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Since the outbreak of war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine the forum has been suffering a degree of subordination to it.
One of the effects is loosing the differentiation between project, development and operational categories.

The core sections are for projects that never progressed to operational status (projects and developments) or, at the date of posting are either in project or development.
Operational hardware goes always outside the core sections: aerospace/military/bar

Thus hardware deployed in Ruso-Ukraine war should be outside the core sections.

To enjoy a performant forum it's capital to keep it organised. This is a responsibility should be considered before every post.
 
I have a technical question. Is there a buton that removes formatting of the text in the editing box in the bottom of each thread’s page? I can’t find it. Sometimes, when pasting text from other sources, the formatting goes nuts and it’s difficult to keep control over it.
 
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When pasting text in Chrome, the easiest starting point is using right click - "paste as plain text". This gets rid of all formatting from the source.

If you want to try to fix up formatting, press the [ ] button and it will show the BBCODE markup of the page. You can delete tags you don't want. You will need a basic understanding of BBCODE though.
 
TomcatViP said:
Another day, another half dozen of older posts deleted related to French made hardware.
And as usual, any indication of what is being deleted is absent: no post contents, not even the reference.

Do you guys realize how utterly arbitrary this sounds?
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In this case, some old offtopic posts were removed. Why do you care so much?

Removed posts were either:

Actively bad, in which case you may well get a warning of some kind or

Offtopic, and not worth preserving by moving to a different topic.

In the second case, it would be easier on moderators to not notify people, but then you'd get snippy about not being notified.

The forum has always been presented as a combination of discussion and database of information. If your off-topic or joke post from 6 months ago is removed from the forum, that's just the natural process of cleaning up.
 
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To get back to Forum Software Feedback - I would like to adjust a couple of settings on my account (add another page to the two only that are displayed when I click on "what's new", etc) - but nothing happens when I click on it.

The word "settings" is in a larger font than all of the other items listed on the left side of my "Account Details" page, and all of the others work.
 
Jemiba said:
When several posts in a thread are deleted in one step, there‘s only one comment possible. And in the latest case of in the Exocet thread, nine posts from May 25th, reported today, I wrote, that they were deleted, because being OT, as the thread is about the development of the Exocet, and not about its potential delivery to and use by Ukraine.
Sorry, when it didn‘t got through…
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Would it be an idea to have a ‘bin’ or holding forum for posts that would normally be just deleted?

Users could still see the posts, there’d be some idea of why they ended up in the bin/holder, and after a set period of time these messages could be deleted.
 
Jemiba said:
When several posts in a thread are deleted in one step, there‘s only one comment possible. And in the latest case of in the Exocet thread, nine posts from May 25th, reported today, I wrote, that they were deleted, because being OT, as the thread is about the development of the Exocet, and not about its potential delivery to and use by Ukraine.
Sorry, when it didn‘t got through…
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Do you realize that we can´t have this discussion while the content of those post flagged, as it seems, by an individual, are unknown to us all. I also very much doubt that the content I wrote ranks in the category of being political or inappropriate.

Then having a discussion around the possible usage of Exocet as fitted on a fighter jet that would ultimately be the object of a handover to Ukraine is highly not OT or irrelevant to a news thread.
 
You are mixing up two threads, but I'm sure, you know ...
 
- The posts in the „Exocet Missile Developments“ thread (not only from you) were deleted, because they were about potential delivery and use by the Ukraine. That has nothing to do with its development.

- And the posts in the „Dassault Rafale NEWS ONLY“ thread were deleted, because they weren‘t only news, but comments…
 
TomcatViP said:
No I don´t know and I would appreciate you are not portraying me with this kind of negative image.
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The "Exocet Missile Developments" topic is in "Secret Missile, Bomb and Gun Projects" and is intended for discussion of projects of Exocet derivatives, launchers etc. To fit this section, these should be unbuilt projects or prototypes.

You would need an Exocet topic in "Military" section for discussion of Exocet usage. I don't think that exists currently.
 
TomcatViP said:
Do you realize that we can´t have this discussion while the content of those post flagged, as it seems, by an individual, are unknown to us all. I also very much doubt that the content I wrote ranks in the category of being political or inappropriate.

Then having a discussion around the possible usage of Exocet as fitted on a fighter jet that would ultimately be the object of a handover to Ukraine is highly not OT or irrelevant to a news thread.
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These posts were

1) Two years old
2) In the wrong topic

I have moved them to an operational use topic on Exocet along with half the posts from the Exocet topic which had been thoroughly hijacked from its original topic.
 
Jemiba said:
When several posts in a thread are deleted in one step, there‘s only one comment possible. And in the latest case of in the Exocet thread, nine posts from May 25th, reported today, I wrote, that they were deleted, because being OT, as the thread is about the development of the Exocet, and not about its potential delivery to and use by Ukraine.
Sorry, when it didn‘t got through…
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Thank you for the explanation.
If I may suggest, just including "nine posts from May 25th, reported today, they were deleted, because being OT" would have clearly explained what the deletions was about. Maybe I'm sensitive, but being caught in a collective cleanup feels much different than subjected to individual censoring.

And btw I agree than periodic cleanup is important. It could also include all the off-color "jokes" along with the off-topic.
That permanent drizzle of off-color does much worse damage to the quality of SPF as a reference than anything else, IMO.

And, lest we forget, thanks to all for this endless work!
 
dan_inbox said:
Thank you for the explanation.
If I may suggest, just including "nine posts from May 25th, reported today, they were deleted, because being OT" would have clearly explained what the deletions was about. …
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Seems to be a good idea, will try it next time
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
I don't understand what you mean by "no way to display more than 2 pages of posts"
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When I select "new posts" it only puts up two pages of thread titles.

If I miss a day or two of looking at the forum, then threads which have had new posts since my last visit exceed two pages - but I still can only access the first two pages. No option to check further back is available, even though there are threads with new posts on a third (or fourth, etc) page.

See the part I outlined in red:

Untitled.jpg
 
Is there a universal listing of technical and historical resources like the large files which can be downloaded from the forum? I noticed eg. the SA-8 Gecko manual in dejavu. Are there other manuals available, too? How to find them?
 
I made a comment regarding a post in the Rafale forum that was, I think, wrongly deleted.

- original post: https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/dassault-rafale-news-only.17813/post-730268
- My comment: basically reminding that the date for the presumed order would fall under the next administration.
- Moderator comment: not a news comment
- My view on this: relaying a prospective expectation from a gov that is not backed with tangible action is neither a news. It would have been if, for example, long lead items were announced to be ordered (such as is the case with the F-35)

So, my question today, why delete some no news comment about the absence of real news in another?
 
Your message was
But who would order them in 2029? Wouldn´t that fall under another administration?
You have to love the US system with their yearly budget.
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It's a fair point that after the last election results, the French government making plans for buying things in 2029 seems... premature. It's still news though, and your comment on the news, is a comment not news.
 
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overscan (PaulMM) said:
Your message was

It's a fair point that after the last election results, the French government making plans for buying things in 2029 seems... premature. It's still news though, and your comment on the news, is a comment not news.
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The US have not had a budget as per the normal annual Congress process for 30 of the last 49 fiscal years including FY2024. Last (and only) time the existing procedure was proprely implemented was 1977. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-r...ong-struggled-to-pass-spending-bills-on-time/
The US have multi-year procurement in defense programmes that extend over one presidential term.
The national and social budgets in France are adopted (or not...) by parliament on an annual basis. ("annualité budgétaire").
So even the comment was factually wrong.
 
Absolutely not. Commitment to budget allocation are made with pluriannual expenses. This means that it does include a share of the budget being used for appropriation.
Claiming that an order would be made by a next administration while not allocating part of the annual budget is unheard of.
As I have written, the departing gov could have secured long lead items for example.
 
Once again, on the Rafale forum, several of my older posts were deleted without any notification or backups arguing that content was not news. That after a ban following a gentle reminder to another forumer, not shy of writing expletives and derogatory comments, that he should remember his high school math lessons before doing stats for the greater good (what was obviously not).

@Jemiba : How can you not feel ashamed doing such at the time we live on the web? What gives you the right to appropriate the words and idea of someone else and blast it in oblivion? What comes next, burning CFD and Aeronautical Science books to hide the sometimes doubtful design of your patrons?
 
A user active in the topic reported two of another users posts (not your posts) for not being News in a News Only topic.

The moderator agreed (both were essentially responding to the news posted, and so strictly speaking not news) and deleted the posts in question and the replies to them. He also deleted your post of "just a pic" and a link to a news article "Clemenceau 25 – GAN carries out joint air-maritime maneuvers with the Indian Navy" at the same time.

The intent of making certain topics "NEWS ONLY" was to mainly stop the endless political, partisan and nationalist sniping between pro- and anti- [whatever] members which kept derailing certain topics into a slanging matches.

In this case, I think a strict interpretation of NEWS ONLY is being weaponised by a user to remove posts that don't strictly fall into "NEWS ONLY". However, one of the reported posts directly responded to a news post about additional Rafale production sensibly and related to the news article, the second diverged into discussion of Greece and its political / economic failings. Only the second of these warranted potential moderation.

I've undone some of the deletions. I will also add to the forum rules some explicit rules around "NEWS ONLY". This is a forum, and having discussions is a core part of being a forum. Where the posts are responding to "news" in a sensible manner in a way which doesn't spin off into politics, nationalism or wild speculation, it should be allowable.

Separately, @TomcatViP has once again publicly attacked a moderator and accused him of nefarious motivations.

The moderator in question was exercising his judgement responding to user reported posts within the context of the rules. The two reported posts weren't yours, your posts were deleted only because they responded to deleted posts. The other post deleted, though linked to a news item, was presented by you as "just a pic". So any feelings of victimisation here are misplaced.

If you disagree with a moderator's decisions, the first avenue of redress is contacting me for second opinion, not making conspiratorially minded attacks on staff. Accusing moderators of nefarious intent is not good forum behaviour and will result in disciplinary action.
 

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