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New Forum Wishlist - but read roadmap first
This topic was created by Drewc.
New Forum Wishlist - but read roadmap first
I have closed the original New forum Wishlist - and boiled it down (and added some stuff) to the things we will do, the things we might do, the things we are unlikely to do and the things we won't do. Here is our roadmap. There are no timescales as we have a lot of other stuff on our plate.
El Reg forums roadmap - no time scales
Enable editing posts
One page - up vote / down vote
Inbox to inform you if your account is upgraded, if suspended etc. Give users chance to reply to moderators via this mechanism
Ability to view replies to self via my posts view
Badges to indicate levels of accounts / moderators
Formatting: introduce line breaks, bullet points, blockquote, superscript, subscript
Most recent 50 posts view
Demote "closed" topics so that they always appear underneath "open" topics
Stats view - most popular topic, etc.
Possible inclusions for roadmap
Sitemap
html formatting bar in post comments form
Ignore / Follow - individual commenters
Nesting - three-level nesting, default or optional. Jury still out
View from last read /last post. We think this is useful, but we haven't yet figured out how best to do this
Notifications when someone directly replies to your post or to the thread. Via email or forum in-box? And what if there are dozens of responses to the thread?
Possibles - but only if El Reg forums get very big
Commentard to Commentard communication via forums
Invite-only forums / topics
Kharma-ish system have to balance rewards with attempts to game whatever system we come up with
Ability to order comments by popularity - again this could be gamed
Not on roadmap
User-defined avatars - we don't want to have to store avatars, or vet them, or get angry if someone changes avatar to something abusive.
Log-in via third parties - e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Disqus, Linked-in
It could be nifty to have an optional "withdraw reason" field, which if used would produce something like:
This post has been deleted by its author because it sucked.
or
This post has been deleted by a moderator because every word but one was illegal.
with the current message appearing if no reason is provided.
Allow me to jump in here (hi all).
I came across an issue with flagging posts - IMHO it would be good if you could provide a one-liner with the reason why you flagged a post for review, as it may not always be immediately evident. That also allows for a feedback loop which should (hopefully) result in a degree of tuning between moderators and those who take the time to flag a message as moderators can offer feedback too (I'm assuming a message facility here, but you have the email address of the user so you could just ping an email).
C'est tout :)
I like most of these except for the "karma" thing which seems like unnecessary fluff.
Yep, karma's a bummer.
Otherwise the list is indeed well prioritized. And yes please, definitely NO avatars.
Quick search of one's own posts would be nice.
Providing a link to the stray post I reference in:
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/1355878
could come in handy.
Get rid of the advert/profile bit on the right of the page, currently 25% of available space is wasted.
And/Or allow forum to fill whole browser instead of the fixed width bit.
I'm actually going to argue against this one on the grounds that the widescreen displays it's almost impossible to avoid any more give you gobs of horizontal space but put vertical space at a high premium. That being the case, a columnar layout is really the only thing that makes sense.
Here's a Javascript bookmarklet that'll get rid of the sidebar on any Reg or Reg Hardware page. To use it, create a bookmark (preferably in your toolbar) with it as the target, and then click the bookmark to remove the sidebar. To retrieve the sidebar, reload the page. It doesn't work on the homepage because there are only three headlines per row div and if you want that reflowed then you can damn well do it yourself.
javascript:(function(){$('div.box,div.report').detach();$('div#main-col').css('width','100%');})()
No to avatars.
No to karma stuff.
No to sorting comments by popularity (people will start trying to game the system at the detriment to the quality of the posts).
IMHO this kind of stuff will just detract from people engaging in putting forward serious comments and engaging in interesting discussions. I really like the fact that certain forums I visit do not have avatars and very few people have bothered to make sigs (of which the ones that do usually put useful info/links in).
Nesting - you shouldn't have brought in the silly curved arrow to indicate someone's post is a reply to someone elses, with the vertical grey bar it was instantly obvious it was a reply, and if you bring it back you can make it so two vertical grey bars mean a reply to a reply, and perhaps stretch it to 3 for a reply to a reply to a reply.
re Nesting
Proper indenting is all that is needed. You know, 40px for a reply, 80 for a reply to a reply, and so on. Easy peasy.
Needs...
A direct link to the forum/containing from your list of posts. If you get upvoted a lot or downvoted to hell and back, it might be nice to jump to your post for follow-ups. With the new system, I open the post alone and then click "posted in forum blahblah". The "ability to view posts to self" is a good idea, but fixing the above (back to what it was) will be a quick patch to make this simpler until then.
Subscript? Superscript? Is this really necessary? Next we'll want fonts (so code can be in monospaced, etc), alignment/justification, and so on. I can understand linking things, and also italics for emphasis and bold for shouting at fanboys, but anything else is surely overkill? [I grew up when you had to make do with plain ASCII and a few symbols!]
Please kill that grey arrow. No, seriously, take it out back and shoot it. I'm not a "old ways were the best" sort of person, but you've taken a large clear visual cue (the bar) and reduced it to an easily-missed icon.
If we do avatars, mine will be Haruhi Suzumiya. That, along with somebody else offering the obligatory animated GIF of an ejactulating dick, ought to be enough to make you rethink the idea of avatars...
Facebook login? Die.
… wants, really.
heyrick, nothing in this thread (or in my post on the other thread) is a need; they’re all wants. My being a typographophilotard, a wide selection of formatting options rates highest with me, despite (or perhaps due to) having grown up when upper-case-only hard-copy Teletypes were the reigning “terminal”. As such, I disagree with characterising such a selection as “surely overkill”; those with no desire to make use of e.g. monospaced text will simply choose not to use it, just as I’ve chosen to not use the upvoting and downvoting buttons.
I too believe that the grey vertical bar was superior to the curved arrow icon, and look forward to its triumphal return.
Might I suggest replacing "editing ability" with "10-minute editing window". This will enable a quick spell-correct or 'Oops I forgot that bit'; while cutting out most the 'rewriting history' shenanigans that are possible with unlimited edits.
another possibility
moiety, another possibility would be to allow unlimited edits of a post only if it has no unwithdrawn “descendant” replies: so e.g. if A makes a post, B replies to A, C replies to B, and B withdraws his reply, A cannot edit his post again until C also withdraws his reply.
Re: another possibility
That's good too. I do know that unlimited no-holds-barred edits can lead to dickery in some circumstances. Don't know for sure that it would be a problem on El Reg...the atmosphere here is a little more mature than many places on the net. Maybe even a "This post has been edited" tag would be enough. Maybe not though.
I strongly second this idea. My brain often races ahead of my CP-affected hands and submits my comment with all sorts of annoying typos. A ten minute window to clean up evidence of my lousy hand-eye co-ordination would be very helpful.
Not able to go directly to a top-level posting ?
(unless I am being very thick)
When I view my list of posts, where I have REPLIED to a post, the little curly arrow acts as a link to take me directly to my post in context. However, if I merely add a comment (at the "top level) then I have no such link, and have to trawl through the comments, to see my comment (and hence if anyone has replied to it).
I'm sure you used to be able to do this. If so it's a feature that has been lost in the upgrade.
Re: Not able to go directly to a top-level posting ?
I dont recall what was there before. But I'll put this onto snag list to investigate for our next round of improvements.
Re: Not able to go directly to a top-level posting ? Reminder
"I dont recall what was there before. But I'll put this onto snag list to investigate for our next round of improvements."
What was there before was View Post in Context. It took one straight to the post in the thread.
In any conversation-based model, this is pretty important. Without it, it is hard (sometimes, in a busy thread, just too hard) to return to it.
Please?
Re: Not able to go directly to a top-level posting ?
Please please please !!!!!!
If it helps to move this up the priorities list, it's not a new feature. It's fixing whatever broke it in the first place.
Re: Not able to go directly to a top-level posting ? Reminder
Any life or movement?
What seems to happen now is that when clicking on the reply-to arrow, it is a link to the post to which one replied. There is no way to get from a post in the my-posts list to that post in its thread --- except by searching the page[s] for it. As an index, then, the posts list is utterly useless. Well, ok. it's a reminder of what articles one commented on, but that's all.
Re: Re: Not able to go directly to a top-level posting ? Reminder
We should be making a couple of tweaks in coming weeks. Let me check on this.
My posts / posting in context - your wish is granted
in My Posts / post / Click on the "posted" timestamp link when in my posts to see in action.
Re: My posts / posting in context - your wish is granted
Brilliant ... but obscure! I'd never have guessed if I hadn't stumbled on this while wandering the site news wondering what all the badges were about!
Thanks anyway :)
possibly dumb suggestion
I understand el reg has considered full threading (I'd like that) but it's a hefty change, so I was wondering if there was any way of also republishing posts as nntp.
Newgroup readers are mature, support full tree-structured threading and plenty more. Obviously you couldn't reply to a comment via nntp and expect it to end up in the html forums (could you? I know of no nntp authentication) so it would be read-only. Also I guess the html forums would be the permanent record, nntp threads would not be kept much past the 'this topic is now closed' point.
It's been some years since I used newsgroups (bloody spammers) so I may be missing a very obvious problem, but it just might be a lightweight if freaky solution.
Ur thinkings, please? not to flamey, ta.
Not a dumb suggestion
A couple of other people have mentioned this. We'll have a mull.
Re: Not a dumb suggestion
Without knowing what your back-end systems look like, Russ Allbery's News::Gateway perl module might be a starting point. I've used it in the past ... it's a trifle crusty around the edges (Tim Skirvin cleaned it up a bit about ten years ago), but the base code is usable. I can't comment on the security of the system if open to world+dog.
Pre-expanded comments
When a comment is accessed via an explicit url, e.g. http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/1409631, it would be nice if it was presented pre-expanded - if you're going directly, the chances are you want to see it all.
Re: Pre-expanded comments
Turn off jscript, they all show expanded.
Ok, not strictly "forum", but I'm not starting a new topic.
A commentard-to-commentard message capability. An opt-in system for registered commentards only, with the capability to wield the banhammer on individual commentards at the receiving end[1]. Basic forward to the target's email would do the trick[2], option to add local inbox/outbox/reply capability later if it proves popular and people want it.
[1] Something like: "You can't message ${commentard} as he's already decided you're not worth listening to. You may publicly grovel for forgiveness in the User Forums if you like."
[2] Manual reply process via the same PM process, unless the sender wishes to divulge a return email address of course.
Re: Ok, not strictly "forum", but I'm not starting a new topic.
What a cock!
Colours
Now that we have basic html formatting, can we have a <font color = .... > tag with the colour attribute as specified in this long overdue colour standards document...
Please, pretty please.
Re: Colours
If you do that I want a <blink> tag too. If my experience of 70/80/90s computing is anything to go by, that idea alone should kill it off almost immediately :).
On a serious note, I do support the idea of a FEW colours, like blue and red, but there is a serious risk it will start to look like the first years of DTP: some people just want to use ALL the possibilities in one post. OTOH, this tends to settle down after a while.
In summary, I can see some people wanting it, but I'm not bothered. I started computing when everything was glowing in uppercase green, so I learned to cope early on :)
Re: Colours
That conversation was happening half a year ago, Fred.
Thankfully ElReg hasn't implemented colo(u)rs, fonts, <blink>, and miscellaneous other bits of RansomNote text display ... ASCII is ASCII, and most of us techies like it that way.
I prefer amber on black, not green on black ... Personal preference ;-)
So ... Is this "user forum" thingie working?
Inquiring minds want to know.
[multi]markdown support
Typing HTML is a pain in the arse —especially on a mobile keyboard. But I'd much rather have markdown support than some bloaty resource-hogging WYSIWYG formatting bar.
Re: [multi]markdown support
Covered here
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/register_comments_guidelines/
infamous quotes
just testing
blockquote
and also the alternative q for quote
tags.
What ever happened to implementing proper CR/LF handling?
Just
asking.
Can I please stay logged in forever, not just for 24 hours?
In reply to "Martin Budden"...
For gawd/ess's sake, no! Can you imagine the damage the cats would do?
Upvotes/downvotes
I reckon the up/down voting should be disabled once a forum is marked as "closed", or maybe programmatically after a specified delay of n days from closure date.
Re: Upvotes/downvotes
I dunno.
You can still see the post, so why not be able to vote on it? It's not like you can vote more than once without sockpuppetry involved.
