before i owned my xterra, i had a subaru wrx wagon and was a member of nasioc.com

they have a neat little feature which lists all the members at the top of each forum that they're browsing. it's kinda cool to go to the say, off topic forum, look up at the top, and see a list of all the xoc members that are browsing that forum.

what do you think?

We have that disabled because it puts too much strain on the server.

Most of the "bragging" features of this board are disabled because they are pointless. Just like the Xterra, everything you need, nothing you don't.

I can tell you that on an average day there are about 250 people browsing XOC at our peak hours, and it's always the same people

What are the peak hours?
Just curious.

The good, the bad, the ugly,... and a car salesman.

It's gotta be 10pm-3am.

I'm always amazed who else is living after midnight.

Why don't we have a nice member search function? Some link taking us to a page with all the names and info.

Because it's another useless feature.

Damn it! I came in here specifically to use that very feature. We used to have it. Guess it's been a looooooooong time since I popped in around here.

Hi Ian, still keeping the masses in line I see.

Trying
What's with all the FOG's popping up here lately ?

I think the new commercial is rekindling their appreciation of this site.

Actually, a member list (not who's online) feature would come in handy now and then. It's no fun trying to PM or email someone spontaneously when the only sure-fire way to do it is to root around randomly and find a post by that person or hope that his/her name or handle is somehow referenced in the contents of a post to search for. You can't search by handle, only by member number, which again can't be found without finding a post by that person. Rare that it comes up, but frustrating when it does. Either searching by member name or having a list of members would solve it.

Brent

not to highjack the thread but as a newbie not only to the world of Xterras but also to the world of offroading there are a lot of terms used here I did not know what they meant. After using the search feature (alot) I have begun to understand some of the terms. What about doing a brief glossary for the new comers. Hopefully this will kill some of the overly asked questions and help people learm to ask questions in the right forms also. Just an idea from a new persons eyes.

Brent, if you find someone who you may wish to PM in the future, simply add them to your Buddy List, then you can contact them whenever you feel like it.

A sound idea, but I'm supposed to know in advance who I might decide to PM later?

How would you find them otherwise ?
If there was a searchable member list, and you didn't know who you were looking for, how would you find them ? Scroll through 10,000 records trying to remember their name ?

You stated It's no fun trying to PM or email someone spontaneously when the only sure-fire way to do it is to root around randomly and find a post by that person or hope that his/her name or handle is somehow referenced in the contents of a post to search for.

The same thing will happen with a member list, you will have to root around randomly through 400 pages looking for that someone.

Even as the admin, I have never found the need for a member list, I use the tools the board has, and they work well.

Talking about PM's....
I have noticed that once you PM someone about a certain something, you can't send another message until that person replies. Of course you can, but you'd have to, as was already pointed out, search for the person in random posts, and then start up a new topic. I don't know, but it's a little annoying.

Plus we should have a section just for the crazy nutso's who are still up at 3am in the morn, like me. Ahhh, drunken thursday-college nights.

You can't send another message in the same PM, because that would split the thread (which one would they reply too?). It works like email. When you send email, you can't tack something on to the email in your friends inbox halfway across the country.

Like I said. Add them to your buddy list. Do it the first time you PM them. Maybe you'll never use it again, maybe you will.

I'm not sure why you guys are making things so difficult for yourselves.

Buddy list…? *looks around a little bit* Holy shit I never noticed that!

Cripes Ian, don't be dense.

If I wanted to send Walt a private message or an email right now to ask him if it was OK for me to put up an old video clip of his 2WD Xterra getting 4 feet of air under the front tires shortly before he traded it in, how do you suggest I go about it?

If there were a nice alphabetized/searchable list of users like this:
http://www.nissanoffroad.net/messageboard/members.asp
it would be a cinch. As it stands here, the only way for me to do so is to click the PM or email link above one of his posts, or click the PM or email link in his profile.
To do either currently requires me to find one of his posts somewhere on the board. Finding one of his posts is a crapshoot because you can only search for a member's posts specifically by member number, which just happens to be only available by finding one of his posts or viewing his profile. See the conundrum?
My only remaining option is to randomly search for posts that have "walt" somewhere in the post body, either if he's thoughtful enough to "sign" his posts with his name/handle like I do, or if someone else replies to his post and addresses him in the process, but I'd also find dead-end threads like this one with no-good hits.

So yes, a member list isn't useless by any means. That, or the ability to search for a user's posts by name rather than member number.

Capiche?

Brent, why don't you just go over to NOR and stay there. Maybe if you weren't such a post whore, you wouldn't have to worry about things like your inability to use the buddy list.

And when I say post whore, I mean post whore.

Look at my stats for the month...

BTW, UBB doesn't offer a memberlist due to the nature of the board. There is no database, it's all flat file design, so searching by name would involve opening, searching and closing almost 10,000 files.

With Brent doing that every 5 minutes our server would soon topple over, so you won't be seeing one until I change the forum software, and I don't know when that will be.

Ya know Ian, if you had simply said that this board doesn't offer the ability to have a list of users earlier, I wouldn't have continued to demonstrate how it could be useful and you might not have found another excuse to try and insult me. Calling me a post whore, telling me to fuck off, or otherwise trying to dig at me without provocation just makes me laugh.
Hell Ian, you've still got over 2000 more posts here than I do. Get back to calling me a post whore when I overtake you eh?

Just the fact that you exist is provocation enough. You are the most annoying parasite I have ever seen on a board. You live just to be the first person to reply to a post on 10 different boards. You post nothing but what you can find online, or look up in a service manual.

I think I will ban you when you hit 10,000 posts, then you can spend more time waiting for NOR or XF to load their huge pages on their horribly slow servers, so you can talk shit about XOC with all your friends (who hate you just as much as I do).