Subject: Our current Board-oid prototype system
Author:
Posted on: 2013-04-13 06:06:00 UTC
The code we have now has the view that we have now as the default, with clear ways to change it to something else (like subforums) on a mostly permanent (barring a cookie clear or browser change) basis.
What exactly happened to the idea of moving to a new, more forum-y Board? Is this still a thing people are thinking about? Why or why not?
Without reading the foot-long thread by people who know more about this than me, I would tentatively say that no, I don't think they are. This Board has sentimental value, and so on...
Last summer, I coded a Board-replacement attempt.
The new software supports browsing both in a "subforum view" , for those who want to do that, and in the usual sort-by-date-posted mode.
It's also got some useful features, like protection from the dialog-box injection style shenanigans that were demonstrated downthread.
The code is located here at GitHub if you want to look at it or try to run it yourself.
Here is a draft release announcement written a while ago that goes into some detail about the new Board's features.
Dann used to have a server up for everyone to play with, but that computer was having some issues last I heard. Dann, if the test Board is up, please post a link.
And finally, here's some screenshots.
If you have any questions, feel free to reply or send me an email.
I've made some changes since yesterday.
- Posts that are taller than 140px now have everything past those 140px hidden behind a link under the post, which expands the post in-place.
- There is a 100 character limit on post subjects and an 80 character limit on usernames and the author field.
- I fixed a bug related to posting from the "None of the Above" subforum that was pointed out by EF. Thanks EF!
- There are now thin gray vertical "subthread lines" to make it easier to work with deep nesting.
- There is now a formatting guide linked from the "New Post" page.
Solutions to deeply nested threads are being evaluated.
Thanks for testing and critiquing the T-Board, everyone!
-- Tomash, who should be asleep and have a very good birthday.
I'm not a huge fan of the subforum layout, but the 'sort by date' classic Board view works for me.
The subthread lines work nicely, on this Board I would position my cursor over the point and the use the scroll-wheel to sort out which message it was actually a reply to - that worked fine on my laptop, but was considerably less effective on my phone (particularly as the smaller screen size of my phone meant that that issue came up more often). I've just checked out T-Board from my phone, and it's so much easier to see where replies are coming from.
Being able to expand longer posts while looking the at full thread is also a good thing, and makes it quicker to read a full conversation. Again, this benefit is really noticeable when browsing on my phone, as it cuts down on the amount of page loading I have to do.
The 100 character limit on post titles also seems like a good idea (that seems to be about twice our current limit), as it can occasionally be a little difficult to get a sensible post title to fit in here.
The only advantage I can think of that this current Board has is that, if I make a post while I'm signed in (and I tend to sign in - I've never had any problems doing so), I get an e-mail alert whenever someone replies to it. That doesn't seem to be the case with T-Board. It's not a huge thing, because I have to browse the threads anyway to see anything that isn't a direct reply to me, but I have found it convenient to be notified of any replies. Out of interest, is this something that could be implemented on T-Board (and how difficult would it be)?
Also, a very minor point, on the 'edit your profile' page there appears to be a typo in 'confirm'.
Email notifications are a thing on T-Board. In fact, they fire for replies to replies (to replies to replies ...) as well. The reason you didn't get an email when you replied to yourself is because there's code to prevent that, because getting emailed about a post you just made just clutters up your inbox.
Also, thanks for your typo report! It's fixed now. While you're here, do you have any ideas about how T-Board should handle long threads? Also, is the site easy to use on your phone? I tried to design it that way, but I'm not sure how well I succeeded.
I did get an e-mail notification for your reply. T-Board fooled me by being more sophisticated than I was expecting - well done :)
The site is pretty easy to use from my phone, the subthread lines and the ability to expand a post without having to load a new page definitely make it more convenient than this current Board. And the 'sign in' bit is big enough on my phone screen that I don't have to zoom in to use it (which is a problem I've encountered on other sites). I only tend to view stuff on my phone, if I'm actually posting I tend to do it from my laptop because the bigger screen and keyboard make it so much easier. So yeah, I think it works well from a phone (I use an Android phone, if that's relevant).
With regards to the long threads (I'm assuming you mean the ones that crab sideways, rather than those that just stretch downwards due to a load of first tier replies), T-Board already seems to handle them better than this Board. I guess that the amount of stretching experienced will vary based on screen size/resolution/whatever, but on my current set-up the Rangers RP from the Other Board goes off the side of my screen, while the same thread on T-Board doesn't.
The way the indents reduce as each new tier opens up seems to be a good way of reducing the sideways expansion (looks like it goes down from about 10mm to just under 5mm on the Rangers thread), although it does occur to me that those smaller gaps are still perfectly distinct, thanks to the lines, so if the whole thing had a uniform gap of the smaller size, those later postings would be less squashed up against the right-hand side of the screen.
I guess that (other than the occasional randomly sprawling conversation) the most likely time for that kind of thing to be an issue is in RP threads, where it's going to be a series of consecutive replies, each on a new sub-tier. The 'expand this post' feature means that you can follow such a thread without having to scroll around (and possibly lose your place) all the time, but when it gets to a certain point it's so much easier to read full-width rather than simply expanding a column of text with a load of dead space to its left.
At the moment, if you actually click on a post you get to read that post full-width, then have the 'reply' buttons etc., and then get the full thread. Would it be possible to add in duplicate links to any direct replies to the post before going on to the full thread? That way, you could easily follow a single thread-chain (such as you tend to get in RPs), while being able to read the text without it all being squashed up, and without having to scroll through and find your place each time.
On a slightly different subject, I notice that the admin-type tags (locked, edited, poofed, etc.) are colour-coded, is it possible to do that to the other tags (newbie intro, test post, new story, etc.)? It might just help highlight them if you're having a quick skim through on classic view.
I'm glad everything works on your phone. I also have an Android phone that I used for testing, and I tried to make the Board-reading experience be not too bad on phones.
You guessed correctly on the stretching varying with screen size. The stretch is actually defined as padding on the left with a width of 3% of the space that the text would normally get. Replies are nested under their parent post, which makes the indents stack.
I added a "Jump to this post's position in the thread" link that appears when you view a non-top post full width. This should help with the finding your place problem. If it doesn't, please let me know.
The tags could be color-coded, but we don't even know what the "final" set of tags might be, so I'm going to hold off on considering that. In the meantime, there's a "Sort by Tags" option which groups threads by tag and then classic-modes them. That might help with skimming.
Thanks for your feedback!
Tomash
The 'Jump to this post's position' thing works very well.
I think that colour-coding the tags would be helpful, although I get your point about not really needing it yet. As far as the final set of tags go, I'd tempted to add in 'badfic report' and maybe 'looking for Beta' to the current set.
At: http://ppc-posting-board-2-proto.herokuapp.com/
(Thanks to Tomash, who set it up)
From just a quick glance I noticed that clicking on a specific post seems to open the entire thread... was that intentional, is it just not been noticed yet, or have I not looked far enough in to discover it might be just on that thread?
The specific posts open at the very tippy top of the page, I don't know if there is a way to make this more obvious, but it took several thread investigations for me to notice it was up there and I didn't have to scroll down to where I was trying to get to.
Then again, maybe I just didn't get enough sleep last night and it's not actually a problem for anyone else XD
I'll address the concerns about the software running T-Board in a later post. For now, I would like to note current and possible future problems with the hosting I'm using, which has the side-benefit of being free.
PPCBoard@gmail.com or something like that.It seems to be pretty much similar to this place, but a bit more confusing. But this is coming from an idiot who only looked at it a little, so I'm not sure how much my opinion matters.
In any case, I still prefer this Board, really.
Throughout, I intend to ignore minor appearance tweaks (such as Lilac Lielac's comment about gradients, and the lack of the big red bars in the header). The one I will highlight is:
-Tray-Gnome has expressed concern about the large amount of whitespace on the current Board, and has (possibly?) indicated that this is a problem lots of people have. TomashBoard (hereafter T-Board) has the same potential problem.
Other than that, let's get to it. I'll start by working down my original list of 'benefits of The Board'. Please note: When I say there is 'no indication' (or whatever) of which of several alternatives is the case, I'm saying I can't tell from the screenshot. This is a request for clarification, not a statement that something is unworkable because you can't tell what it is.
-Instant visibility of all activity in the last 24 hours
I see a 'New' tag floating around in one image, but no indication of when it pops up (or when it vanishes). Possibilities appear to be:
-> Flags the most recent post (but that would be ridiculous)
-> Flags your most recent post immediately after you make it (ditto)
-> Flags everything posted since you last logged in (which, assuming you don't have to log in to read - and given that a lot of computers drop 'Keep me logged in' - might be less than useful)
-> Flags everything posted since your computer last visited (cookies? This would be like the change in link colour on the Board, and doesn't help if you use multiple computers)
-> Flags everything since a certain time (like the highlighting. This works in general - but isn't a lot of help if you've been gone more than a day!)
-For a thread you recognise by sight, near-instant recognition of not just whether anyone has replied, but precisely what they've replied to. If you need to hunt for the thread, this takes a little longer.
This appears to be the case in Classic mode, but (obviously) not in Modern mode (or whatever it's called). Modern mode has an 'Edited' flag, but again, there's no hint as to whether this is 'Top post edited' or 'Someone has replied'. The same flag shows up in the Classic mode pictures, which implies it's the former. If so, something would be required to indicate when a thread in Modern mode was last edited.
Related to this: I see 'Newest thread' on Modern view. Does that actually collect newest, or most recently edited?
-The ability to spot an individual post, even if you don't remember which thread it's on. This can be done by eye, or by Ctrl-F or its equivalents, rather than through notoriously fickle forum search engines (example: the Minecraft forum search has literally never worked for me).
This is available in Classic mode but obviously not in Modern. I see a Search bar but don't know how it works.
-The ability for discussions in any given thread to wander wildly off-topic without someone telling them they're in the wrong forum for that.
This seems like it would actually be made worse by the dual setup. If someone on Classic mode discusses things in the wrong Modern mode forum...? Yeah. I think if we migrated to T-Board, a rule that 'forums are not rules, only guidelines' would be not just a good idea, but essential.
-Instantly visible notes at the top of the page, rather than sticky threads. The current header is a lot harder to ignore.
This is there on Classic mode, but bizarrely not in a subforum on Modern mode? I think the Constitution, Wiki and IRC are important enough that they should be instant-access from subforae...
-As previously stated, no artificial divisions which could lead to, for example, "What's the point of going into the newbies forum? Nothing ever happens there..."
Alleviated by Classic mode. I'm not convinced this wouldn't be a problem for Modern mode users.
-No-one being told off for posting in the wrong forum.
As stated above. I'm assuming the tags ('Test post', 'Newbie introductions') are the way of putting your Classic mode post into a given subforum. However, I also note they're possible to attach on lower posts in a thread. I'm... really not sure how this works. Do tags elsewhere in a thread than the top post actually do anything?
And - yeah, that 'guidelines not rules' rule is an absolute must for mixed modes. No, moving the thread and leaving a 'friendly' note won't cut it - we have some very fragile newbies at times, and, given the tone of some of the 'You might want to check the Wiki before asking questions like this' replies we've had in the last year or so (specifically, blunt: I was told this was because people are fed up of saying the same thing over and over), I do not believe they would remain 'friendly'.
-Given the extremely slow pace of stories being posted, no-one making a post in the General forum to tell people there's a story in the Stories forum.
Classic mode obviously negates this. Subforum... would depend on whether people save the link to the General forum or to the top page. I still forsee this being a problem, beginning whenever the first person says, "Did you read my story by the way?" "Oh, no, I didn't see anyone had posted one..."
-Depending on the forum technology, any of:
--No thread bumping (for reasons described multiple times in this thread)
I honestly can't tell if this exists on T-Board. One of the subforum posts seems to indicate it does (an 'Edited' - whatever that means - thread has an earlier time than a non-edited post below it), and if so, it should be turned very firmly off. It wouldn't work on Classic mode - again, we've tested this and proved it - and we do not want different modes showing different threads. That leads to exclusionism.
--Multi-threading of discussions, rather than the constraints of single-threading
This does appear to be in place.
--No logins, which encourages new posters, allows access to people on unusual technology (such as cheap phones - I recall Specs had difficulty logging into the wiki - and badly-firewalled computers at places like work), and permits in-character posts.
T-Board requires logins, but allows using a different name to your own. I like the 'JayBird (posted by Huinesoron)' feature (though I wonder if it will cause arguments during the Badfic Game - how well will people disregard the flames if they're attached to a real name?), and wonder if it could be extended to deal with non-logged-in users?
I propose that a 'limited' posting ability - no HTML, say, and a low posts-per-day count (as measured by IP) - be given to non-logged-in users, with the Author field reading 'Lacksidacksical (posting as Guest)' or 'as IP 192.168.0.0)'. This would cover the fears of spambots (because, say, 5 spamthreads is significantly less of a problem than 200), and of malicious HTML (which would be limited to registered users).
I would be willing to pay some money for it. Dunno how we would organize it exactly. Perhaps a donation drive? Of course, that requires trusting someone to pay the bills, but that doesn't seem like a huge issue.
I'm preeety sure I can get us hosted for ~$8 a month. So, y'know, not a big deal.
GoDaddy has some really good introductory rates for even less. My troop has had their website hosted with them for a while, and it has worked out pretty well. Still, I've heard some less than savory things about them.
Before I start, I just want to say thanks for the concrit. Also, T-Board is a wonderful way of referring to my thing. Mind if I steal it?
With that, let's get to it:
(I've made an effort to maintain the order of this and group replies to similar points together. I have not succeeded)
Probably the biggest feature we've added is editing[...]
I have to say it's more fun to talk about the minor mistakes which are usually all that get made than to edit them away, but okay. I'm thinking that the Edited tag works best as it is - simply because that way anyone complaining will know there's been a change. I have to ask whether there is any record of the previous post, however: in the (very rare) event that someone edited an inflammatory post to cry foul, would it be possible to disprove their assertion that all they edited was spelling?
Floating threads: This seems to be a reasonable proposal. The precise length of time used in the float calculations would need calibration, of course.
Recent Activity: Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to test whether editing a post updates the New tag. I assume not? Either way, since obviously it's impossible to recognise a visitor by the smell of their perfume alone ;), Dann's multiple-ways-of-flagging-new-posts suggestion seems most sensible. Of course you currently don't have anything saying how much new material is behind a collapsed subforum or thread title... but Tomash has already noted that.
Tagging & forums: it seems, then, that the best way to move a thread into the Badfic Discussion subforum is to forego editing the top post on someone's behalf, but simply to tag your reply correctly. I assume that doesn't remove the thread from the 'Everything Else' forum? No, apparently not. Bet there's still complaints.
Search bar: At the moment just throws an error. If it's to be a full text search, please make sure it orders the results by age. I've seen several that just throw things at you in a random order...
Non-logging-in: Dann seems to think that this will be available (with username checking - will this cover people posting as 'Huines0r0n', or even 'Huinesoron ', or just a simple name-match?). Tomash seems to think 'an[o]n posting is more trouble than it's worth', but this is stated as a personal belief, not as a firm decision on what will be possible. Okay.
HTML: I disagree with switching to BBCode, since you're whitelisting anyway. I would accept both being available, but I've always preferred HTML directly. It's usually more flexible, at least in my head. I also think HTML in titles - yes, just italics and bold - are important, since it's the best way to get people's attention in a long thread. I've done it several times in the last couple of weeks.
Mod powers: If it's entirely programmable, we'll leave this to a dedicated discussion of why on earth we'd even need them.
No word limit & all text visible in thread view: This seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Imagine a spambot which threw a million copies of the text of War and Peace up - in Cyrillic? Does the Nameless Admin have the power to delete a post without having to scroll to the bottom of it? Would this overload most hosting systems? But even disregarding that, as this thread indicates, the full-text version (full-image version, rather) can make you wildly lose track of what's replying where.
Hosting: It's not so much the existence of cost that's the problem, so much as the fact that it relies on a) the payer never leaving, and b) if they do, them finding a new willing payer and passing it on. We currently have no members who were here when this Board was founded. At present, we can go on forever, because it's free. That won't be the case on a paid board, however many people post now and say they'd be willing to pay.
Tags: I don't think we need a free-range set of tags. That's what post titles are for. Just making them subforum-maps works fine.
I've made some changes today to address some of the issues people were having.
Links are now red. You may need to do a cache-bypassing refresh to see them that way (in Firefox, that's Ctrl+F5).
In a subforum, there are now "Recent Thread" (posted in the last 48 hours) and "N new replies" (counts the number of "New" flags in a thread) indicators.
There is a "Return to messages" button that drops you back in the subform you came from while in Modern mode and the main page otherwise.
(nm) is supported.
Poofed subthreads are hidden by a "Click to see this" thingy.
You get warned if you try to reply to a locked thread.
The <hr> tag passes the filter now, along with <font> tags, which have every attribute but color and size stripped out.
Bold and italics are supported in titles. This comes at the cost of requiring < and > for things like Andalite thought-speak in titles.
The message reply box is supposedly shrunk, I'm not sure if those edits took.
As to one of your concerns, previous versions of edited posts are stored and can be accessed by clicking on the post and going to the prominent "Previous version" link at the top of the page.
I'm going to assume that the functionality would be equivalent, since, in both cases, things are limited by what's allowed by the board. It's a matter of <> vs [].
(I'm not directing this at you specifically, EF, but this seemed like a good place to put it)
T-Board allows both filtered HTML and Markdown. Markdown is a simplified syntax for writing the sort of things that often come across the Board, like bold, italics, links, etc. For example, in Markdown, you can bold text **like this**. A link looks like Text for link. I put that in there so people wouldn't have to fiddle with HTML if they didn't want to.
What are the Board's thoughts on this setup, which should probably be explained more clearly on the "New Post" page?
<b></b> just sounds more like bold than the stuff wikis (for example) use. But as long as HTML remains usable, too, I'm okay with it.
Tagging & forums: it seems, then, that the best way to move a thread into the Badfic Discussion subforum is to forego editing the top post on someone's behalf, but simply to tag your reply correctly. I assume that doesn't remove the thread from the 'Everything Else' forum? No, apparently not. Bet there's still complaints.
Nobody will ever be completely happy with everything. Someone is going to complain at some point, because everything is imperfect. The topic at hand is whether the T-Board is better than this one, not whether it's so good no one will have complaints.
By "complaints", I meant "I bet there are still people who go around telling everyone who posts in the general forum something which could be in a subforum that they are doing things wrong and that they ought to have tagged their post". I thought I made that clear, but apparently I missed putting the context into this post.
hS
By "complaints", I meant "I bet there are still people who go around telling everyone who posts in the general forum something which could be in a subforum that they are doing things wrong and that they ought to have tagged their post". I thought I made that clear, but apparently I missed putting the context into this post.
Could you clarify? It's still not clear to me what you meant.
Boarder 1: [Posts a badfic report without any tags]
Boarder 2: Hey, it's best to tag that as a badfic report.
Boarder 1: Oh, okay, sure.
[Time passes. Boarder 3, 4, 5 and 6 have the same exchange]
Boarder 7: [Posts a badfic report without any tags]
Boarder 2: Why didn't you tag this? We have tags for a reason, you know. There's no use having these features if people don't use them - it's not that hard!
Boarder 7: ... wow, and I thought this was a nice place.
This is not made up from whole cloth. We have witnessed analogous situations on this Board, such as:
Boarder 1: [Posts a badfic thread four threads above another]
Or
Boarder 1: [Asks a question about the PPC]
Boarder 2: Wiki. Use it.
When I suggested the person in the latter scenario not be so abrupt, they said words to the effect of 'I've said this dozens of times before, I'm fed up with repeating it to every newbie'.
This is a bad situation to create. People's experience with the PPC community should not consist of 'You did this minor thing wrong and now I glare at you'.
hS
...is a problem with people, not the Board they're on. As you've shown, it doesn't matter whether we move or not; someone's going to get snippy with a hapless newbie for making a mistake Boarder 2's seeing for the umpteenth time. That's Boarder 2's issue, and not the fault of the T-Board.
For unwritten rules like 'don't make a new Badfic thread until the last one's off the front page' or 'please tag appropriately', it would be best to fix that 'unwritten' bit and have a link in the header to a page with specifically things like that. That way, they're clearly laid out for newbies so they know that's how we roll.
... it was a single comment in a very long list of replies to the replies to my original very long list of comments.
Can I recommend that if you wish to put forward T-Board as a viable alternative to the Board, you start looking for what's wrong with it so that it can be fixed? It seems to me to be the best approach to anything new. When we rewrote and amended the Constitution, we had at least three threads dissecting how each point we made could be misinterpreted and used maliciously. I think we got a stronger document out of it - certainly stronger than if people had settled for saying "Well, it's better than this in the old version..."
hS
And you will note...
... it was a single comment in a very long list of replies to the replies to my original very long list of comments.
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here, but seeing as the tone of your last post on this branch seemed to be mostly or all concern for how newbies would be treated, I replied to that concern. Did I read it correctly, or are you referring to something else with this line?
Can I recommend that if you wish to put forward T-Board as a viable alternative to the Board, you start looking for what's wrong with it so that it can be fixed?
Why don't you think it's already a viable alternative? As for looking for bugs and glitches in the T-Board, that's what Tomash is doing already. Perhaps you could help him out.
As for the rest of your post: We've had many discussions about the possibility of moving before. Tomash has been working on the T-Board for a while. On the point of whether we should move at all, the majority is in favor of it, so it's not a question of "Will we?" but "When will we?", "How is the new Board coming along (when will it be ready)?", and "How are we going to move over?".
perhaps you can experiment on the T-board, and bring up issues that you find through posting, as that's what the most pressing issue with the t-Board is at the moment (read: getting it working).
Also, you seem to have ignored her first and last points?
That is what he is trying to do. Help Tomash and Dann figure out what the issues are, so that they can be fixed. He is doing that by posting on the T-Board, and replying to this thread with the issues he's found.
I understand the frustration that's coming up in this thread, I really do. You guys seem to be trying to stick up for Tomash and Dann, arguing in favor of their ideas. Since I am a fan of the idea of a shiny new system, I understand. But getting upset at people for pointing out issues that could be resolved is not the way to go about this. If people respond to this thread by going "Well, I haven't tried the new Board, but I've looked at it and I don't like X feature," then by all means, tell them how massively unhelpful that is.
But... please, dudes. This topic always stirs up tensions - can we try to assume the best of each other, rather than assuming the worst? Toes have certainly been stepped on, but I'd like to think that's coming from ignorance or misunderstanding, not malice. Please, please try to act and react accordingly.
That was also what I was trying to suggest other people should do.
But I'm done. Discuss or fail to discuss whatever you all like. Just be aware that if you try to move to a broken board, you'll lose people.
hS
I'd like to thank everyone for their bug reports, feature requests, suggestions, and concrit, especially hS, who has pointed out several problems (or possible solutions to known problems) I never thought of. Please keep that sort of thing coming!
Some of the things people have mentioned, like the "deep thread problem" and the mess that could be caused by really tall posts, are things Dann or I will fix when we're not too busy with real life. I actually have an idea for the tall post problem which involves throwing "Show more" links and limiting the height of each post to some limit until the link is clicked client-side. I just need to figure out how to implement that.
Other things, especially guest posting, editing, and the multiple views model, should probably be discussed a bit more before I go poking around in them. As an aside, implementing guest posting given the current state of the code might be a little tricky because I pulled in a library of code that handles most of the login-related stuff, since that kind of code is notoriously tricky to get right.
First off - the important thing to remember here is that this is a prototype. We can change literally everything about it, if we want.
Probably the biggest feature we've added is editing - this is meant to be how one fixes a typo, broken link, etc. In fact, we'd considered making posts lock after a given time after posting. Edits should be in-place, without affecting ordering, newness, etc. The intent here is that if you have new ideas to bring up, they should be in a new post. The "edited" tag is there so people can't edit away inflamatory posts and then cry "OMG you're so mean!" (Hopefully, this won't be a concern - but we decided that safety was better than sorriness on this one.) Personally, I don't think that the edited flag should appear at all on the main views - it should only show up with the posts themselves. I'd be interested in hearing what you think?
One of the big themes that seems to come up in your post is how we define "newest" - which, fortunately, is completely up to us! You do raise a good point, that we've seen that bumping on the Classic Board causes trouble, while not bumping on a Modern Board is a pretty strong contradiction of what people expect. And you're very right that we want people to be interacting with essentially the same set of threads, regardless of view.
There may be a reachable middle ground here... We could have threads float - rather than a reply automatically bumping a thread to the top, it adds to the thread's buoyancy. As threads age, they become sinky, with their bouyancy counting for less and less. (This could be a very aggressive sinking policy - after, say, a week, they could be back in their time-ordered position.) It would be a change for both views, but it keeps interesting threads from falling off the front page for a while, while also enforcing a death time.
And on individual comments:
On flagging new posts: Unfortunately, if someone visits us from an IP that they've never visited from before, on a PC they've never used before, and doesn't log in, we have no way of knowing that they're them. This is simply one of the fundamental limitations of the internet. What we could do is, once people have logged in, park a cookie on their box that says "I believe that this person is the Sunflower Official", and then reference that to their last known visit time - this cookies wouldn't give them any permissions, of course, but it would give us cross-computer last-visited time once we know who that computer is. We could also set it up to work in multiple ways - if you don't have any of our cookies, it highlights the last 24 hours, and if you do have a cookie, it highlights everything since your last visit instead.
I don't recall what the status of the search bar is in the prototype - when it's done, of course, it will be a full text search, and do all the expected shiny things.
The dual setup does risk fun with offtopicness, but there are a few mitigation strategies: Firstly, tags on the Classic Board are forums on the Modern Board, so as long as people tag things appropriately, they should show up correctly. Secondly, and this one is a bit more hand-wavey at the moment, replies can be tagged as well. So, if a newbie thread turns into a badfic discussion, a badfic discussion post can be tagged with "badfic discussion", and the entire thread will also appear in the Badfic Discussion forum. (With appropriate tags to make it obvious that it exists in both places, user configurable, subject to design review and usability study, etc, etc.)
Note visibility is trivial to add - every main Board page should have the same header with constitution, wiki, etc, IMO. It's all of a single line of code to add the header, so we can change our minds on it for free.
I'm not sure that slow subfora is a huge problem - as long as they're all visible from the main Modern Board page, we have a single place that shows where all the new posts are, so new posts aren't going to get lost in the shuffle.
One of our thoughts with logging-in is that a lot of people (myself included!) don't log into the Board to post. We would like to keep this ability - set it up so that users can decide if they want non-logs to be able to post as them or not.
Regarding spambots, it'll be a lot easier to handle the content of spam than the sources, I suspect. Given that we have members with multiple computers, using proxies, not logging in, etc, detecting content is a lot easier than detecting a deliberately stealthy user. We definitely plan to create repeat-thread detection, which will happily snark at anyone trying to ypur the board.
*Dons the Security Fedora to address the point on HTML*
Allowed HTML tags will be whitelisted, not blacklisted - we will allow only tags that we know to be inoffensive, and disallow (probably by stripping them out) the rest. This is the only way to really protect against cross-site scripting: there are thousands of tricky ways to get javascript to run on a page, it's impossible to blacklist them all.
This is going to be a large set of tags - text formatting, links (minus certain vulnerable attributes like onClick), images, tables, etc, are all totally legit.
I suspect that we would want to switch over to BBCode-esque tags, rather than raw HTML - it's much harder to escape the post section with bbcode that we translate, on the backend, to HTML.
As far as mod powers are concerned, that's not really a question of what the prototype supports as much as it's a question of how much power we, the community, want to give our mods. Everything you've listed is totally doable.
Hosting is a very good question. You're right that we don't want it predicated on a single member, but at the same time, we will want someone relatively technically savvy in a Nameless Admin position paying the bills, keeping an eye on the database, etc. Sadly, this will almost definitely not be free. So, it's a big question. I am totally against a mandatory community fee, and really have no good ideas beyond that. Hosting is probably not going to be expensive - I'd be surprised if it was more than $20 a month.
Tags will have to be chose-from-a-set to keep the forums under control - we could possibly have two sets of tags, a canonical set that map to subfora and an enter-your-own set that don't? Even that seems complicated. I dunno.
Actual post will follow soon.
I still like it.
I also still have a twitch about the gradient-shaded smooth-cornered buttons, and the non-gradient but still rounded tags. They itch at my sense of aesthetics and get me cranky. Don't ask why, I'm not sure myself. (See also: reasons why I think I'm on the autism spectrum...)
Wait no. It's something about the contrast between lo-tek stark white background and hi-tek rounded-gradiented buttons. If more things were fancier the buttons wouldn't stand out so much, and if the buttons were simpler they'd also mesh better. Personally I'm in favor of tossing the gradients out the window.
(Also: hahahahaha I see myself in the screenies! Hi me!)
Never did get to test it out when it was up, though, since I was gone last summer.
Last time this topic came up, the majority of people agreed moving was a good idea. And then Dann and Tomash started working on a new board. As far as I can tell, at this point we're basically waiting for that board to be done. Which could possibly take a year or more.
(Also, just about every time this comes up, the majority favors moving. hS even ran a PPC survey thing where one of the questions was about if people would prefer a new board, and the majority said yes.)
If - hypothetically and hyperbolically - I were to come in here and say "Switching to a new forum would remove ALL KITTENS from the world!", and then I were to offer actual proof thereof - would you expect everyone to say, "Yes, you have a point, but your argument is moot because we already decided. Shame about the kittens, but..."?
hS
Your analogy implies that there are new facts that came up. What are these facts (aside from the fact that this board is perfectly hackable, that is)?
Who am I to say which, if any of them, are going to make any given person think "Hey, that's a good point"?
hS
Switching to a new forum would not remove all kittens from the world, and even if you said it would there would be no proof of that statement, so your analogy is invalid. You also completely skipped over Data saying that the majority is in fact in favor of moving.
Ask him to clarify. Don't jump straight into "You're wrong because that's an invalid analogy!" Guys. Please take a deep breath and think before you post. You all know better.
Taking a deep breath sounds like a good idea. If anyone needs me, I'll be over there destressing by trading ludicrously valuable prepared meals to the caravans.
(PS: -gives VM a white party hat with '#1 Mod' stenciled on it-)
Isn't anything to do with the fact that at some point a majority was in favour of moving.
The fact is that at this moment, we are drawing comparisons between this Board and 'the best/worst of all possible forae'. That's a ridiculous comparison.
Tomash and/or Dann have a prototype. How about we wait until they're ready to make that prototype public, and then we can base our decision on an actual second option, not just a generic 'summat different'?
As far as I can tell, this is what Tray-Gnome was asking in the first place: Do we have an alternative yet? The answer, apparently, is 'Not yet, but closer'.
hS
And would like to add two more exhibits:
Exhibit 4: A returning oldbie. Unless we came up with some sort of redirect, how would people find us again? Maybe they wouldn't think to check the wiki. We wouldn't want to miss out on a Jay or Acacia return just because we wanted a shinier board.
Exhibit 5: We all know how to work this board, and it's easy for new people to learn how to use. It works well for mobile without having a specific mobile version. Its format is simple and clear.
Basically, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The whole "returning oldbie" bit, that is...
Yes, it is. (Go on, move your mouse over the text.)
I tried to do something different before, but that ended up crashing the browser, which would be going way too far.
Exhibit 4: We have a header. It has been pointed out before, but the thing above the post should be read, as it contains important things. As for using Jay or Acacia as an argument, you're appealing to emotion here.
Exhibit 5: When I look at the regularity of the whole post tree being screwed up because people couldn't get their HTML straight, I doubt we all know how to work this board. And if you don't go out of your way to pick the most convoluted forum software on the internet, people will figure out how to use that one too.
... that's the first time I've seen anyone do that. ;) I've seen people mess up images and links, sometimes to the point of blocking the Post Reply button from view, and of course throwing an accidental bold or italic down the rest of the Board - but I've never seen anyone work a popup in.
hS
I haven't looked into this too much, but you can put a lot of things into a post. And even if the reader needs to touch the post with the mouse cursor, if the post's long enough, they will do so. I'm just glad that vengeful authors aren't usually that tech savvy.
And it's potentially a big problem. Basically, a malicious poster could make the 'board do whatever it wanted - say, suggest that you download virus-containing files, try to forge requests from you to other websites, redirect you to phishing sites and try to steal your password, etc, etc.
Exhibit 4: Link in the header.
Exhibit 5: It's... still a forum. It would work pretty much the same. Also? I'm not sure what you're using, but the Board is actually pretty unwieldy on my phone. Simple, yes, but the moment we get nested replies it all gets tossed out the window.
This may not be the case any more, but at one time, yourwebapps boards actually auto-disappeared entirely after they'd been activityless for long enough.
hS
Then have somebody post something once a month.
We'll have to set up a test first - you know, to make sure you're not going to forget, or go on holiday, or leave the community without passing it on, or get inconsiderately hospitalised... and then you'll need to sign a pledge to say that you will stay with the PPC always and never forsake your duty... oh, and no-one will ever thank you for it, which is usually a good reason to stop doing it...
Yeah, I don't think that's a good idea.
hS
I'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing with either side, here; personally, I'm with Dann. The choice is not a binary one, and it is about time we stopped treating it as either "Massively Divisive Collapsible Threads" or "Absolutely Nothing Ever Changes."
But other than that, after... what, eight years of arguing about this? I'm done. It's come up roughly once a year - we were a little overdue this time - literally every year that I've been here. After seeing it explode numerous times, I think I'm going to not bother trying to argue/debate/reason/unreason with people.
(Other than to agree that Thread-bumping didn't work, please trust those of us who were around for it, and please let's never do that again.)
Like Tray said, it's a few minutes of my time every month. Hell, I might do it every couple of weeks just to make sure I have some give in case of RL emergency. And with two people willing to do it, that's slack in case one of us gets sick or "inconsiderately" hospitalized.
"no-one will ever thank you for doing it"
I've always thought of that as the coward's way out.
You're willing to come by once a month for - well, I've been on the Board for a decade now, so let's say ten years - with no recognition, no-one saying 'It's great that you're still doing this', no-one ever thinking it's in any way important, no-one ever reminding you, no-one even knowing it's happening...?
That's... wow. That's pretty much the worst job description I've ever heard. Even restaurant cleaners have people who register their existence (I know, my wife was one).
Still, as I say, it may be a moot point. They may have updated the delete thing away.
hS
It's not a big deal, and it will only take a few minutes of my time every month.
Seriously, it's... it's not like it's the end of the world or anything.
As part of my job, I took a good long look at one of the chemicals we make. It turned out that, despite the fact that we make this stuff daily by the tonne, no-one had bothered to look at the long-term trends in our quality.
I spent months running numbers through Excel, and actually pinned down a fair number of things. In an effort to try and make sure things didn't keep going wrong and going unnoticed, I decided we needed to have a weekly report.
Again using Excel, I cobbled together an automated graph generator. "Brilliant," I said. "I'll just email it round every week, and things will stop going wrong!"
Or, as it turned out, I could email it round every week, get no replies, and see no-one bother to act on the information I was very handily packing into a bite-sized morsel for them. Things keep going wrong with the same frequency as before.
And yes, that's left me feeling somewhat demotivated about doing it at all. I have months of weekly updates in my pocket, but there doesn't seem to be any point to it...
Analogous situation? Not entirely, but it's pretty close.
However, as I say, it may be a non-issue.
hS
Even if there's nobody here, I'm just making a post once a month. I don't really care if nobody thanks me, I'm used to that.
In retrospect, I shouldn't have made the comment about it working on mobile, because I don't have a phone, I have a Kindle Touch.
Also, I believe there was this section in FAQ: The Board.
"Hey, why do we keep to the Board still? It's all old and topics drop off! Can't we go someplace else?
Simple answer: No.
More complete answer, which has been stolen from Huinesoron's latest reply to this question on the Board:
This is where everything links to, including many pages we can't edit.
When we have our occasional heated debates, it's actually better that they drop into said abyss.
For the PPC, it's better to have a Board that's constantly moving than one where topics get pushed back to the top when commented on, since it means new topics don't get lost, old ones don't get dragged out by a couple of people, and any particularly interesting ones can be restarted after it falls off the front page.
The simple layout is i) traditional, and ii) easy on the eye.
People keep coming back after years of absence, and they wouldn't be able to find us.
We're just too stubborn to give up on this place, especially given the weight of tradition behind it now.
Updated answer: It's Complicated.
The above answer is somewhat outdated, since at this point Oddlots has dropped off the face of the Earth, the community has swollen to a size that makes the Board difficult to use at times, and we've somewhat outgrown the current Board.
However, many of the previous items from the hS answer still apply (bump mode did not work out too well).
To this end, Techno-Dann is currently working on a custom built new board in an attempt to resolve the current problems."
If it would work pretty much the same, why change it?
I'm not techsavvy enough to keep this up, so I'll leave and let hS do the talking.
This is where everything links to, including many pages we can't edit.
Keep this place up as an archive, and have whoever can edit the up-top header do so.
When we have our occasional heated debates, it's actually better that they drop into said abyss.
Moderators. Some group with the ability to go "OKAY ENOUGH NOW" and lock the hell out of flame war threads so they do get bumped down by new topics. They'd be chosen for their willingness to listen to people and their ability to admit they might have made a mistake.
For the PPC, it's better to have a Board that's constantly moving than one where topics get pushed back to the top when commented on, since it means new topics don't get lost, old ones don't get dragged out by a couple of people, and any particularly interesting ones can be restarted after it falls off the front page.
... Why is it better? I don't understand this argument.
The simple layout is i) traditional, and ii) easy on the eye.
There's tradition, and then there's, as Techno-Dann said, "running the Model T of discussion technology." As for 'easy on the eye', that's subjective.
People keep coming back after years of absence, and they wouldn't be able to find us.
Header. Link in it.
We're just too stubborn to give up on this place, especially given the weight of tradition behind it now.
-sigh- Just because we've always done something one way, doesn't mean that way isn't clunky and obsolete.
No moderators. Please. Or at the least, let's not have that discussion at the same time as this one. They are two separate issues which do not need to be linked.
And this:
... Why is it better? I don't understand this argument.
Because when we had thread bumping on, multiple people got extremely annoyed at other people for having conversations, or posting badfics to the mega badfic thread of doom which ended up three times the length of the rest of the front page combined. Neither you nor hermione were there, so it's understandable that you don't know this, but for the PPC Board, thread bumping did not work.
hS
(PS: But tradition is fun!)
No moderators. Please.
Again. Why? I don't understand. The IRC works just fine with having people who have the authority to go "Hey no not cool, I shall apply a boot to your butt so you understand that what you just said was unconscionable". How is that different from people on a forum who have the explicit authority to step in and say "Hey, no, PPCer #413, what you just said in post #1025 was not cool, don't go exploding this thread into a flame war or you're off posting privileges for a couple days so you can cool down"?
Because when we had thread bumping on, multiple people got extremely annoyed at other people for having conversations, or posting badfics to the mega badfic thread of doom which ended up three times the length of the rest of the front page combined. Neither you nor hermione were there, so it's understandable that you don't know this, but for the PPC Board, thread bumping did not work.
In a forum format, a Mega Badfic Thread of Doom would be one line with an immense amount of posts. Hell, I could see The Mega Badfic Thread being a sticky thread at the top where people could post all their NSFB links. In a forum type situation, you'd only get... oh, here. Lemme embed a picture.http://i.imgur.com/BnVqTuK.png
At the top is a stickied thread. 500+ pages, and it's one line. 4 down, and there's the nearly 2000-page "What's going on in your fort?" thread, and it's, again, one line. Bumping matters a hell of a lot less when it's one line being above another.
(PS: But tradition is fun!)
Until it stops being fun and starts being clunky, obsolete, and kind of an awful system.
I seem to recall the IRC being the scene of one big blowup after another not all that long ago...? Some of which were caused by 'How could you kick that person?'...?
And I have commented elsewhere on this thread on why ultracollapsed threads are not, in my mind, the best of ideas. Several items on my list here refer to it.
hS
I mean, it's not like stuff like this has ever happened or anything.
Yes, there is Drama on the chat. But you can't pretend that there's never any on the Board, either.
(also, if you were actually in the chat you'd notice that it's actually been completely drama free since... hm. I've not seen any "blowups" since I came back in... Mid-september?)
to link to that thread.
hS
It happens in the IRC.
It happens in other communities.
It happens here.
You can't expect everything to just be all perfect all the time, so don't suggest that the IRC should be any different than the Board.
(Also? That thread? The other reason that I avoid the Board.)
At the time, we also had multiple people going around and telling people to stop having conversations on the Board or making certain types of posts. Yes, they were people whose names were suggested as potential moderators. No, I do not think moderators would solve more problems than they cause.
(I assume you mean the antecedents to that thread, given that you weren't on the Board very much before it?)
hS
(And no, I mean that I didn't post on the Board until well after a month after I returned because I was no longer -and to an extant, still am- comfortable with posting here, due to the events of that thread)
But a chatroom moves significantly faster than the Board, and so moderation can be, in theory, useful there. I do not think the same is true here.
(Ah. I am willing to do a post-mortem on that thread at this stage if you wish, either here or by email. I am equally willing to drop the subject entirely. Since you brought it up, I leave the choice to you)
hS
I'm not entirely sure why it's a bad thing here? Moderation in the chat is mostly nose-booping and saying "Mayhaps chill out a little, mmkay?" Which I think is a good thing no matter the context. Also, it could probably be useful on the Board. (it does work better on the IRC, though, what with PMs. Come to think of it, that's another thing the Board lacks.)
Alternatively, if we switch to a new Board, we could have moderation be more like the Nameless Admin. Have a few mod accounts, with names like "Mod A, Mod B" or what have you, and a rotating roster of shadowy Illuminati-tpe figures elected mods, with rotations done monthly, and elections held every, oh, let's say 4 months?
(although I do agree that moderation should be discussed in a different thread, more because this one will be taking up enough space as it is)
(Post-mortem? I don't follow >.
We can take it up later (including perhaps the first accurate description of the Nameless Admin process?).
As to the post-mortem... since you still feel uncomfortable on the Board because of that thread, and since I was there at the time, I thought it might be helpful to lay out the various motives people had for what they said - since, as I'm sure you've guessed, none of them were to attack you. ;) It's up to you (but the very beginning of the explosion, in particular, has some nuances you're almost certainly unaware of - like why I ever posted in the first place).
hS
I'm not sure what I was thinking, but it wasn't that >.
And yes! I would gladly take you up on your offer of that. (don't worry about timing the emails, my job basically entails sitting about the house checking my email occasionally)
...to take a moment, please, and think about whether this might be getting personal, and if it might be better continued later, when feelings are more calm. Although I'm responding to Tray's post, this message is directed at both of you.
(This, by the way, is exactly what I would do in the IRC. The only difference here is nobody gets a title for doing so, which I'm fine with.)
Incidentally, this post is a great example of what mods would be useful for. They'd just have the power to actually break things up if a topic continued to get heated.
Also, would anyone (out of the IRC regulars, at least) really have a problem with mods if they were just called Designated Arbitrators, like they are on the IRC? Because, let's face it. That is exactly what all of us with the little star next to our names are: mods. (Well, except for Bot, but Bot's mostly useless anyway. I'm still trying to figure out how to replace it.)
I'm not entirely sure why it's a bad thing here? Moderation in the chat is mostly nose-booping and saying "Mayhaps chill out a little, mmkay?" Which I think is a good thing no matter the context. Also, it could probably be useful on the Board. (it does work better on the IRC, though, what with PMs. Come to think of it, that's another thing the Board lacks.)
Alternatively, if we switch to a new Board, we could have moderation be more like the Nameless Admin. Have a few mod accounts, with names like "Mod A, Mod B" or what have you, and a rotating roster of shadowy Illuminati-tpe figures elected mods, with rotations done monthly, and elections held every, oh, let's say 4 months?
(although I do agree that moderation should be discussed in a different thread, more because this one will be taking up enough space as it is)
(Post-mortem? I don't follow >.
I seem to recall the IRC being the scene of one big blowup after another not all that long ago...? Some of which were caused by 'How could you kick that person?'...?
Everywhere has blowups. Everywhere. They're an inescapable fact of interacting with other people. Moderators (in my mind, or at least my vision for them) are elected by the people they will be moderating, as those who have been noticed as level-headed, willing to separate two people and mediate between them or at least go "OI that's seriously off-topic take it to PMs please", able to explain their actions in a rational manner, accept that they might have made a mistake and take input as to how to fix it... and I can't think of other traits at the moment so could someone else please add to this list?
And I have commented elsewhere on this thread on why ultracollapsed threads are not, in my mind, the best of ideas. Several items on my list here refer to it.
I wouldn't love to go through that point-by-point just now, but only because I have afternoon classes to get to that I've already missed far too many times. I'll look it over and reply after school.
I was referring to Dann's post. You'd have the option to view it in a format like it is now. It just wouldn't be the default.
The code we have now has the view that we have now as the default, with clear ways to change it to something else (like subforums) on a mostly permanent (barring a cookie clear or browser change) basis.
I offer two pieces of evidence.
Exhibit One: At one point, we actually had a forum-type board: this one. It didn't get used (and appears to be taken over by spambots). The only reason I remember it at all is that it's where the A/V Division stories were posted.
Exhibit Two: Not so very long ago, we tried turning the thread-bumping function of the Board on (since that's the thing people most often complain about). It was... pretty much a disaster, with one gigantic thread of badfic posts dominating the Board until people started telling other people not to link to badfics on the PPC Board. I don't think something which utterly removes the point of this place is a good idea, myself.
What we put in place instead is the current highlighting of 'new replies to old threads', which is actually incredibly useful.
So that's my evidence. Oh, And One More Thing:
Exhibit Three: People who spend all their time on the Board already don't know people who spend all their time in the IRC. I don't think that divide is a good thing, since we're actually trying to maintain a single social space here. Regardless of the intentions of the creators, breaking the Board into sub-forums would, does and will lead to people who only visit certain ones. I don't want the PPC fracturing even more.
... andonemorething:
Exhibit Four: What's the point? The Board is currently moving as fast as I've seen it in a long time, and we've still got nearly two weeks worth of threads on the front page. And no, still-visited threads aren't dropping off (you have to scroll halfway up the page to find a recent reply - KittTheCat's newbie thread), and on the extremely rare occasions where that's actually happened, such as the Badfic Contests, we just start another thread. Splitting into sub-forums would just give us a skein of ultra-low-traffic forums.
On a more personal, non-exhibit note: I like to be able to see what the PPC is thinking just by scrolling down a single page. If I had to click ten times just to see all the post titles (five sub forums, one click in, one click back out), I probably wouldn't do it. And this is me.
hS
...Talking with people, the reason why some don't visit more regularly/join/use the Board is specifically because it's not a forum. This is the whole reason I brought it up.
What I was under the impression of is that the categories would be more "badfic" "new mission" "new people" "EVERYTHING ELSE", since the badfic and new people threads seem to be what people are concerned about when they talk about stuff getting nudged off. There's no reason to go "I will only hang out here" if the only place where actual hanging-outing is done is in the one subforum.
And this has been the root of most objections to, well, most things over the years:
The PPC doesn't divide things into neat little boxes like that. We never have. Newbie threads spawn massive conversations, badfic plugs even more so. And, and, you want to separate missions - the reason we're all here in the first place - from the central community hub?
And. And. We currently have 25 threads for the past 2 weeks. That's about two per day, and that's pretty much all we ever have. Why do we need a forum? There is not enough going on here to make it necessary or useful. I have not yet heard a good argument (er, any argument?) for this - just years of 'It won't hurt!' and 'The Board is old!'. No-one has ever given me any convincing arguments that a forum offers any benefits to the PPC community.
Again, we turned thread bumping on (the one thing people were consistantly saying would make things !!vastly better!!), and we turned it off again after a giant thread ate the Board. People who had been advocating bumping for years decided it wasn't worth it.
You'd have the option of viewing the Board as-is. Presumably there'd also be an option to not have thread-bump.
While I can just about see the advantages of having alterable layouts to suit preference, the idea of some people having bumped threads and some not... is pretty terrible. "Hey, why'd you give up on our conversation?" 'Er, it dropped off the front page...' "No it didn't, it's right at the top!'. And when a megathread eats the Board for people with bumping on, half the community won't know what they're on about...
Oh. And, to cut off the "Logins means no spambots!" argument before you make it - yes, it does. It also means no in-character posts, an extra hurdle for newbies, no in-character posts, no dropping into nameless anonymity on occasion, and no in-character posts.
Aaaand. The one other argument I can foresee you making is that proboards-style threading - where all the posts are visible on the same page - would be better because you could see the posts. This is sort of true, but again, the PPC has a wild time with multi-threading. A single column of answers wouldn't work here.
The Livejournal-style - where top posts and the first few replies are fully visible, and the others are collapsed - might work, but it gets awfully complicated to navigate. I like being able to click into a thread - anywhere, mind you, not just the top post - and see at a glance roughly what people are saying. It's brilliant.
Like I say: no-one's ever offered me an argument as to why a forum would be better. Please go ahead and do so. ;)
hS
"It also means no in-character posts"
Not true, and saying it three times doesn't make it true.
"An extra hurdle for newbies"
alright, all give you this one.
"No dropping into nameless anonymity on occasion."
I was under the impression that this is /heavily/ frowned upon by the ppc, seeing as how when someone did it, a bunch of people came forward saying it was heavily frowned upon.
As it is, the board is painful enough to check what is a reply to what that I outright quit bothering to look at it. I knew this thread happened because it got linked to me.
You're right that it's possible to post in-character without changing your name, but I'm talking about posting under the name of a character, whether it be for a roleplay, or as a humourous way to respond to someone mentioning your agent. That immersion, I feel, would be lost if people didn't look at a post and think 'Oh hey, it's Agent Rosalind' rather than 'Oh hey, it's hS saying he's posting as Agent Rosalind'.
hS
Is it /really/ that complicated to have login name and shown name be different?
I've never actually seen a forum where you login and then still have an option to enter your screenname-of-choice every time you post, but I suppose it's possible. You'd have to ask the techies. ;)
(I would accept that as an excellent solution to this point)
hS
In our system, each post has both an "Author" field (which can be anything the author wants to put there, and is pre-filled to their username), and an internal link to a specific user. Every user has a username, which can be changed.
If someone posts, and the "Author" field of the post is the same as their username at the time the post is viewed, the post is shown as authored by "[username]". If not, the displayed text is "Author field, the post will be displayed as being written by "Tomash". If, however, I change the author field to "Sunflower Official", the displayed text will read "Sunflower Official (posted by Tomash)".
Would that work as a solution?
...And I've never felt a sense of immersion was lost. If you're posting in-character, people seperate the you from the character, if that makes sense.
Hell, I avoid using the Board because of the format. We're getting newbies now who are used to forums. Who's to say how many lurkers aren't posting because of the format?
We are losing potential community members (and considering that some of the people I'm referring to are personal friends of mine, I feel comfortable saying that we are chasing away what would be valuable members of the community by staying here.)
People who are already here are posting less than they would be if we had, y'know, an actual forum. What conversations are we losing by not switching?
And if I may be blunt? You're doing the same bloody thing. What benefits does staying here -besides "this is how we've always done it"- offer?
I've yet to see any.
However: ooh, personal experience. Good. I'd appreciate it if you could please clarify why the current layout of the Board is offputting. You've said several times that people don't post because of it - why not? What is it about this setup that causes this issue?
As to the benefits of staying here - leaving aside all issues of how the move would be handled or mishandled:
-Instant visibility of all activity in the last 24 hours (you're welcome, by the way - I was the one who found that feature)
-For a thread you recognise by sight, near-instant recognition of not just whether anyone has replied, but precisely what they've replied to. If you need to hunt for the thread, this takes a little longer.
-The ability to spot an individual post, even if you don't remember which thread it's on. This can be done by eye, or by Ctrl-F or its equivalents, rather than through notoriously fickle forum search engines (example: the Minecraft forum search has literally never worked for me).
-The ability for discussions in any given thread to wander wildly off-topic without someone telling them they're in the wrong forum for that.
-Instantly visible notes at the top of the page, rather than sticky threads. The current header is a lot harder to ignore.
-As previously stated, no artificial divisions which could lead to, for example, "What's the point of going into the newbies forum? Nothing ever happens there..."
-No-one being told off for posting in the wrong forum.
-Given the extremely slow pace of stories being posted, no-one making a post in the General forum to tell people there's a story in the Stories forum.
-Depending on the forum technology, any of:
--No thread bumping (for reasons described multiple times in this thread)
--Multi-threading of discussions, rather than the constraints of single-threading
--No logins, which encourages new posters, allows access to people on unusual technology (such as cheap phones - I recall Specs had difficulty logging into the wiki - and badly-firewalled computers at places like work), and permits in-character posts.
I could probably think of more, but that's a pretty hefty list already. And since it's been a long post, I'll restate my question to you: What is it about the Board that makes it difficult or offputting to use for you?
hS
As to the benefits of staying here - leaving aside all issues of how the move would be handled or mishandled:
-Instant visibility of all activity in the last 24 hours (you're welcome, by the way - I was the one who found that feature)
That is convenient, but it's gray on white and easy to miss when scrolling. If all you want to scan for is 'new activity', then I think pretty much every board has [NEW] tags next to threads with posts you haven't seen, and icons next to forums with new content. Not within the last 24 hours, but it's even better in the case where you spend more than a day away and want to check on everything that's happened.
-For a thread you recognise by sight, near-instant recognition of not just whether anyone has replied, but precisely what they've replied to. If you need to hunt for the thread, this takes a little longer.
So it's a bit more inconvenient. Something extremely inconvenient and irritating about the system we currently use is how if I want an overview of everything, I have to scroll for what feels like forever. Besides, there's probably some system where you can collapse all posts to subject-line, set it so they're nested, and hunt through the specific thread that way.
Also, quote pyramids. Quote pyramids are your friend.
-The ability to spot an individual post, even if you don't remember which thread it's on. This can be done by eye, or by Ctrl-F or its equivalents, rather than through notoriously fickle forum search engines (example: the Minecraft forum search has literally never worked for me).
I don't have an argument for this. I've never had a problem with forum search engines myself.
-The ability for discussions in any given thread to wander wildly off-topic without someone telling them they're in the wrong forum for that.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'd happily allow wild wanderings. In my experiences on the Bay 12 Forums in the Dwarf Fortress section, threads regularly go wildly a-wandering. The mods really only get involved if the discussion gets flamey.
-Instantly visible notes at the top of the page, rather than sticky threads. The current header is a lot harder to ignore.
I've seen boards with that. It's a news header at the top of the main page.
-As previously stated, no artificial divisions which could lead to, for example, "What's the point of going into the newbies forum? Nothing ever happens there..."
There's artificial divisions, and then there's sorting things into like-with-like so you can, say, more easily check out all the Permission requests if you're like me and wanted to see what exactly passed and didn't. Or if you want to check the Roleplay forum to see if anyone's done your idea before.
Also, I'm not sure what tech the BZPower forums use, but there's a 'most recent 5 topics' thing on the right side of the index page that doesn't discriminate between subfora. It's a bit out of the way, but if we can find something more prominent it might work too. It would probably be even more useful for us, because the PPC moves slowly enough that you can blink and the topics will still mostly be there.
-No-one being told off for posting in the wrong forum.
Are you volunteering for telling-off duty? I know I wouldn't be. Besides, that suggests that it would be finger-shaking reproach, which I don't think is in the cards. Gentle pointers and moving the thread ("There's a specific forum for Permission requests for archival purposes; I've moved your thread there"), sure, but telling someone off for posting in the wrong forum is silly.
-Given the extremely slow pace of stories being posted, no-one making a post in the General forum to tell people there's a story in the Stories forum.
If there's a [NEW] brightened icon next to the Stories forum whenever someone posts in there, then anyone who actually cares would notice that there's something interesting there anyway. Anyone who's so focused on the General forum that they don't check the main page probably wouldn't care much about the stories forum anyway.
-Depending on the forum technology, any of:
--No thread bumping (for reasons described multiple times in this thread)
That's much less of a problem with collapsed threads and the ability to scoot heated discussions into a locked archival subforum if we don't want it going on anymore but would like the history so we don't end up repeating it.
--Multi-threading of discussions, rather than the constraints of single-threading
I know the NaNoWriMo forums at least let you switch between flat and nested replies. Also? Quote pyramids. In this case, they are also your friend.
--No logins, which encourages new posters, allows access to people on unusual technology (such as cheap phones - I recall Specs had difficulty logging into the wiki - and badly-firewalled computers at places like work), and permits in-character posts.
I know there are forums that can set whether guests can post or not. Also, letting guests post makes it a lot easier for spambots to screw around, and that's a serious con in my book.
The format. I honestly have difficulty with white space (there's a reason my posts aren't particularly verbose and that's because posting here hurts), and the board is mostly white space.
Second? The highlighting tends to not work for me. This basically means that my only method of checking what is/isn't new is by following which links are which shade of red (something which can actually be pretty easy for me to miss), which... doesn't work. I do my work spread over three laptops and a phone, and check the board on whichever one I'm using. (also my phone doesn't have the different shaded highlights, so...).
Compare this with forums, which tend to have a tag on threads that have a new post in them. On the forums I've been on, those can be linked to accounts, so you always know what's new.
tl;dr I don't use the board because it's physically painful
I'm unclear on what you're saying here. Are you saying actually physically painful, as in you suffer a physiological-neurological effect from looking at large white spaces on a computer screen, or 'physically painful' in the usual internet sense of 'I don't like it'? And if the former - is this a common problem for large numbers of people? And is it just white, or would any large monotone space on a screen cause this?
And I know of one potential reason why the highlighting might not work... did you happen to notice whether it appeared during the Blackout? Because it was implemented slightly different (through CSS rather than just a tick-box) at that point.
hS
I said physically for a reason. I'm not a complete doof.
And no, I didn't. There was a blackout?
... seems to use 'physically' to mean 'mentally' - and 'literally' to mean 'figuratively'. I just wanted to be sure.
So is it specifically due to it being white? I remember way-back-when, another board linked from Oddlots used a... tan-yellow background, I think. It might even have had some texture to it, to make it look like paper.
(Hmm... now you've got me thinking about a possible cosmetic tweak here. I'll conjour something up and take a look on the Other Board)
hS
I cannot look at spaces of mostly-empty. Dark is better, but it's not really saying much.
... mild background imaging? Something like the effect on my website, with the paper thing? Would that still track as 'mostly empty'?
hS
...so no.
tl;dr I don't use the board because it's physically painful
And while we're on that point, excessive amounts of white space irritate me too. Not to the extent where I avoid using the Board because of it, but I avoid the Board because of the counter-intuitive sorting system for posts. Repeated scrolling up and down when catching up on an explosion annoys me, and then I spend longer away and BOOM, more posts that require MORE obnoxious scrolling up and down and then I get frustrated and take more time off to cool down and rinse and repeat until I eventually say SODDIT and go hide in the IRC where things aren't upside down.
I'm not as bothered by the white-space, however about the excessive effort it takes to read a huge thread is offputting for me too, I was actually going to point that out once I finished reading all the replies since last night, and now it's been made for me. ^_^
I mostly don't even go through the steps Lilac stated anymore, I see a huge thread and I just skip it, so I miss out on a lot of the RP, and such because I just don't have the time or patience or both to sit and fiddle with trying to read things in order, and find where I am at the bottom of the thread (even with the italics) and figure out if there's been a reply to something I've already read on the way down, and I know that's not anyone's fault but mine. But it still means I'm less active than I might be otherwise.
Also, I didn't even know the purpose of the highlighting, it shows up so infrequently I thought it was just a glitch somewhere, like the one that makes the board show up blue and purple on occasion. So that's of no help in determining new replies for me at least.
Because I didn't actually read through the whole thread before agreeing with this point, so I came a cross another point to make.
The red/dark red doesn't always work correctly for me, but that's a side point to something I came across as I finished up reading this thread. It becomes hard to see what posts are in response to sometime when you have the main post, and 3 replies to that post that lead to three different discussions that people jump in on at various levels. So you read the whole reply thread, and then have to "scroll obnoxioulsly" around to figure out which mid point dot of it that hanging, less indented, reply at the bottom is because the discussion has taken up more than the screen length and width. Where as with a forum style, replies are in order, a quick refresh lets you see if there was any replies since you started reading, and with the quote function a lot of them have you know what specifically someone is replying to if they got "posted over" with a huge reply tree. I know you can kind of quote on this board too, but that only helps if the people replying to a certain thing know to quote it in their post before hand. Which they don't if a discussion takes place after them and creates a bigger tree line of responses.
I hope that makes sense...
(deeeeerp) Also, I would like to nudge you gently towards Dann's post. You'd have the option of viewing the Board as-is. Presumably there'd also be an option to not have thread-bump.
Tomash built a prototype a while back that had multiple options - threads were divided into categories, and then it was up to the users if they wanted to see the different categories as different forums, different tags on topics on a single big page, or what have you. It would provide an interface that's a lot like the current Board for people who like it as it sits now, and a forum-like Board for people who prefer that view, along with inbetween options for people who want something between the two.
It would also get us off yourwebapps, which is basically running the Model T of discussion technology.
... as the Ford Fiesta of discussion tech. Yes, it's small, yes, it's been around for ages, no, it doesn't have the sporty bells, whistles, carbon-fibre windscreen wipers and wood-panelled hubcaps of the Porche Forum (available $999,999 at your nearest red supergiant!!1)... but for a small community (which we are), it's nice, comfy, easy to use, and not noticably prone to breaking down.
That may not actually be a good description of a Fiesta; you'll have to fill in your own small-car-of-choice. I know nothing about cars (they're the four-wheeled ones, right?).
hS
PS: And even if it were the Model T - can you be sure you wouldn't end up moving us to the Reliant Robin version? Cheap, stylish, popular... falls over when you try to turn a corner and ends up only being used by a handful of die-hard enthusiasts. ~hS
The Board is, as EF has demonstrated, capable of breaking down in potentially dangerous ways. It also has other failure modes - for example, trolling as someone else, which we've seen happen.
And yes, I can be reasonably sure that a forum I work on would not be the Reliant Robin of websites - I work for, and have learned a ton from, a company with a bit of experience in the matter.
Wasn't the Fiesta notable for being an incredibly terrible car, though? I mean, my uncle's a mechanic and some of his worst horror stories come from Fords.
The actual names involved weren't the core of my point. ;P
hS
Subdivisions make everything nice and tidy! If it's one of those boards that require a login, then that's even better because that's a really good spammer deterrent.
Who is going to make one?
...I know Dann and Thomas were working on one. not sure exactly how ready it would be, though.
If that doesn't pan out, there are some forum hosting servers that don't charge for their services. (I know of Zetaboards off the top of my head)
((also your anon is showing >.
...I know Dann and Thomas were working on one. not sure exactly how ready it would be, though.
If that doesn't pan out, there are some forum hosting servers that don't charge for their services. (I know of Zetaboards off the top of my head)
((also your anon is showing >.
I think I prefer the more forum-y board set up, it makes it easier, for me at least, to keep track of new replies. Though I must say, having hung around here for a couple months, it's not as daunting as it first looks like, so I won't be overly disappointed if the board stays here either. :)
