Communications (Forums) Tech Development

[Reploid Productions]

Oh, yeah. With a forum tailor-made to NS we could add better WA<>forum functionality! Memo to self, add that to the list when I'm off work for the day.

[Haganham]

Another two; hard coded sig limits. Defining lines may be challenging with all the bcode, but maybe that could be bypassed by counting the height of the signature.

Temporary foe lists. Sometimes a person is on a bender and you don't want to deal with them any more this week.

[Dimetrodon Empire]

Is there an ETA or is still too far away to even speculate as to which decade it might arrive in?

I'm starting to think we need to have timelines laid out in centuries at the rate it's going.

I know there may be something I'm missing but:

Honestly, I just don't understand why admins shouldn't attempt to port/modify their custom code that gets the old phpBB forum to work with the game to work with a newer phpBB version as opposed to writing everything themselves. Much of the things listed can be achieved with a more modern phpBB version.

Hiding forums for instance can be achieved by creating a fully open group with never permissions for a certain forum and allowing people to freely join it through their UCP. You can use a closed or hidden group to block access to certain forums, something you've somewhat implemented here with the Got Issues Blocked group. Newer phpBB versions have quote notifications, so a moderator telling a person to knock it off or issuing a warning is more likely to be read, and there's a reactions plugin for phpBB already in progress.

Not to mention that the special anti-spam measures won't have to be recoded as you would be able to use extensions such as auto groups & authorized for urls to keep it out. Not to mention that an up to date phpBB instillation has a plugin that can restrict certain bbcodes to certain usergroups.

I get that this will be a pain in the ass anyway due to the code changes required, but why reinvent the wheel?

[Reploid Productions]

I'm starting to think we need to have timelines laid out in centuries at the rate it's going.

I know there may be something I'm missing but:

Honestly, I just don't understand why admins shouldn't attempt to port/modify their custom code that gets the old phpBB forum to work with the game to work with a newer phpBB version as opposed to writing everything themselves. Much of the things listed can be achieved with a more modern phpBB version.

Hiding forums for instance can be achieved by creating a fully open group with never permissions for a certain forum and allowing people to freely join it through their UCP. You can use a closed or hidden group to block access to certain forums, something you've somewhat implemented here with the Got Issues Blocked group. Newer phpBB versions have quote notifications, so a moderator telling a person to knock it off or issuing a warning is more likely to be read, and there's a reactions plugin for phpBB already in progress.

Not to mention that the special anti-spam measures won't have to be recoded as you would be able to use extensions such as auto groups & authorized for urls to keep it out. Not to mention that an up to date phpBB instillation has a plugin that can restrict certain bbcodes to certain usergroups.

I get that this will be a pain in the ass anyway due to the code changes required, but why reinvent the wheel?

Newer versions of phpBB still have the same problem of "talking easily with gameside". If we update things to work with a newer version of phpBB, then we come right back around to where we're at right now when an even newer version comes out and we can't update to it without breaking the current version's ability to integrate with gameside. That's the biggest goal of doing our own, is having a forum perfectly tailored to our needs, that integrates perfectly with gameside, and that won't need to be massively rejiggered to work with the game every time the forum software needs an update.

[Dimetrodon Empire]

True, but how often do you guys plan on upgrading your forums? I would be shocked if you end up ever doing it more than once every decade, probably not even that.

Not a bad idea to make your own software of course, but with lack of admin time, it would not surprise me if this were to stall completely and die.

[Minoa]

True, but how often do you guys plan on upgrading your forums? I would be shocked if you end up ever doing it more than once every decade, probably not even that.

Not a bad idea to make your own software of course, but with lack of admin time, it would not surprise me if this were to stall completely and die.

This in part, but the main reason for me recommending that the site continues to use phpBB or XenForo, is the availability of support should things go wrong.

My concern is that if the custom forum software were to break down a few years into the future, then how many people will have the expertise to get it back up running?

[Dimetrodon Empire]

True, but how often do you guys plan on upgrading your forums? I would be shocked if you end up ever doing it more than once every decade, probably not even that.

Not a bad idea to make your own software of course, but with lack of admin time, it would not surprise me if this were to stall completely and die.

This in part, but the main reason for me recommending that the site continues to use phpBB or XenForo, is the availability of support should things go wrong.

My concern is that if the custom forum software were to break down a few years into the future, then how many people will have the expertise to get it back up running?

phpBB is better as it is free, but I agree. We have limited admin time, yet they're going to reinvent the wheel to create something entirely new, where you needlessly need to code features that others have already done, and on top of all that, be the only group that knows anything about the code and what problems can occur.

It seems counter intuitive, especially when one doesn't really need to be religious with phpBB updates. Not only that, but well coded Extensions (plugins for more modern versions of phpBB) usually can survive minor updates.

[Sunset]

Hmm. I would kinda like the option to get an alert when specific people post. However, that would raise the specter of using that same to stalk/harass someone. So. I would then like the ability to approve/disapprove/block-further-requests account-wide. So if I want to, say, follow Reppy's posts I can request to do so but if she doesn't want to allow that, she can either say 'no' or 'no and not ever'. Now, one could use the search function but this is about requests - no one said they have to be sane.

[Trotterdam]

Newer versions of phpBB still have the same problem of "talking easily with gameside". If we update things to work with a newer version of phpBB, then we come right back around to where we're at right now when an even newer version comes out and we can't update to it without breaking the current version's ability to integrate with gameside. That's the biggest goal of doing our own, is having a forum perfectly tailored to our needs, that integrates perfectly with gameside, and that won't need to be massively rejiggered to work with the game every time the forum software needs an update.

Sure, if you don't use phpBB, then you'll never need to do any manual work to smooth over an upgrade to a new version of phpBB. But that's just because any upgrades you want to do will have to be 100% manual, rather than taking an upgrade package someone else did most of the hard work on and only needing to manually patch a few details. Having custom forum code that you can never upgrade (because nobody ever releases upgrades for it because nobody except you ever works on it) isn't really better than having phpBB forum code that you can never upgrade (because your custom extensions are incompatible with new versions).

I think the current forum does integration with gameside pretty well. In fact, I'd go a step further and say that the forum as a whole works pretty well and does most of what I want from it. Any upgrade should prioritize not breaking existing functionality. That is extremely hard to do if you're rewriting everything from scratch.

Hmm. I would kinda like the option to get an alert when specific people post. However, that would raise the specter of using that same to stalk/harass someone.

How would you even know if someone is stalking you? As you say, this can already be done silently by regularly refreshing a search page.

If you actually make harrassing posts every time your target says something, then that's something that can be reported to the moderators. It doesn't make sense for purely-passive observation to be something that can be blocked from the target's side. This is a public forum.

[Wymondham]

Is there any sort of ETA as to when this might materialise?

[Dimetrodon Empire]

Has anything been made towards this?

No, I am not trying to be pushy since you’re all Volunteers. Just asking.

[Sedgistan]

As far as significant projects go, "Accounts" is above a replacement forum in priority. So unless something breaks horribly with the forums, then there won't be any movement until Accounts are implemented. The hope is that Accounts will happen this year, but it's highly unlikely any significant work will be done on a replacement forum this year.

[Dimetrodon Empire]

As far as significant projects go, "Accounts" is above a replacement forum in priority. So unless something breaks horribly with the forums, then there won't be any movement until Accounts are implemented. The hope is that Accounts will happen this year, but it's highly unlikely any significant work will be done on a replacement forum this year.

Good to know, thanks.

[Socialist Gestachia]

Here's a feature that I really want:

Have the ablity to embed SVG code and have it render as an SVG once a comment has been posted. I do almost all of my art in SVG and I don't want to use an image hosting service. (It would also be great to have this feature for dispatches/factbooks.)

It could be like:

Code: Select all

[SVG]<svg height="350" width="700" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g transform="translate(2.050114 -404.18754)"><path d="m-2.1 404.2h700v350h-700z" fill="#a00" stroke-width=".972598"/><path d="m36.8 404.2 24.1 74.5-63-46.1h78l-63 46.1z" fill="#003380" stroke-width="2.34625"/></g><g transform="translate(471.828 -.00394)"><path d="m153.172 275.00391h75v75h-75z" fill="#fc0" stroke-width=".976718"/><g style="clip-rule:evenodd;fill-rule:evenodd;image-rendering:optimizeQuality;shape-rendering:geometricPrecision;text-rendering:geometricPrecision;fill:#a00" transform="matrix(.21824515 -.2070191 .2070191 .21824515 161.23749 265.39754)"><path d="m-74.4 119.1v31.3h20.3v134.2h19.6v-134.2h38.6v-10.2c-10.8-3.3-16.4-12.5-22.4-21.1z"/><path d="m.4 89.8c13.3 20 23.5 35.4 27 48.6 9.2 34 2.9 57.2-9.7 71.1-28.5 31.5-85.2 35.8-102.7-33.1l-9.3.8-4.5-8.1c-.9-2.3-6.3-2.4-7.3.4l-1.6 10.2c-28.7-3.9-36.6 2.9-43.5 9.8l-2.6.8c-.6 2-1.3 5.7 1.8 7.5l2.5-.2c24.8 10.3 35 .1 44.9-5.9 13.7 42.3 43.6 60.5 70 63.6 38.8 4.5 72-27.1 77.9-67.9 2.3-16.4-1.8-36.7-12-56.7-6.5-12.7-16.9-26.2-30.9-40.9z" fill-rule="evenodd"/></g></g></svg>[/SVG]

It would also be nice if the BBCode and NSCode were unified.

[Haganham]

Niche, but it's very difficult to quote posts in locked threads.

If you're wondering why you might have a legit reason to quote a thread that's been locked, an example would be quoting part of the discussion in the secretariat archives archives in a current WA drafting thread.

[Sedgistan]

As far as significant projects go, "Accounts" is above a replacement forum in priority. So unless something breaks horribly with the forums, then there won't be any movement until Accounts are implemented. The hope is that Accounts will happen this year, but it's highly unlikely any significant work will be done on a replacement forum this year.

I should correct this; Violet was actually much further on with the replacement forum than understood. Shortly pre-crash, we were looking at starting an initial staff-only testing phase imminently.

This would also overhaul and upgrade RMBs too, and would likely include the ability for regions to create their own subforums and threads within their discussion area, with control over who can see/post in those.

I cannot provide any ETA at all on when any of this will happen, as our priority at present remains data recovery from the recent disk failure. When we do return to the forum replacement/RMB overhaul, it would need an extensive period of staff testing/feedback before we progress to player testing.