Greg

Can you provide a screenshot? I'm not exactly certain what you're talking about...

Yes, most definitely. Google bot is just an ignorant spider that crawls the web indexing what it can, no amount of engineering (or magic) can allow it to better understand what someone is trying to say if the forum topic/post is an inconsistent/unstructured rant.

Yes, very much. It's the reason why Charles and I appreciate it when people correctly structure the opening post of any new thread - including a descriptive topic title, etc. While the IPB software isn't the most SEO optimized forum software in the world (by a long shot), the most recent update attempted to "fix" a lot of the issues. They still don't use header tags, and other vital markup that Google (and other SE like Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc) use to better understand what we're all talking about, but it's an improvement nonetheless. And for me, it's way down at the bottom of the first page. Google personalizes search now, so it highly unlikely anyone will get the exactly same result as someone else. Much depends on your prior searches and the whether you're logged into your Google Account, etc.

@cougar, @Aristides, we all get it, you disagree with each other. Now lets try to do it without all the insults and otherwise bad behavior.

Take a breather folks, less insults and more discussions, please!

Cool down guys, drop the insults.

No problem, this is one of those things that can be difficult to figure out if you're not already familiar with the views functionality. Thanks!

It sounds to me like you've accidentally switched the forum layout to "fluid" rather than "table". Please review the screencap below: If you have the fluid button selected (red arrow), please select the table button (green arrow) and the forums should be presented in the format you mentioned above. Give that a try!

I've turned that type of ad format off, you should not see these types of ads anymore.

Can you be more specific? I haven't noticed any issues with the forum categories - has anyone else?

NOTE: The support Issue related to the new ads on the forums has been moved to it's own thread here.

Ok, let me look into it! This is just a test, if these ads are too annoying, I won't continue them. But thanks for being it to my attention! Charles - I'm going to split this thread into two seperate threads.

Can you try clearing your browser cache? Are you refusing cookies or anything else out of the ordinary in your browser?

I implemented a new system, but can someone snap a screen shot for me? I'm not seeing these ads for some reason. That shouldn't happen... If it keeps happening, send me a note.

Is that a desirable trait? The name “Maple Leaf Web” says nothing about politics, repolitics is more descriptive than MLW.

Yes, the name is officially retired.

Just so everyone is aware, I've pruned the spammer accounts, and we're down to about 10K accounts (most are dormant). After pruning I initiated a recount of everyone's badge counts. This should correct most of the "RARE" badge issues that were cropping up before.

OK, I appreciate the note, but please encourage that user to send me a note when something like that occurs. Thanks!

@Yzermandius19 This is the first I've heard of any problems. If someone tells you they're having an issue, tell them to post a message in the support forum.

In theory yes, but because this is such a large forum, it attracts ALOT of spammers. Those spammers will register and then will either be immediately blocked (via an external spam filtering service), or they will post their spam and then one of the mods will ban them. So basically we have 80K + spammer accounts in the DB all of which have no posts associated with their account (cause when we mark them as spammers, their spam is removed). So if you're not a spammer, it's a good chance you've posted at least once. And because spammers outnumber members, you've in a "rare" group of members who've posted at least once. The rare badge is assigned to tasks that less than 5% of members have achieved. So the solution to this is to prune the spammers from the DB - which I've considered doing... but that might cause some unintended consequences...

Ha, thanks. It hard to believe, but I was member #1 registered in Dec 29, 2000! I'm not certain, but this might be one of the oldest (and longest running) political forums on the Net. We'd certainly be in the running in Canada... But I might be wrong.

Search re-index has been completely and the badge reindex has started. Note, while the badge DB redindex is running, the badges will no longer show... So it'll be a few hours before everything is displaying properly.

Sorry folks, a forum upgrade added a new gamification feature, which includes badges. The upgrade is requiring a reindexing of 1.44 million postings (in the background), so things are a bit slow around here. Once the search reindex is complete, i can then start the process of reindexing the database to properly allocate badges based on everyone's past contributions. Argus, you'll be pleased with all the fancy badges you're about to receive So ignore the badges for now, they're going to be incorrect for a short period!

Yes, I would agree somewhat, but things are changing in the world of online discussions, and I believe there might be a migration away from large platforms like Facebook, towards more non-aligned forums like this one. Perhaps we could merge the State and Local into one sub forum... That's not a bad idea too.

I'm going to be making some major changes to the forums over the next few weeks. The first, and likely the biggest change, is going to be in the name of the site, and the domain name you use to access the site (and consequently the discussion forums). I'm not going to release the new name yet (or the domain), you'll just have to wait and see what it is. Not to worry, all of the old URLs will still work, everything will just be forwarding to the new domain URL scheme. I will also be modifying the sub-form categories somewhat, incorporating some long overdue changes. Mostly, I'll be expanding the US Politics section, so that it has it's own section (similar to what we have for the Canadian Politics section) Canadian Domestic Politics Federal Politics Provincial Politics Local Politics United States Domestic Politics Federal Politics State Politics Local Politics International Politics Canada / US Relations The Rest of The World The remainder of the forums I plan to keep the same. Of course I'm always open to suggestion for organization of sections, so please post below if you have any ideas. If you have any other good suggestions on reasonable changes we can make to the forums, please post them below. If they're good ideas, I'll do my research and see how easy it would be to incorporate into the new forums. Thanks!