Communications (Forums) Tech Development

[Reploid Productions]

Do we know when we might get an update as to when development of this might start, assuming of course is hasn't already started behind the scenes? I appreciate that this is likely an extremely complicated project and do not wish to be a pest, but it is a project that a fair few members of the community, myself included are rather excited about.
Additionally, a cool thing to do when things get started in ernest, again assuming they haven't already, could be some sort of new forum dev diary so the community can follow developments as it progresses.

A lot of the base functionality is already well on its way, but a lot is still pending discussion of desired/plausible features. ^^;

A small feature, but it might be nice to add the ability to highlight posts in a thread - giving this "ability" to Moderators and OPs - to allow users navigating the thread to more readily see important posts and announcements.

I worked out a small visual POC below using a screenshot from the current forum:

(Image)

For OP-marked posts, it would obviously have to be a different color to avoid "Mod impersonation", but it would also mean Mods no longer need to use the WARN tags. Just tick a box in their reply to color their post with red righteous fury.

Ooh, interesting idea. Probably worth crossposting for the moderation dev side of things too.

I'd like it if latest forum topics were tagged with what sub-forum they came from. IG [Ge] General [NSSP] Nationstates sports.
It's always alarming to be diddling around gameside and see "explosion kills 300 in..." (7) only to realize it's some RP

Yeah, that would be handy. Had the same sort of thing happen plenty of times too. Heck, "Latest Forum Topics" has a lot of potential ideas floating around, might be worth getting a dedicated thread running just for that.

[Gandoor]

Couple of small features that might be useful for the new forums to include:
1. The ability to search for someone's posts within a certain thread - You can technically already do this on the current forums, but it's a bit clunky. (Best method I've found is going to the thread, clicking in the 'Search this topic...' box at the top of any page on the thread, hitting the enter button on your keyboard, then typing in the name of whoever's posts you wanna find in the thread in the 'Search for author' box and then either pressing enter again or clicking the search button) Maybe have it so the search page on the new forums has an option to enter in a thread title if you only want to find posts that were made in that specific thread or something.

2. The ability to hide signatures on a per user basis - Obviously not as a replacement for the current ability to hide all signatures, but for dealing with cases where a user has a signature that's really obnoxious to look at, but is still within the sig rules. Feels a bit overkill that the only options to deal with that so far are disable all signatures or adding the user to your foes list.

[Frisbeeteria]

The ability to hide signatures on a per user basis

That sounds like it would be difficult to code. What about this instead - the ability to collapse / suppress all sigs, and then just click an arrow or something to Show a player's sig? If possible, the game could remember your settings on a per nation basis, but even if it didn't, it's still superior to making the change in Settings to Show All or Show None.

I have sigs disabled by default, but I'm the mod who does most of the sig edits. I do this by opening the player's profile in a new tab (left click the player name), where the sig is prominently displayed. That way I never have to re-enable sigs, which I prefer not to see.

[Esternial]

The ability to hide signatures on a per user basis

That sounds like it would be difficult to code. What about this instead - the ability to collapse / suppress all sigs, and then just click an arrow or something to Show a player's sig? If possible, the game could remember your settings on a per nation basis, but even if it didn't, it's still superior to making the change in Settings to Show All or Show None.

I have sigs disabled by default, but I'm the mod who does most of the sig edits. I do this by opening the player's profile in a new tab (left click the player name), where the sig is prominently displayed. That way I never have to re-enable sigs, which I prefer not to see.

Perhaps it would be feasible to re-use the same mechanism used for "foes" (assuming something like that will be implemented)?

Adding someone to the foes list could then allow you to make the distinction to have their post suppressed, their sig suppressed or both.

[Pluvie]

I don’t know if this is something that’s been mentioned before, but I think a more extensive and better organized system of archiving threads might be really useful. At the moment, the archives are just kind of a mess of channels that are worth keeping but there’s only the recency of a thread to organize them. Something as simple as making an organization for each individual forum/board would make it a lot easier.

And I don’t mean having a separate archive for each channel (although a pinned channels with links for archives might work as well), I just simply mean like in the archives board there’s sections for each archive to separate them.

Anyway, this is just a small thing but I think it might be really useful for some channels to keep things neater. I also know nothing about code so if this would be way too difficult, feel free to laugh at me

[Comfed]

I don’t know if this is something that’s been mentioned before, but I think a more extensive and better organized system of archiving threads might be really useful. At the moment, the archives are just kind of a mess of channels that are worth keeping but there’s only the recency of a thread to organize them. Something as simple as making an organization for each individual forum/board would make it a lot easier.

And I don’t mean having a separate archive for each channel (although a pinned channels with links for archives might work as well), I just simply mean like in the archives board there’s sections for each archive to separate them.

Anyway, this is just a small thing but I think it might be really useful for some channels to keep things neater. I also know nothing about code so if this would be way too difficult, feel free to laugh at me

What do you mean by channels? Do you mean threads?

[Frisbeeteria]

a more extensive and better organized system of archiving threads might be really useful.

We mostly archive in place. When a topic has stopped attracting posts, it slowly sinks into the back pages of its forum Each forum (not channel) has topics organized by "last posting date". That's not something we can change.

I just simply mean like in the archives board there’s sections for each archive to separate them.

Once again, those are mostly mini-game sub-forums that were archived after the mini-game was done. No topics were moved there. That's just how they were created.

Something as simple as making an organization for each individual forum/board would make it a lot easier.

There's nothing simple about this idea. Some human would have to read portions of hundreds of thousands of topics (comprised of tens of millions of posts) and create an organizational system for it. You're talking many thousands of man hours to do such a thing. It's a solution in search of a problem, and our volunteer staff has better things to spend our time on.

[Pluvie]

a more extensive and better organized system of archiving threads might be really useful.

We mostly archive in place. When a topic has stopped attracting posts, it slowly sinks into the back pages of its forum Each forum (not channel) has topics organized by "last posting date". That's not something we can change.

I just simply mean like in the archives board there’s sections for each archive to separate them.

Once again, those are mostly mini-game sub-forums that were archived after the mini-game was done. No topics were moved there. That's just how they were created.

Something as simple as making an organization for each individual forum/board would make it a lot easier.

There's nothing simple about this idea. Some human would have to read portions of hundreds of thousands of topics (comprised of tens of millions of posts) and create an organizational system for it. You're talking many thousands of man hours to do such a thing. It's a solution in search of a problem, and our volunteer staff has better things to spend our time on.

Oh yeah I did not explain this well at all, I am so sorry haha. I meant in terms of the forum we have listed as “archives”. Like the way it only archives the important posts and such? My point was just that it might be nice to separate those archives into a place for each separate forum (so sorry for my bad terminology, it’s been a while since I’ve played this game religiously >_<). Sort of in the way we already have that for the WA channels but in one place and for each channel. I don’t mean archiving everything in this forum because heck no that is a terrible idea. Additionally, the only further organization I would ask for would be by individual forum so I imagine that would be easier to create a system for?

Maybe thats a better explanation of what I mean? And if I misunderstood your response, I apologize in equal measure

[Frisbeeteria]

Like the way it only archives the important posts and such?

Once upon a time that might have been true. For the past decade, it's primarily been a place where threads from F7 are moved to prevent them from being purged. It's always going to be sorted in date order. I suppose it might be possible to collect the NSG Senate threads, as those account for most of the contents ... but by that same account, you don't really need to sort them out as they are the bulk of the Archive. In short, it's still a solution in search of a problem.

[Pluvie]

Like the way it only archives the important posts and such?

Once upon a time that might have been true. For the past decade, it's primarily been a place where threads from F7 are moved to prevent them from being purged. It's always going to be sorted in date order. I suppose it might be possible to collect the NSG Senate threads, as those account for most of the contents ... but by that same account, you don't really need to sort them out as they are the bulk of the Archive. In short, it's still a solution in search of a problem.

Okay! Thank you for your time anyway! Have a wonderful day ^_^

[Reploid Productions]

Another thought that occurs to me regarding Foe/Ignore lists (crosses over into moderation tools dev) that could use some input:

Right now, when we get two (or more) players who just CAN NOT get along, but their bickering doesn't really rise to smackable levels, we'll tell them to put one another on Ignore. With the current forum, mods cannot see, let alone modify a player's Foe list. So in no particular order:

1. Should mods be able to see user Foe lists?
2. Should mods be able to ADD somebody to a user's Foe list? Essentially take current "Put one another on Ignore!" and turn it into "This is not just a suggestion, you're both ignoring one another now."
3. Should players be able to remove mod-added Foes from their own lists?
4. Foe history log that the player and the mods can see, so players can see when they added/removed someone from their Foe list?

My thoughts on the above in order:

1. Yes. Being able to see who has who blocked would be useful information when handling harassment complaints, similar to how we can see TG blocks gameside. It would help give players better protection in cases where somebody comes crying to us about being harassed when they didn't even block the 'harasser' and were basically just trying to goad the other person into a trap.
2. I'm a bit torn on this one. Given the number of times over the years where "Use your Foe list!" was ignored and ultimately turns into a sea of redtext somewhere down the line because they just CAN'T leave well enough alone, I do feel like mods being able to forcibly put the jilted players onto one another's Foe lists would probably help mitigate some of that where the player just doesn't like to use their Foe list for whatever reason.
3. Firm YES on removing mod-added Foes. A player removing a mod-added Foe and then going right back to needling that person would probably become another factor moderation would consider when evaluating those types of back-and-forth complaints.
4. Heck yeah, relating to the first point. It's a lot harder for somebody to bait another player into "harassing" them when we can see that they unblocked their harasser themselves.

[Tinhampton]

Yes on all four. I was thinking of this when I got to the Forsher/Shofercia controversy but apparently you've beaten me to it

[Twertis]

I don’t think that the forums should have an API for creating posts, but perhaps for updating them? Perhaps a region would want their forum page to consistently change linked news reports or something like that. A lot of regions put their government in their page and forget to change it.

I think it’s more of a question of whether it’s going to be a more “static” or “dynamic” API, if that makes any sense. In a dynamic case, like world happenings (i.e. RMB), you’re watching an RMB or the world and constantly refreshing to see new posts that come in. It can be used for accessing older posts or accessing posts irrespective of time, but it doesn’t seem to be designed to do so. Forum posts could be integrated just like RMB posts, with filters for subforum, specific threads, nations, time, and IDs. And you’d probably need a not operator as well, because filtering out one nation is a lot easier than filtering in every other nation.

Then there’s a more static API, which would be useful for trawling the forum in general rather than monitoring new posts. You can collect a list of subforums, and a list of threads from a given subforum ID, and a list of posts from a given thread ID. This could perhaps serve larger portions of data than the dynamic type, as it can expect less requests per minute.

You can see how these would have very different workflows. I could outline out some examples if it seems cryptic.

Regardless, I believe there needs to be a way to access user information (e.g. post count, posts, post count type (like ‘diplomat’), most popular subforum, nation, role (like admin)), threads within subforum, and posts within thread. Posts would have user, ID, thread ID, subforum, content (in bbcode), title, signature, date time, and generally anything you would see on the site. And there could be filters for user, time, and ID when accessing posts within a thread.

As a side note, I’ve had problems in the past with the API servicing non-standard characters from RMB posts (it throws an error). This could prove an issue with forum posts (I imagine non-standard characters are more common on the forums).

Also, in general, I think migrating is a necessary change, but don’t want to change RMBs or the forums from their current format. Forums aren’t chat rooms, and I think we should be sure not to turn them into one (like Tapatalk tries to). I’m even wary of automatic post generation. Also, I think preserving the current forum and its contents is the number one priority.

[Esternial]

Another thought that occurs to me regarding Foe/Ignore lists (crosses over into moderation tools dev) that could use some input:

Right now, when we get two (or more) players who just CAN NOT get along, but their bickering doesn't really rise to smackable levels, we'll tell them to put one another on Ignore. With the current forum, mods cannot see, let alone modify a player's Foe list. So in no particular order:

1. Should mods be able to see user Foe lists?
2. Should mods be able to ADD somebody to a user's Foe list? Essentially take current "Put one another on Ignore!" and turn it into "This is not just a suggestion, you're both ignoring one another now."
3. Should players be able to remove mod-added Foes from their own lists?
4. Foe history log that the player and the mods can see, so players can see when they added/removed someone from their Foe list?

1. Yes for the reasons you mentioned.
2. Yes, in fact I would add it as an alternative punishment aside from Warnings and Bans - consider it a "ban" on interacting with someone specifically rather than the entire forum.
3. Yes and no. They shouldn't be able to in the scenario I described above (i.e. the mandatory ignore acting as a lightweight ban) until the time of the "ban" is over.
4. Yes for the reasons you mentioned.

On this topic, though, what do you think about the fact you can still see your foe's posts when other people quote them?

Especially on NSG it kind of defeats the purpose if I foe-list a particular person and see their post being quoted directly underneath the obfuscated post.

[Jar Wattinree]

Another thought that occurs to me regarding Foe/Ignore lists (crosses over into moderation tools dev) that could use some input:

Right now, when we get two (or more) players who just CAN NOT get along, but their bickering doesn't really rise to smackable levels, we'll tell them to put one another on Ignore. With the current forum, mods cannot see, let alone modify a player's Foe list. So in no particular order:

1. Should mods be able to see user Foe lists?
2. Should mods be able to ADD somebody to a user's Foe list? Essentially take current "Put one another on Ignore!" and turn it into "This is not just a suggestion, you're both ignoring one another now."
3. Should players be able to remove mod-added Foes from their own lists?
4. Foe history log that the player and the mods can see, so players can see when they added/removed someone from their Foe list?

My thoughts on the above in order:

1. Yes. Being able to see who has who blocked would be useful information when handling harassment complaints, similar to how we can see TG blocks gameside. It would help give players better protection in cases where somebody comes crying to us about being harassed when they didn't even block the 'harasser' and were basically just trying to goad the other person into a trap.
2. I'm a bit torn on this one. Given the number of times over the years where "Use your Foe list!" was ignored and ultimately turns into a sea of redtext somewhere down the line because they just CAN'T leave well enough alone, I do feel like mods being able to forcibly put the jilted players onto one another's Foe lists would probably help mitigate some of that where the player just doesn't like to use their Foe list for whatever reason.
3. Firm YES on removing mod-added Foes. A player removing a mod-added Foe and then going right back to needling that person would probably become another factor moderation would consider when evaluating those types of back-and-forth complaints.
4. Heck yeah, relating to the first point. It's a lot harder for somebody to bait another player into "harassing" them when we can see that they unblocked their harasser themselves.

All of the yes for this, and if they removed the mod-add Foe only just to go back to their bickering, with the presumably still oblivious person, it'll make them liable to get warned via redtext. But Tin has a good point -- there should be a minimally mechanically enforceable limit where the player can not remove the Foe after a mod has instated it until an arbitrary length of time has passed, like say six months. Then once that limit has passed, the player can be free to remove the mod-added Foe, and are thus liable to get warned if they go back to their old ways.

On this topic, though, what do you think about the fact you can still see your foe's posts when other people quote them?

Especially on NSG it kind of defeats the purpose if I foe-list a particular person and see their post being quoted directly underneath the obfuscated post.

I don't think this can work given the forum software.

[Haganham]

On this topic, though, what do you think about the fact you can still see your foe's posts when other people quote them?

Especially on NSG it kind of defeats the purpose if I foe-list a particular person and see their post being quoted directly underneath the obfuscated post.

I don't think this can work given the forum software.

This is a discussion thread for the new forum software.

[Jar Wattinree]

I don't think this can work given the forum software.

This is a discussion thread for the new forum software.

Oh, then by all means, a way to snip the quoted posts of Foes would be great.

[Bears Armed]

Another thought that occurs to me regarding Foe/Ignore lists (crosses over into moderation tools dev) that could use some input:

Right now, when we get two (or more) players who just CAN NOT get along, but their bickering doesn't really rise to smackable levels, we'll tell them to put one another on Ignore. With the current forum, mods cannot see, let alone modify a player's Foe list. So in no particular order:

1. Should mods be able to see user Foe lists?
2. Should mods be able to ADD somebody to a user's Foe list? Essentially take current "Put one another on Ignore!" and turn it into "This is not just a suggestion, you're both ignoring one another now."
3. Should players be able to remove mod-added Foes from their own lists?
4. Foe history log that the player and the mods can see, so players can see when they added/removed someone from their Foe list?

Yes
Maybe
Maybe
Yes

[Wormfodder Delivery]

Would it be possible to add a Width attribute on things like images, boxes and sidebars?
On images it would help with being able to just resize them to what is needed and with boxes and sidebars it could allow for automatic text wrapping.

[CoraSpia]

Another thought that occurs to me regarding Foe/Ignore lists (crosses over into moderation tools dev) that could use some input:

Right now, when we get two (or more) players who just CAN NOT get along, but their bickering doesn't really rise to smackable levels, we'll tell them to put one another on Ignore. With the current forum, mods cannot see, let alone modify a player's Foe list. So in no particular order:

1. Should mods be able to see user Foe lists?
2. Should mods be able to ADD somebody to a user's Foe list? Essentially take current "Put one another on Ignore!" and turn it into "This is not just a suggestion, you're both ignoring one another now."
3. Should players be able to remove mod-added Foes from their own lists?
4. Foe history log that the player and the mods can see, so players can see when they added/removed someone from their Foe list?

My thoughts on the above in order:

1. Yes. Being able to see who has who blocked would be useful information when handling harassment complaints, similar to how we can see TG blocks gameside. It would help give players better protection in cases where somebody comes crying to us about being harassed when they didn't even block the 'harasser' and were basically just trying to goad the other person into a trap.
2. I'm a bit torn on this one. Given the number of times over the years where "Use your Foe list!" was ignored and ultimately turns into a sea of redtext somewhere down the line because they just CAN'T leave well enough alone, I do feel like mods being able to forcibly put the jilted players onto one another's Foe lists would probably help mitigate some of that where the player just doesn't like to use their Foe list for whatever reason.
3. Firm YES on removing mod-added Foes. A player removing a mod-added Foe and then going right back to needling that person would probably become another factor moderation would consider when evaluating those types of back-and-forth complaints.
4. Heck yeah, relating to the first point. It's a lot harder for somebody to bait another player into "harassing" them when we can see that they unblocked their harasser themselves.

Yes on all 4. The third is particularly important as obviously the mindsets of posters change based on an endless number of factors.

[Reploid Productions]

"Hide quotes of Foe'd user" is already on the feature wishlist for the new forum.

Would it be possible to add a Width attribute on things like images, boxes and sidebars?
On images it would help with being able to just resize them to what is needed and with boxes and sidebars it could allow for automatic text wrapping.

Not too sure on this, especially since that sort of resizing of an image doesn't actually change how big the data is. With how many people access the site via mobile device these days, I don't think we want to be building in a convenient way for somebody to make a sneaky "waste somebody's mobile data" thing, similar to how we don't permit videos to be embedded. Boxes and sidebars are a maybe, it depends on what the new forum's NScode will be like. NSCode isn't quite as limited as BBCode is, but it still can't go full-on HTML customizeable.

[Twertis]

Oh yeah, it would be nice to fix the search system when put in " characters (which denotes n-grams). Currently - and + are treated as search operators, rather than search characters, so searches like "Nationstates++" or "E-Army" are treated as "nationstates" and "army", respectively.

[Wormfodder Delivery]

"Hide quotes of Foe'd user" is already on the feature wishlist for the new forum.

Would it be possible to add a Width attribute on things like images, boxes and sidebars?
On images it would help with being able to just resize them to what is needed and with boxes and sidebars it could allow for automatic text wrapping.

Not too sure on this, especially since that sort of resizing of an image doesn't actually change how big the data is. With how many people access the site via mobile device these days, I don't think we want to be building in a convenient way for somebody to make a sneaky "waste somebody's mobile data" thing, similar to how we don't permit videos to be embedded. Boxes and sidebars are a maybe, it depends on what the new forum's NScode will be like. NSCode isn't quite as limited as BBCode is, but it still can't go full-on HTML customizeable.

Well, I know that something like making responsive design won't be possible, but I certainly hope that it will allow us to do some really cool stuff.

[Esternial]

Notification of warnings. If a user is warned on forumside, they should be notified of it in some notifications section. I have seen users be warned and them not realizing it because they've never seen the public forum post.

Would this be a TG notification or via the Notices pages?

Regardless, this could be expanded a bit further to have more forum-to-gameside notifications. For example:

- Someone replied to you in a thread*
- Your post has been edited by Moderation

*perhaps give posters the freedom to (1) enable this kind of forum notifications or (2) enable it for followed/bookmarked threads only. Having it active by default could get a bit spammy if it notified you of every reply to your posts - though personally I would keep it enabled.

[Wormfodder Delivery]

Could the "Your Forum Posts" site be maybe fixed?
It sometimes shows quotes correctly, but sometimes it doesn't which makes it sometimes hard to see which posts are the actual user and not him quoting someone else.

Correct Quote depiction


Incorrect Quote depiction