Bugs and Suggestions for Metabunk.org

When clicking on a BOLDED post in the list of latest posts on "What's New," it normally takes me to the oldest of the posts I have not yet seen in that thread. From time to time, it takes me to the first post in the thread. This is a minor annoyance, requiring scrolling through the first page of a thread to get to the page list at the bottom, then clicking on the link to the last page, and then trying to spot the earliest post that I don't recall reading.

This is a MINOR annoyance, I would not call it a high-priority thing to worry about, mentioned for what it is worth.
I don't know why this happened, but if you end up at the top of the thread you can also click on "Jump to New", which usually works.
 
I believe this happens on older threads. Perhaps some information got lost when the forum was upgraded. Or perhaps it's a feature.
 
When clicking on a BOLDED post in the list of latest posts on "What's New," it normally takes me to the oldest of the posts I have not yet seen in that thread. From time to time, it takes me to the first post in the thread. This is a minor annoyance, requiring scrolling through the first page of a thread to get to the page list at the bottom, then clicking on the link to the last page, and then trying to spot the earliest post that I don't recall reading.

This is a MINOR annoyance, I would not call it a high-priority thing to worry about, mentioned for what it is worth.
I think if you click on the title, you'll get the latest, but if a careless finger lands on the line beneath (with the name of the OP) you'll go to post #1.
 
When using the Alerts drop-down menu, is there any way to separate "replies" from "reactions"?

It'd be nice if there was a way to isolate any actual quotes and responses from merely a "thumbs-up" or other similar icons that may have been applied to a previous post. Just a thought.
 
When using the Alerts drop-down menu, is there any way to separate "replies" from "reactions"?

It'd be nice if there was a way to isolate any actual quotes and responses from merely a "thumbs-up" or other similar icons that may have been applied to a previous post. Just a thought.
You can turn notifications of reactions off in https://www.metabunk.org/account/preferences ; you can still see them in https://www.metabunk.org/account/reactions .

Or you could close the alerts drop-down, and then reopen it, to have the reactions marked as read, but your unread responses stay unread.
 
Suggestion - include the ability to embed URLs generated from the Reddit mobile app, in the same way that links from the web page are embedded...

Example 1 - copied from the "share" button on the mobile app:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/s/J2g8ZXGsm7

Example 2 - if I paste that into a browser, and then "share" the page it brings up we see this...

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1gv9kll/aaro_recycling_metabunk_analysis_of_resolved_ufos/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
 
Suggestion - include the ability to embed URLs generated from the Reddit mobile app, in the same way that links from the web page are embedded...
This is the wrong place.

Xenforo has customer support, they could be implementing this.

Or reddit could stop tracking individual shares by ID.
 
Perhaps it exists already and I've missed it....but a tool for seeing when a particular post has been quoted would be useful. That way I don't have to look through 23 pages to see if anyone ever responded to a particular post.

Every quote already contains a link back to the original post....so what I'm asking for is essentially the reverse of this...does any post link back to a specific post I am on. I do not know if this would be overly complex or that data for it already exists in the system.

This would avoid the 'nobody ever responded to this post' issue that can arise especially on very long threads.
 
Not sure if this has been mentioned before but XenForo seems to have some limited plugins to allow for star ranking posts. Might this be more useful than reaction emoji, especially in the very long and unreadable threads, such as those for the Calvine photo, where useful posts with links / quotes etc, get drowned out by squabbling. It would be nice to have a choice about how posts are viewed, either as they were posted chronologically, or by "quality".
 
There's this, "Trending Content" metrics settings which appears to allow admins to sort posts into two buckets, "Hot" or "Top", but allows them to set some parameters. https://xenforo.com/community/threads/trending-content.220649/
Not exactly what I was thinking of but anything that would allow at least a basic method of quality filtering posts would be useful IMO.
Trending content has been on the forum list sidebar for a while. It just shows threads (not posts) based on activity. So the angry political threads bubble to the top. I've added it to the home page as well, under "Latest Posts"
 
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So the angry political threads bubble to the top. I've added it to the home page as well, under "Latest Posts"
I've modified the metric so it's entirely based on recent positive reactions now.
2025-02-23_10-46-39.jpg
 
Oh, I think you're going to have to define that according to your own criteria, Deirdre. We at Metabunk tend to be "one-sided" with a bias toward facts and evidence, and our mods do their best to keep us that way. I don't think it's possible to be TOO much biased toward facts.
well "hiding" posts from pro-ufo believers or even 911 proponents or hoaxers isnt a good look.
 
I've modified the metric so it's entirely based on recent positive reactions now. View attachment 77638
Be interesting to see how this works out. I might feel obliged to give good reactions to posts with which I disagree but which seem well reasoned or well expressed even so. Which might make me read such posts more carefully, which would be a good thing. On the other hand, I might find myself doing the very human thing, and up-voting stuff I agree with even if it is not well supported, which won't help me or the site.

Will be watching with interest and hoping for the better outcome.
 
Failing the public quality rating of posts I wonder if there's a way for each user to see which posts they have tagged with the subjective "informative", or "agree" labels? If there is, I see this might function a bit like bookmarks on Twitter? It would be great to have a way to make sense of the things you're following and to tease them out from the noise—not necessarily a public statement of "agree", "disagree" etc, but a kind of record keeping "locker" that will be different for everyone.
 
Failing the public quality rating of posts I wonder if there's a way for each user to see which posts they have tagged with the subjective "informative", or "agree" labels? If there is, I see this might function a bit like bookmarks on Twitter? It would be great to have a way to make sense of the things you're following and to tease them out from the noise—not necessarily a public statement of "agree", "disagree" etc, but a kind of record keeping "locker" that will be different for everyone.
You could use the bookmark system (top right of each post)
 
Be interesting to see how this works out. I might feel obliged to give good reactions to posts with which I disagree but which seem well reasoned or well expressed even so. Which might make me read such posts more carefully, which would be a good thing. On the other hand, I might find myself doing the very human thing, and up-voting stuff I agree with even if it is not well supported, which won't help me or the site.

Will be watching with interest and hoping for the better outcome.

its not moving posts like Reddit. it just puts it in the "trending" box, which i didnt even know existed til today.

Besides we have a few members who show up once two three weeks and read sometimes old threads from OP and "like" a ton of posts...so whatever threads they happen to read that day will be put it in "trending" likely. which is ok its nice to see "blasts from the past"
 
Not sure if this has been mentioned before but XenForo seems to have some limited plugins to allow for star ranking posts. Might this be more useful than reaction emoji, especially in the very long and unreadable threads, such as those for the Calvine photo, where useful posts with links / quotes etc, get drowned out by squabbling. It would be nice to have a choice about how posts are viewed, either as they were posted chronologically, or by "quality".

It might be better to allow users to turn their posts arguing about a specific issue into a sub-thread linking to where the argument began..or with a side menu similar to the 'Latest Posts' one. This saves the overall thread itself becoming too laboriously threaded, whilst allowing the 'main' thread to exist and have sub-threads alongside it.
 
well "hiding" posts from pro-ufo believers or even 911 proponents or hoaxers isnt a good look.
Are posts being "hidden"?

Are they being hidden because of their opinions? Or are they hidden because they make claims that are false, i.e., because they are not based on facts? Giving falsehoods the same emphasis as factual statements is "not a good look" for a site that wants to discuss facts.
 
Feature request - option to change/overwrite or remove "Article:" text when using 'article' tags. It looks clunky if you stack text on top of "Article:" but sometimes a few words are needed to set up the quote.
 
What metric determines which threads appear on the homepage tiles? Can it be changed? These seem kind of stale. For instance shouldn't Aguadilla be right there given recent events?
Screenshot 2025-03-20 at 23.59.51.png
 
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