ATAR Notes Discussions Updates and Suggestions 💙

literallylauren

Hi everyone! Hope you're having a great start to the school year & uni semester! 🎓️

This is just a quick post to let you know we've been collecting feedback and data on this new Discussions site for the past few months, and our web devs will be implementing some new features over the next few weeks.

First on the list are two big things we've been missing:

1. File uploads 🎉 You can now attach Word docs, PDFs, etc. which should save time on things like essay marking! However, the same rules apply regarding copyright materials, so please don't try and distribute illegal textbook uploads or anything dodgy 😛
2. Direct messages! 📬️ There's a Private Discussions tab on the left, or you can go to anyone's profile and you'll see the option to send them a message under the 'controls' options.

As for what's next, we have a few minor fixes and a few long-term plans, but we want to hear from you!

Reply here with any suggestions or ideas you have! This could be profile customisation, new features, fixing bugs/quality of life issues, or anything you think could improve your Discussions experience 😃

Billzene

literallylauren better subscript and superscript formatting, right now if I type ^-1 nothing will be superscripted, which might make explaining dimensional analysis in chem and physics slightly confusing.

jinx_58

literallylauren
Missin the taglines real bad

Following on from what Billzene said, if we could write math equations that'd be pretty cool. Whether it be through latex code or not.

-jinx_58

grrrmestudyhard

literallylauren
I would like to see the signatures come back, it's a profile feature I really like.

literallylauren

Billzene

Not as ideal as proper maths inputs but if you put the powers in brackets i.e. x ^ ( -2) then you'll get x^-2. And the same for using ~ for subscripts. Think we only worked that out with trial and error though, so it's definitely not intuitive :/ I'll see if we can customise it more, or else we can have a stickied post or resource that explains the major text formatting options!

jinx_58
By 'taglines' do you mean forum signatures? If so, see below 😃

And yes, LaTeX or some sort of maths plugin is definitely on the agenda!

grrrmestudyhard

It's back! 😄 As of today, you should be able to go to your profile and see the option for it in the left side bar!

literallylauren

Update! Some as per requests and also just general improvements:

Menu links: you can now get back to the atarnotes.com and uninotes.com websites from here, lol 😅
Cover photo and user bio: can be added via profile pages
Post bookmarks: you can now bookmark any post for reference and it'll appear in your private 'bookmarks' section available in the left sidebar
Forum statistics: available in the sidebar on the main page
\bf{LaTeX} 🥳 : you can now input LaTeX equations using the \sqrt{x} button!

Billzene

Also can we get animated profile pics back? I was able to have a gif animated profile pic on the old forums

literallylauren

Billzene

Hmmm, it doesn't look like this is currently supported due to how the forum crops images when uploading, but I'll see if we can find a workaround!

literallylauren

Hey everyone,

As you've probably noticed, the changes we made back in March have been causing some havoc with posts disappearing. We'd been doing lots of trial-and-error/process of elimination stuff to work out what the problem is, and last week it looked liked it was fixed... then this weekend it was impossible to post anything 😞

In the interest of keeping the site usable, we've decided to reverse the updates mentioned above, so I'm afraid you'll no longer be able to add cover photos, send PMs, use LaTeX, etc. If things stay stable, we'll add these back one at a time to ensure nothing breaks!

Sorry for the frustrations - I'm really annoyed that our customisation plans have been put on hold, but more importantly that everyone's had a sub-par user experience here for months. We're going back to basics until we get a handle on things while we research better options. I'll post here again if anything changes.

Thank you all for your patience 💙