Forum Activity for @strumelia

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Using Jamroom

My two cents: Add two or three sign up questions that might require a spammer to look up something online to answer... but that legit members might know and answer pretty easily. Then set it so new members need to be approved by you (admin). It only takes me a minute or two per day to look over and approve pending members. You'll see their answers to your questions before they get approved/activated.

Helping my members see their 'pending' Followers

Using Jamroom

I thought 'following back' was the whole purpose of the module, because this module was meant to facilitate/simplify on top of the regular Follower module. But as I said, I'm not seeing that it actually is doing that. I suspect I just haven't been paying enough attention to it, and thus didn't notice that it wasn't doing what I thought it was doing.

Helping my members see their 'pending' Followers

Using Jamroom

Please see above post- is this module actually doing what it says it does in the module's description? I'm not seeing that happening.

Helping my members see their 'pending' Followers

Using Jamroom

OK, I had a chance today to go over a few things in the Followers To Friends module that are confusing or misleading (to me).
There are actually FOUR areas or wordings that have caused me confusion and I'd like to present them in a way that hopefully doesn't cause confusion for YOU, Michael!
The following is the biggest issue (I'll get to the other 3 in one post, but after this first most important one) :

In the FollowersToFriends module Description, it says this:

"Automatically create a follow back when a new follower is approved"
(see screenshot below)

When this module was first created (to help mimic the Ning friends system), I took this literally and was very relieved. However, I don't see this module actually doing that. Now that I've used the nifty new Tool to set all my member profiles to NOT require approval for new followers (and OMG that's so great!!)... I'm not seeing (and never have) that when a member follows another member, there is a 'follow back' created....EVEN WHEN THE PERSON APPROVED THE NEW FOLLOWER. It's just never been happening. In fact, I had a panicked member just now email because she's trying to make a quick sale of a dulcimer, has 'followed' the buyer earlier this afternoon, and cannot exchange PMs. I went to check the buyer's profile, and they have not had a follow back created, and yet they are still set (as I did earlier) to not require approval for new followers.
Am I not understanding this module description, or the intended function of the 'FTF' module, still?

Does it perhaps do this follow back function ONLY if the module goes through the Approve action? (thus negating any 'follow backs' for all members who have their profile "require Approval for followers" set to OFF?)

This Follow/PM arrangement continues to confound me. It's the single one thing that seemed more logical and simple to me on Ning.
Please first help me understand the above module description and how it's now supposed to work for me (now that I used the new Tool on all my members). Thank you so much!

updated by @strumelia: 02/18/18 06:06:37PM

Helping my members see their 'pending' Followers

Using Jamroom

Sorry- I had to work all day today. Will try to get to this tomorrow about the help message wordings. Thanks!

Helping my members see their 'pending' Followers

Using Jamroom

Just to be clear, yes I totally get that the checkbox cannot reflect that 'some' users are this and 'other' users are that... that it reflects/effects ALL profiles. That was never confusing for me.

Helping my members see their 'pending' Followers

Using Jamroom

Yes I do understand and appreciate all that Michael.

I guess what I mean is that since the help wording simply says "If this is checked, anyone following a profile will need to be approved by the profile owner."... and when I come back to the Tool window and find the box has become checked again (even though I ran the tool as unchecked prior to that, and I left it unchecked when I left that page).. well it makes me think it went ahead and unset all the profiles to their 'checked' state again when I wasn't looking. Have we not all had it happen where our checkboxes somewhere online reset themselves and caused us problems? But now I know that's not true in this instance. I think the help wording could maybe be clearer to avoid this confusion among non-developer folks such as myself.

Aside from all that... I'm so HAPPY to have this added customization- thank you thank you!!! :D This will solve a lot of my site problems with inept members struggling to grasp the Follow system.

Helping my members see their 'pending' Followers

Using Jamroom

Forgive me, but this is confusing to me.
I hear what you are saying and I think I see how you are explaining that it works. Yes the Global checkbox is important ...but that controls the default setting only for NEW profiles.
But the help wording on the TOOL checkbox, which changes the setting for ALL current members, says this:
"If this is checked, anyone following a profile will need to be approved by the profile owner. This tool changes EVERYONES state to what is selected here. If checked, when a friend request comes in the profile owner will need to click 'approve' for each pending profile before they are friends."

Are you saying that that tool checkbox can be checked when you go to look at it under the Tool tab, but that it only matters if it's checked or unchecked when you actually hit the button there to "update all profiles" ? If so, then the help wording is misleading- since it merely says "if the box is checked"... not "check or uncheck this box and then run the tool to reset all profiles the way you want". Since that checkbox seems to by default check itself again when you go away and then come back to it, it makes it seem like the state of all the profiles has been reset again by the Tool. I'm thinking others will be quite confused by this as well- it sure confounded me. I expect checkboxes to behave themselves and STAY checked or unchecked... lol.
Perhaps if the help wording for the Tool made this clearer?

Sorry to be such a bother... I'm really THRILLED to be able to have these two new features on the Followers to Friends module! I just want to help folks in the future to not get confused as i did.

Helping my members see their 'pending' Followers

Using Jamroom

Ok thanks for answering my questions!

Michael, I'm wondering if there's a glitch going on-
As master admin, I use the Tool to set all profiles UNchecked to allow following without approval.
Then I go and change my OWN profile to check the box having me approve my own new followers.
Then I go back to the Tool and I find that the box is now checked again.

I tried this also when logged in as a regular member quota. After the master admin ran the tool and unchecked it (to allow follows without approval), I logged in as a regular member I checked the Approve box on my own profile settings. Then I logged back in as Admin -and I go to the Tool and find the box has been checked again... to make all new follows for everyone have to be Approved. Maybe I'm not understanding something?
updated by @strumelia: 02/13/18 01:15:55PM

Helping my members see their 'pending' Followers

Using Jamroom

OK, so I want to understand how this now works- can you please answer the following questions for me about these new functions?...

1) Once I have used the Tool to reset all profiles to UNchecked (to allow new followers to follow without having to be approved by them)... the checkbx still remains so that a member can reverse that for themselves if they like, correct?

2) members will then still get a notification that they HAVE a new follower... just not the notification saying they need to approve a new follower, correct? (assuming they have their notifications ON).

3) with all this set as I described, member B can go ahead and actively follow member A, but will still not be able to PM member A until A has followed member B in return (via the Follow button on profile pages. Correct?

4) by my using the Tool today to reset all members to not require followers to be approved, will this automatically approve all CURRENTLY PENDING followers for everyone? (understanding that a member might reset that checkbox and thus get new pending followers in the future) Correct? ...And if correct, will all these newly approved followers trigger any new notifications to either member A or B?

note- I noticed a little wording issue- once you use the Tool to reset the approve function for everyone to OFF, the generated popup message's wording seems to imply that it's setting approval checkbox to ON- see screenshot. This is minor of course and doesn't mean the tool is not working right, but for a moment it had me scratching my head when I saw it.