The following modifications are being made in the Forum:
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1. The Opinion box will now show a detailed list of Members who provided the rating. When you click on Great, Thanks, Useful or Agree, a box will open up beneath displaying the names. When you hover over the respective member names, the tooltip will provide the corresponding member profile.
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2....
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In order to preserve the past anonymous scheme, the above will be effective for all Opinions, going forward ONLY. Past opinions will remain anonymous.
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3. A new option "No Opinion" has been provided to withdraw your Opinion.
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4. As a consequence of the introduction of the features, it is NO LONGER necessary to provide one-word replies like Thanks, Nice, Agree and so forth. Such blog posts will henceforth be considered SPAM, and members indulging in this practice will get suspended/banned.
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5. As a further elucidation, the "Great" opinion is a synonym for "Nice", "Superb", "Fantastic", "Mind-blowing", "I really like it", ... and so forth. Hereafter, only Blog Posts with material substance will be entertained.
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Thanks.
#siteannouncement

As per the suggestion presented [here|http://indiarailinfo.com/blog/post/615661] , a new experimental feature is being introduced today.
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At the top of the member profile, you will see a new link "Block Member" (see pic). If you block any member, they will NOT be able to reply within Blog Entries started by you, OR reply to your own replies within other Blog Entries OR send you private posts. This feature is aimed at preserving the freedom and independence of all bloggers, without the fear that they would be mocked at or ridiculed for their comments...
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or any question they asked. If you fear that a particular member is targeting you or bullying you, then just block him/her. Thereafter, they won't be able to directly reply to you or post comments within Blog Entries started by you. Needless, to say, this blocking is reversible. You are able to both block and unblock.
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Example 1. If you feel that when you start new Blog Entries or post pictures/videos, one or more members insert controversial comments in between diverting the topic, then just block them. Thereafter, your Blog Entries and threads are safe from disruption.
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Example 2. You are brand new user asking a genuine rail question. One member comes in completely derailing the thread, leaving the main question unanswered. Just block them. Thereafter, your thread may come back in line.
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Please note that blocking is person to person ONLY. If you block a member for whatever reason, that is your OWN opinion only. It does not reflect on the member himself. The "blocked" member has complete freedom and privileges everywhere on the site. He will just stay away from YOUR POSTS, that's all!! This feature puts the onus on members themselves to carry themselves in a courteous way, so that they are not blocked by other members.
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As noted above, this is an experimental feature that is subject to modifications based on usage and feedback. Thanks a lot to our Admin Hussain for the suggestion.
#siteannouncement

Today, we are introducing seamless offline browsing of IRI, and we are calling it "Sawaari Mode". Supported modern browsers like Google Chrome, Android, Safari, Opera, etc. will be able to take advantage of this feature. Firefox may have some problems. Opera Mini will not work.
Some salient aspects:
1. When online, just browse normally thru IRI and your browsed pages are cached automatically. These are not static offline pages, but fully dynamic. For example, in the Blog Forum, the next page automatic scrolling will work exactly the same even when you are offline....
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The next page will appear beneath the current page. In the Search Results page, each row will expand below to show train details exactly the same whether you are online or offline. The tooltips on the various links will work exactly the same. The ONLY requirement is that you should have done that operation while you were online. For example, if you expanded a train row in the Trains page, you will be able to do that while offline. If you scrolled 3 Forum pages, then you will be able to scroll 3 pages when offline.
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2. The objective is to make IRI surfing totally seamless. Whether online or offline, just open your browser and type in indiarailinfo.com, and browse normally. You will NOT get a "not connected to the internet" error. The ONLY indication you will get that you are not connected to the internet is a small caption at the top left saying "Sawaari Mode" at the top left hand corner. (see Pic 1). Otherwise, just browse exactly the same whether you are online or offline. When you see "Sawaari Mode" written at the top left, it means that your device is not connected to the internet, and you are browsing offline.
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3. To repeat, ANY operation that you performed when online, will be available offline. The saving is automatic. One specific example is the drop-down box. For example when online, type "raj" in the Trains drop-down box. Now disconnect from the internet, and type in "raj". The exact same results will appear, allowing you to select. (see Pic 2) But, if you did not type in "ant" when online, typing in "ant" when offline will produce no results.
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4. When Offline, if the page you are browsing to has not yet been cached, then you will automatically be directed to the "Sawaari Page" showing all the pages that have been cached so far (see Pic 3). You may delete selective offline pages or clear the entire cache.
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Coming very soon:
You will also be able to Post and Reply to blogs while you are offline. Unposted blogs will automatically go to a local Outbox, and sync up automatically when you get internet connectivity.
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The "IRI Sawaari Mode" is expected to be useful when you have intermittent internet connectivity while travelling. With this feature, the surfing will be seamless, and there will not be any difference whether or not you are not connected to the internet. This is the reason this new Seamless Offline browsing feature is called "Sawaari Mode".
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The feature has been tested in Google Chrome, Opera, Android and Safari browsers. Firefox has some issues which will be fixed soon. Also, there may be some bugs in the initial release. For this reason, currently only logged-in Admins can see this feature, and provide feedback. By tomorrow, the rest of the members will be able to avail of this feature.
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This is currently an experimental feature which will be refined and enhanced over the next couple of weeks. Please let us know your experience, issues, etc. Thanks.

#siteannouncement
On this site, we have the concept of merging of news entries so that all related news articles appear together, and do not cause chagrin when users see similar articles (or even exact copies of the same article) from different newspapers. However, till now the "merge" operation was rather cumbersome, and hence was not used very often.
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Today, we are introducing...
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"Drag & Drop merging of news articles". You just have to drag the source into the destination. (see pic) That's all it takes to merge. If the news articles are far apart and difficult to drag, then just do a search with the relevant keywords to make them appear together.
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Only Admins can access this feature. Hopefully, this feature will serve to make the News Forum more user-friendly. Related news articles will appear together, so that you can get different perspectives on the same news. The same news story will not appear in different places.
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Thanks.