I wanted to publish a new post but the forum software blocked it, I got the following error message:
Sorry, new users can only put 2 links in a post.
This is ridiculous- I have just signed up with the intend to ask a question but I wasted my time- I do not I think that I will come back again.
The blocked original post below:
https://paste2.org/sOXA6wOt
Okay… (This is ridiculous. I just wrote “okay” but a post has to have at least 20 characters.)
I don’t see anything ridiculous here.
You only have to enter a few topics and read a few posts while being logged in to get to basic user status and be able to post more than two link. Or you can simply post a second post with more links.
This is a forum feature to somewhat restrict spam bots.
And @David1: This is also a good feature I’d say. Imagine you are reading a topic because you are interested in what is being discussed there but you have to go through hundreds of posts with no real content, only “okay”, “thanks”, “yes”, “I agree”, etc.
A lot of that can be expressed with the 
like button under each post without littering the topic.
Original questions:
I can provide more examples of apps that haven’t been updated to the latest version. Why does this happen?
We can automatically detect new versions of some, but not all apps. When we can’t, someone (this can be you) should update F-Droid’s repository metadata manually.
Shall I update such apps manually in stead of waiting F-Droid to upload the latest releases?
I’d recommend checking the bugtracker first: Issues · F-Droid / Data · GitLab
If there’s no issue about the outdated app, file a new one.
I was being ridiculously sarcastic. I totally agree!
@ relan
We can automatically detect new versions of some, but not all apps. When we can’t, someone (this can be you) should update F-Droid’s repository metadata manually.
Is this what I am supposed to do?
How is one supposed to update the repository metadata?
Is this what I am supposed to do?
Yes. Thanks.
How is one supposed to update the repository metadata?
Modify the metadata, make sure the new version builds, open a merge request.
@smaragdus I’m sorry to hear you got into troubles with our forum software. As @anon99929151 said, that’s to block spam bots. For now, I bumped your user level manually so that you should now be able to post text with more than two links.
@relan
This may be a bit off-topic. I am new to Android, F-Droid and GitLab (I feel a bit uncomfortable at GitLab- I find GitHub more intuitive and easy to use but this is subjective). I work almost exclusively on desktop (I do a lot of beta testing and bug reporting on Windows) and I do not think that I will be able to contribute that much on Android. My humble contribution might be just posting notifications about updates when I notice that some programs on F-Droid lag behind the latest versions. I plan to migrate from Android to LineageOS in the future but currently I don’t have time to do the necessary research (I don’t even know whether F-Droid client would work under LineageOS). I don’t use many apps on Android but I have found real gems on F-Droid (for example DroidFish). Thank you for your explanations and advices.
@NicoAlt
Thank you for your kindness. I know that fighting spam is a hard task and I also know that as a side effect innocent, well-intentioned users got punished. I am a causal visitor here and I am aware that I have to observe the rules. I was frustrated because I spent some time to produce a relevant first post and it was automatically rejected. On other forums I have seen different precautions against spam, for example the first post by a new user is not published before it is manually reviewed and accepted by a moderator, I find this approach better. There is one more thing that I do not like about this forum:
This topic will close 2 months after the last reply.
For me this is Reddit-like. On other forums I have replied to 10 years old threads where the last post was 5 years old. In my opinion a thread might be old yet relevant.
I have one last question- are topics not fully related to F-Droid accepted here (for example questions about open source apps not included in F-Droid)?
I feel a bit uncomfortable at GitLab- I find GitHub more intuitive and easy to use but this is subjective
GitHub is proprietary software, so we prefer GitLab.
I don’t even know whether F-Droid client would work under LineageOS
It will. LineageOS is Android. Many F-Droid users run LineageOS on their devices.
I have one last question- are topics not fully related to F-Droid accepted here (for example questions about open source apps not included in F-Droid)?
Yes.
That’s indeed frustating and I would also like to see a behavior like the one described by you.
@anon99929151 Do you know if that’s possible? Upon a first look at the admin settings, I did not find anything like this.
Absolutely, yes. This forum is open to everything related to free, libre and open source software on Android/mobile devices.
I don’t know of a way to make this the default, but it does happen sometimes - I believe usually when a first post is written very fast (so copy-paste).
For a huge forum I don’t think it would be an option to have every first post by a user go through a review process, but here it would probably be manageable. We have had 115 new users in the past month and only 31 users who made their first post - so about one a day.
We could ask in the Discourse forum if this can be set up somehow.
Yeah, I also saw this.
Uff, one per day would still be much. I saw an option where we can force that all first posts of new users must be manually approved, so that would be an option. But imho it would be better if new users could post like they do now, and only if Discourse thinks a post is spam, we had to approve it. However, upon searching the admin settings and the web, I did not find any option to do this.
By the way, I looked at @smaragdus’ post and what’s really weird is that the posts only contains links to github.com and f-droid.org, but for years I’ve put those domains in Discourse’s white list, so that they should never block an user’s post…
@relan
Thanks for handling and closing this issue. I opened a new one. Is it enough to just open an issue or it should also be announced in the forum?
@NicoAlt & @anon99929151
I can see that here the moderators are friendly and helpful, for me this is important, I am a novice here and I don’t know many things but I have good intentions to contribute my tiny share to F-Droid community.
Is it enough to just open an issue or it should also be announced in the forum?
Opening an issue is enough.
You’re already doing a fine job contributing. Cheers.
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