Comment About Forum

[KatDini]

Since the redesign of the forum, the US state of the question asking members no longer appear on their posts. The mods refer to the IP addresses when a poster is asked about their state like all the other members can see it. We can't see the IP addresses and the name of the state does not appear. Please check the forum settings and see what can be done about this, so we can at least post accurate information.

Thanks, y'all.

 

[adjusterjack]

I agree. I've been on legal websites for 15 years.

One of them makes it an automatic part of registration so the state always appears under the poster's avatar and only a few opt out of showing their state.

Another site asks the state question in the body of the message similar to the way this one used to.

A third website doesn't ask at all so very few posters have the sense to post their state until we tell them and then, after reading their post once, we wait until they respond with the state and have to go back over it again. It's a real PITA.

The vast majority of questions involve state specific laws anyway, so knowing the state from the getgo allows a volunteer to go straight to state references to answer the question efficiently.

My vote: Bring back the state question.

 

[Betty3]

I "believe" the state question is asked in a drop down memo to choose state from but it is just not showing up apparently. I have seen a couple of cases where responder went back & asked for state & OP replied they chose it from drop down memo & didn't know they had to post it again in their post. Apparently drop down to chose state from needs to be fixed so state shows up in post.

 

[Betty3]

I notified Michael & told him to note this thread.

 

[Betty3]

Michael is working on this.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

My apologies on the late replies here. I've been working on a major upgrade to the site that should set things going without needing much upgrading for a while. One of the problems is that our field to hold the state dropped out -- but I should have that fixed this weekend - tomorrow probably at latest.

This issue is not so simple. First, having a flag for where the user is located isn't conclusive since people will have issues that concern states they aren't in, e.g. trips, driving over the border, etc.

Next - mobile interface. This is harder than you realize since many of the extensions that are commonly used will not show up when a user logs in using a mobile interface. I think I have that solved too, for the most part, so long as users don't use certain apps. In the past I had that part nailed right into the post, which we may do again.
 
Can my moderators test out this really cool new feature?

http://www.thelaw.com/threads/two-types-required-in-topic.63085/

This should conclude a successful transition to the new system. It will take a lot of work to clean up the old system but I should have it completely transitioned by tomorrow, assuming it works. Thanks everyone for your patience. By Monday morning you'll see a lot of changes and, later this week, a major update to our interface and cleaup of the rest of what remained from the transition of the old site. Was more work than you can imagine!

 

[KatDini]

Oh, believe me, I understand. That's why I decided against programming back in the 1980s (though I did do a little web design). Your hard work and time spent on this is appreciated!