode.

A few more things:

Thread list in a board can't be sorted.

Attempting to edit a thread title throws an exception in the backend.

Couldn't find a way to add users to ignore list directly.

Spelling error when entering a new trust rating ("Postive"). Seems to still use the old pre-flag trust format.

No merit system?

Scaling avatars down to little circles looks... uhm... horrible LOL. Text is unreadable. Might work for something like photos but that's not what we do here.

I figured out the image drag and drop. It turns out I can drag local files but not images from websites like imgur ("No images found").

An option to paste images directly from clipboard would be far more useful (for example screenshots).

Super Administrator is SUPER AD in threads. The excessive capitalization still irks me. Feels like it's shouting at me all the time. Waste of space too.

Couldn't find a way to move a single post to another thread or to split a thread (as a SUPER AD).

Can't report my own posts, which makes it impossible for e.g. a global mod to purge their own post but they can report and purge anyone else's posts.

awww  

Been helping out to the best of my knowledge for some months now. Been in contact with Slickage on a weekly basis at least.
BTW that issue with double posting is already waiting to be merged to master: https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk/pull/769

You are correct about the requirements docs and we tried to provide such info to them in order to have a clear vision.
It will still take some time, that's for sure, but I like to think we went a long way in the meantime.

The editor clearly needs an overhaul but also needs to be 100% compliant with current way posts are made/edited/displayed. That might mean a more spartan like editor (for bitcointalk at least). We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Thanks again for all your input !  

I love your enthusiasm

Let's face it - the editor is just a textbox with zero features. I can't imagine anyone would be happy having to learn and type bbcode by hand. It needs shortcut buttons, better yet - WYSIWYG+source view.

It's also lacking multiquote feature. It should just let me select any piece of text and quote it, like other modern forums do.

Got it ! The offset logic not added to quotes.
Should be a relatively easy fix. Thanks for pointing it out


Yes I did. The editor is still WIP on a few features.


Tried a few times and was denied by post rate limitations. But the request was clearly sent twice. Found the sweet-spot eventually. Thanks again !

The issues pointed out are already on their github page.
We'll try to channel our inner "Supreme Leader Kim" and maybe surprise a few faces... after that issue list on github thins down

Set UTC (or some other timezone different from your actual timezone) in your account settings.


That's why this needs a proper vigilant QA person who can dig into this. I reckon I could figure out these "temporary glitches" in a couple of days but I don't have that much time.


Did you have to remove newlines from my post? That's what I had to do to migrate some texts from Bitcointalk to Epochtalk and make them look somewhat similar. I find that unacceptable. I think it's a combination of "white-space: pre-wrap;" and "line-height: 1.5" that does this (typing from memory, apologies if I got it wrong).


Click "+ Post Reply" in a thread. Enter some text. Double-click "Send Reply" (it shouldn't be "Send" but that's another story). The post gets posted twice. Try the same on Bitcointalk.


Again, I must respectfully disagree. See that quote that DdmrDdmr posted where I asked about documentation. If developers don't have requirements and if we just randomly poke at stuff to "test" it - that's not going to work. My day job used to be dealing with hopeless software projects. I know one when I see one.

I'd be very happy to be proven wrong in this particular instance though. Kim proved me wrong so it's doable.

"Tesing board" , "presists" ... you are right. Luckily those are just some .html files that can be corrected instantly once caught


They recently changed the logic behind timezone offset (so each user can set their own GMT+/- local time) Tried it a few times but worked for me. Not sure what to say on that front. Could not replicate it
This is the quoted post: https://coinbistro.com/threads/0ikKhHejRWmWWV3R8l6EgA/posts?start=37#NbTt-Mu4QJSXrWVezjRPyw - post #37 (post hyperlink does not take you to the actual post. Takes you to the top of the page. Used to work but got broken between lines of code. Would be fixed in the next release that should be merged in the next few days. They are working on some UI refactoring and was told that issue should be solved)


Nice catch! Even got a thread ID with underscore in the first try ) Will forward this and see why is it acting like that and fix it


Again... works for me. Those temporary glitches are a real pain in the ass because if you cannot replicate you don't know what to fix. Regarding the last part just seesm the break point is not at the middle on the category button. A few more mm below and would have worked as advertised.



Currently has a legend and would need to type them urself. Some buttons and smileys would be a net asset. Will be added on the to-do list (if not already there)
Image drag'n'drop works on my end. Tested it with local storage and with amazon AWS bucket. Admin-settings-general-image server configuration try to tinker a bit there.


Has some faults there. Tried to replicate your post here: https://coinbistro.com/threads/0ikKhHejRWmWWV3R8l6EgA/posts?start=40#8twUqUb-T9GSfGYUHyDGjw   post #40 . Looks decent IMO altho had to edit the post a bit. We'll be needing some rules for spacing. Ignore first new line after quote/img/etc. Will look furhter into it.
Still work in progress on that front. A bit hard tho as they set out to rebuild the SMF BBCode parser and is more than challenging. Even current devs at SMF don't fully know how it manages to work and has comments in the github source "// Hm. That's weird. Well, just prepend it to the list and let the user deal with it". But that's another story


There is some strange voodoo with those hyphens. Will look into it. Thank you for pointing it out


Don't understand what button you're talking about...

Don't know about you but I found this to be very productive! Thank you so much for your input and for taking the time to install Epochtalk.
As I said before, any advice or critics is one more step towards the goal.


As a forum software it has some issues here and there but my personal impression is pretty good.
As the new house for bitcointalk ... there still is a lot of work to be done. But is achievable!
Thank you also for your assistance and hope you get some more free time now and again

I went and spent a few hours trying it out back in March 2019, when @lulucrypto kindly created Cryptos-Currencies.Com on Epochtalk. I reported 20 odd things or so at the time (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.49971713), and saw how some were dealt with after reporting them on Github, but I lost interest after a while.

Really there are two macro testing scenarios here (with different required profiles):
-   Epochtalk as a general purpose software to implement forums.
-   Epochtalk to support Bitcointalk, as one instance of the above.

Now it’s clear that the goal is way more ambitious to that of simply moving Bitcointalk from one platform to another or creating a custom platform solely for Bitcointalk, as developing a general purpose software for forums is pretty tough, full of abstractions that need to be considered.

From a Bitcointalk user’s point of view though, I’m ok spending a small amount of time testing Epochtalk on a non-Bitcointalk test forum, but I’d still prefer rather more prefer a Bitcointalk specific test scenario (providing I find enough time again). Even so, it’s better to carry out scripted tests than random generic test (unless the former have been completed), and doing so requires plenty of linear focused time (whereas voluntary help is normally sparse).

I’m aware that the objective is broader than Bitcointalk, but from the point of view of a member of this forum, I’m likely to be more motivated and focused if I can test things that are Bitcointalk implementation related. That is, I’d rather have a full test scenario with the data migrated as of last month, which enables me to compare functional features, UI, speed, and so on with regards to a scenario that is better known to me. Exaggerating a bit here for comparison purposes, I’d rather test a SAP implementation of the software to replace my ERP that test SAP itself.

The two macro testing scenarios I mentioned before, although one is a subset of the other, do have different goals. From a product owner’s perspective, you’d want Epochtalk to work as a full fledged forum implementation solution. From a Bitcointalk member’s point of view though, I’m really only concerned on how well it will server as a platform for Bitcointalk.


Here’s an example of these two different perspectives, both understandable, but with different scopes in mind:

How much time do you have? I certainly don't have enough to report everything and I'm confused why it is that I found a ton of these problems in the first few hours of using it. And I'm not even purposefully testing it. A few examples below, there is a lot more than that.

Some issues are trivial, like spelling errors:


Edited 2020-11-30 to fix a broken image

Some are just "WTF" - like the 503 error itself - no idea why it's throwing it. The site is not down for maintenance, I can log in and use it.

Timezones are broken:


Edited 2020-11-30 to fix a broken image

Some quote tags don't display post link/timestamp at all. I don't have a screenshot but IIRC it happens when thread ID has an underscore in it.

Admin panel: created a category, created a board, dragged the board to the category, hit Save - board disappeared. No idea why. Next time it worked correctly. Then I started dragging another board, changed my mind, dropped it back into Uncategorized Boards - it disappeared. Drag-n-drop itself is clunky. The following board will end up in EpochTalk Testing despite me holding it on top of (or even slightly below) General:


Edited 2020-11-30 to fix a broken image

And then there is usability... or lack thereof. I'm gonna give it the benefit of the doubt and assume I just don't know how to configure something, although I'd think it should be user-friendly out of the box. For example the post editor. On Bitcointalk you click a button - you get a smiley, you click another button - you get image tag, etc. Do I have to type everything by hand in Epochtalk? Image drag and drop doesn't work.

Capitalizing all board/thread titles is unnecessary and messes up stuff like camel-case code.

Newlines are converted into something weird, looks like two BR tags. Vertical text spacing in general is... I was gonna say horrible, but I feel like I'm overusing that word. It just doesn't look right:


Edited 2020-11-30 to fix broken images

I haven't yet found a way to put two lines of text on top of each other without a blank line in between, other than to use something like a bullet list.

If you put three hyphens on a line like this

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The hyphens disappear... Apparently there is some sort of markup allowed (in addition to bbcode) but no help or documentation that I could find. I thought it supports Markdown (readme mentions it) and that's why I tried hyphens but it didn't produce a horizontal line like it was supposed to.

No image proxy unless again I don't know some setting or something.

Double-clicking the "Send Reply" [sic] button will duplicate posts (no warning).


I disagree. We've had this available for user testing for months if not years. QA is one of those things where you get what you pay for.

Now that we have Epochtalk running on a few servers/VPS let't try to have a discussion about it.
Just saying it is horrible will not help anyone.
For the good of everyone involved let's have a discussion about what you found to be good/bad/meh/missing (doesn't matter if the issue was already mentioned or not) and see where it needs to be improved, what features are missing so we can have feature parity and then quality of life things.

Can you please detail what you found so horrible ? Would appreciate some more info on that. Maybe we can fix something. Find a solution...

Since coinbistro.org I have tried to test and find issues and missing features(with explanations) so the guys working on it have some clear goals in mind. Found a few of them in the meantime...
Today mole0815 opened an acc there and started messing around. And found a flaw that I clearly missed. Will it cut it ? Probably not but it surely helps and that is the whole point of a community !
This is an open source project. Anyone is more than welcomed to join in and contribute as much as they can, with advice, bug report, critics, trolling, FUD...anything.

First let's have User Testing. Once a majority or theymos is satisfied with the result we'll talk about the pro QA guy/gal

That's for sure, spending hunders of bitcoins on the development and at the end to not have a proper testing sounds silly, especially with that recent prises of the Bitcoin, it won't takr that much.
So finally we can have a final product and migrate to it for once and for all.

This so much.

I finally got ET installed and it's quite horrible. There's a bunch of issues reported on Github but unfortunately I don't have time to go through all that and figure out what's already been reported, what has been deemed as acceptable etc. There needs to be a somewhat dedicated person with QA experience for testing it if there isn't one already. Random users poking around won't cut it.

thank you for staying persistent and active on this issue iasenko.
in my opinion, the topic of epochtalk did not appeal to me enough.

many users find it important because of modern design, notifications etc.
but as so often in life, everyone wants to get the finished (and perfect) result without doing anything for it.

i have now created a coinbistro user and will try to get actively involved on a regular basis.
even if it will still take some time... it is better than waiting and only asking without actively participating