PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

[Dark Tangent]

Is it me or does it seem faster with this latest update?

[TheCotMan]

Upgrade complete. Please report troubles since the update.

[Dark Tangent]

New Year's Network Changes should kick in January 1st

Happy new year everyone!

I've put off making some of these network changes, a balance between TLS security settings and accessibility to those with older phones and browsers. For 2017 I'll be discontinuing TLS 1.0 and 1.1, moving to 1.2 (and when the appropriate software supports it) adding in 1.3 support. Come 2018 don't be surprised if we go TLS 1.3 only.

So here is what will happen:

TLS 1.2 only for our web and forum sites. I'm testing what the impact on STARTTLS for email is.
HPKP TLS certificate pinning will get a much longer max-age. Right now I think we expire the pins every minute for testing, but soon it will be every 6 months.

If these changes somehow prevent you from visiting here let us know on twitter or email and we'll investigate.

Thanks!
The Dark Tangent

[TheCotMan]

Archived DEF CON 24 content. Will create forums to reserve space for contests, events, social gatherings, parties.

[TheCotMan]

Upgrade completed. Now testing posting.

[TheCotMan]

Scheduled down-time in the forums starting at 6:30pm Pacific time.

[TheCotMan]

Access to forums was interrupted with troubles on the FW. These have probably been resolved. It looks like pages are loading in all the browsers I have, except those that can't talk TLS/1.2.

[TheCotMan]

Issue has been reported when posting new messages which is being diagnosed. An error appears, but the post is posted. Reloading the page after the error shows the post is present.

Issue has been resolved. We are back in service. Please report problems you observe on the forums.

Thanks!
-Cot

[TheCotMan]

Issue has been reported when posting new messages which is being diagnosed. An error appears, but the post is posted. Reloading the page after the error shows the post is present.

[TheCotMan]

More maintenance completed. Please report any troubles here or at our forum account support email address: defconforums@gmail.com

[TheCotMan]

gah, that's rough. shame that the software vendor makes folk choose.

i would have to suppose that the option of "by post" that takes you right to the oldest unread post is best. but honestly, that sounds like a "Hillary or Trump" kind of choice. both are pretty equally undesirable. ;-)

Yes. What is desired is:
* Show threads that contain posts with unread content per user
* When clicking on search result, user is taken to the first unread post in that thread
* Thread does not appear multiple times when multiple posts are updated in any one thread

If/when that is fixed and works, I will be happy to switch to using that -- it is the most efficient with updates, allowing a user to search once, and then "open-in-new-tab" each resuling thread with updates.

Also, when they fix the per-user "unread posts" to work in cookies, I plan to switch from storing this data in the DB for these forums to cookie storage -- I do not want to have any DB under my control know which posts any user has read and which they have not read. The less in data we keep about our users and their browsing the less enticing our data is for any expedition. Our present, published logging policies for forums already announces that we do not keep browsing data after a certain date. The "browsed posts" data is also limited -- anything older than ?4 weeks ? is assumed "read" and not included in list of unread posts.

[Deviant Ollam]

So, would you prefer a list by thread, and the link to thread takes you to the top of the thread, or a list by post which takes you to the post? One or the other. Which is better?

gah, that's rough. shame that the software vendor makes folk choose.

i would have to suppose that the option of "by post" that takes you right to the oldest unread post is best. but honestly, that sounds like a "Hillary or Trump" kind of choice. both are pretty equally undesirable. ;-)

[TheCotMan]

i still find the "recent activity" and "unread content" features to be problematic and not particularly helpful to users.

In what way?

Presently, "recent activity" is per post, with most recent at the top.

i can never seem to get the "mark all forums read" link to do anything, so my "unread content" is always a bazillion pages long. and yet it still somehow seems to NOT show lots of entries that i see if i check the "recent activity" link.

Please logout, purge all *.defcon.org cookies, then login again. Because cookie-based storage of read vs. unread was problematic and buggy, I moved to having the DB track that, but this process can cause problems with old cookies. I do not like the DB tracking read vs. unread, but that is what was needed to support the feature reliably. A good point on this, is read vs. unread is per account, so if you read from multiple devices on the same account, then read vs unread should by shared.

and, as described before by me, both of these yield highly less-than-useful results. they display by-post as opposed to by-thread. to repeat my previous statement...

Right, it is per post. Order of "Unread" is oldest unread at top. If you click on the top hit in "unread posts" then it will dump you off in the middle of a thread at the first unread post in that thread, so all posts after that are also unread. ONCE YOU VISIT ANY THREAD ALL POSTS IN IT ARE MARKED AS READ. If you then repeat the "unread posts" search link all of the posts in that thread should be removed from the list of unread posts. Repeat process, and eventually you will get caught up.

Click unread posts, click on the first result, read the posts that follow (or don't) and then click again on "unread posts" and ALL of the posts under that thread previously listed are no in the results of unread posts.

If we do this per-thread and not per post, you do not get dumped off in the middle of the thread on the first unread post, but instead you get dumped off at the top of the thread and have to find the first unread post on your own.

If we sort with newest at top of "unread" and multiple posts were added to the same thread, then the top post is the last update, and you have to scroll-back up in the thread to find any other unread posts -- likely causing you to miss unread posts.

So, what combination of supported results returned would you like to see for "unread" ?

* Sort by oldest update with only threads returned and not post with the net result that clicking on the thread with update drops you at the top of the thread
* Sort by newest update first with posts as results, and the top post-link you click won't take you to the first unread post in a thread, but the last, forcing you to scroll up

These are the constraints we have.

I have seen requests from users of the software to the vendor to provide results returned as threads and the link to thread take the user to the first unread post, but there has been ZERO progress on that feature in ~3 years. People have abandoned our vendors software because of this. If you have ideas on an alternate to use, please suggest it to DT -- he has asked for similar things in the past, asking for recommendations on alternative forum software with features and a good security track record with years of support to demonstrate this.

The closest to functional is the present system for unread, if users only visit the top hit and re-check unread after finishing each post link to thread with updated posts.

If you believe this not to be the case, feel free to use your coding skills to generate a JSON query by using the examples provided with "Recent activity" and "Unread posts" URL to generate something you think is more functional.

if in the few days since I have visited the forums a thread has seen 6 replies to the discussion, i do not need (and desperately do not want) 6 lines of results in either "recent activity" or "unread content" because of this. one and only one result (linking to the OLDEST of the "new" content in that thread) is the proper thing to give users.

So, would you prefer a list by thread, and the link to thread takes you to the top of the thread, or a list by post which takes you to the post? One or the other. Which is better?

i visit the DEF CON forums less and less these days, mostly because they are not nearly as useful a tool for communication with the community anymore. :-(

Right. They are not. People have mostly moved on to twitter and facebook. People go to where the people are, and can be reached.

I see more activity related to DEF CON on twitter than the forums. They have a lower cost to entry, and each user can manage their own sources of information, choosing to block people they do not want to read from, and follow those they do; nobody has to tolerate content that is disagreeable and censorship is distributed.

[Deviant Ollam]

i still find the "recent activity" and "unread content" features to be problematic and not particularly helpful to users.

i can never seem to get the "mark all forums read" link to do anything, so my "unread content" is always a bazillion pages long. and yet it still somehow seems to NOT show lots of entries that i see if i check the "recent activity" link.

and, as described before by me, both of these yield highly less-than-useful results. they display by-post as opposed to by-thread. to repeat my previous statement...

if in the few days since I have visited the forums a thread has seen 6 replies to the discussion, i do not need (and desperately do not want) 6 lines of results in either "recent activity" or "unread content" because of this. one and only one result (linking to the OLDEST of the "new" content in that thread) is the proper thing to give users.

i visit the DEF CON forums less and less these days, mostly because they are not nearly as useful a tool for communication with the community anymore. :-(

[TheCotMan]

Upgrade complete. Please report any troubles or bugs you find. Thanks!
-Cot