Communications (Forums) Tech Development

[Hypatian Commonwealth]

Are we going to lose stuff like what happened with the Jolt migration?

[Reploid Productions]

Are we going to lose stuff like what happened with the Jolt migration?

Hopefully not; in theory the existing forum can be ported into the new one. But if not, we own this forum. Worst case scenario is we can't migrate the existing material, and leave this one as a locked read-only archive. Since it's on our servers and we have all the data, it won't vanish into the aether the way the Jolt one did once they closed down.

[Sunset]

Oh - neat but tricky! Nested replies would be really neat - particularly for General threads or OOC RP discussion threads. Instead of replying to the topic/thread, reply to a specific post & poster with those replies forming their own 'branch'. Very nice for keeping separate sub-topics at least somewhat organized!

[Kyrusia]

Oh - neat but tricky! Nested replies would be really neat - particularly for General threads or OOC RP discussion threads. Instead of replying to the topic/thread, reply to a specific post & poster with those replies forming their own 'branch'. Very nice for keeping separate sub-topics at least somewhat organized!

If it can be turned off by the thread OP, at least. If I want Reddit, I'll go to Reddit. Otherwise, I'm personally just fine with the quote function. :shrug:

Edit: More generally, while I am supportive of NS "Getting with the Times" (especially in terms of a qualitative merger between gameside and forumside, and smoothing out the issues of that present disconnect) as it were, some things do concern me with regards to NS potentially getting tangled in the drive to "update" for the sake of updating, adding needless, complicating (not "complicated") features, losing its identity and part of its charm in the process. 'Course, maybe I'm just old.

[Sunset]

Oh - neat but tricky! Nested replies would be really neat - particularly for General threads or OOC RP discussion threads. Instead of replying to the topic/thread, reply to a specific post & poster with those replies forming their own 'branch'. Very nice for keeping separate sub-topics at least somewhat organized!

If it can be turned off by the thread OP, at least. If I want Reddit, I'll go to Reddit. Otherwise, I'm personally just fine with the quote function. :shrug:

I was actually thinking just that as I went about my day - it would be nice but yes, an OP switch should turn it off and on. Then I thought 'Hmm, you know what else would be nice? Threads that auto-lock and/or delete themselves...' But we're also having a heat wave so that idea might not be as well thought-out.

[Kyrusia]

If it can be turned off by the thread OP, at least. If I want Reddit, I'll go to Reddit. Otherwise, I'm personally just fine with the quote function. :shrug:

I was actually thinking just that as I went about my day - it would be nice but yes, an OP switch should turn it off and on. Then I thought 'Hmm, you know what else would be nice? Threads that auto-lock and/or delete themselves...' But we're also having a heat wave so that idea might not be as well thought-out.

My first thought was "How would the thread default its organization?" which is what lead me to the Reddit comparison: the immediate conclusion I reached was "by most lively sub-topic," which made me recoil with, "WHAT ABOUT MY HIGHLY-STRUCTURED POSTING ORDER?!" I supposed in such an instance that it could lead to instances where every post having one sub-topic reply, which just seemed to either defeat the point (for some RP threads at least), or potentially look really, really cluttered and clunky, depending on execution. Or, where every time the OP(s) posted, their posts just had chains of replies. So, yeah, "Can I turn this off pl0x?"

As an enhancement on the quote feature, though: have the "Quote" option be replaced with "Reply." Lead the replying post with simply "This is a reply to [link to post]," rather than the full quotation. Might also help with things like malicious quote editing, for what it's worth, though with the drawback of making line-by-line responses to posts a bit more onerous.

[Merni]

As an enhancement on the quote feature, though: have the "Quote" option be replaced with "Reply." Lead the replying post with simply "This is a reply to [link to post]," rather than the full quotation. Might also help with things like malicious quote editing, for what it's worth, though with the drawback of making line-by-line responses to posts a bit more onerous.

It would also:

• make it difficult to reply to more than one post in a single reply,
• make people keep clicking between the original post and the reply (since they can't see the original text in the reply)
• make it difficult to reply to one point in a long post (and as you said make line-by-line replies difficult)

... and more.
That kind of simplistic reply mechanism works well for places like Reddit or Discord, where a message is maybe a paragraph long at most. (And both have rudimentary quote features as well.) It's not ideal for a forum like this where posts can be very long and detailed. (Especially in places like the GA, where line-by-line responses are very common.)

[Kyrusia]

[snip]

Fair, fair.

[The Blaatschapen]

Idea: Partial forum bans.

People can be banned per subforum. So that they can publicly appeal their ban in the Moderation subforum. Not sure if we want to do this from a mod perspective, but it's worth thinking about (definitely not the highest prio though). If they then abuse it, of course, the mod can always go for a full ban.

(this post was made without consultation with the rest of the team)

[SherpDaWerp]

People can be banned per subforum.

Relevant: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=506796 & memberlist.php?mode=group&g=21

[Reploid Productions]

Idea: Partial forum bans.

People can be banned per subforum. So that they can publicly appeal their ban in the Moderation subforum. Not sure if we want to do this from a mod perspective, but it's worth thinking about (definitely not the highest prio though). If they then abuse it, of course, the mod can always go for a full ban.

(this post was made without consultation with the rest of the team)

I feel like this one has merit, but at the same time I also wonder if making our ability to ban that granular would actually take some of the actual teeth out of the punishments and diminish the effectiveness of bans. Kinda like grounding a misbehaving kid from one specific video game for a week isn't likely to effect much change in behavior, the kid will just play other games for that week and wait out the clock and likely keep right on misbehaving; whereas grounding the kid from all their video games for that week in theory will have a more substantial impact.

Also starting to think some of these ideas could probably benefit from their own dedicated discussion threads, which we can then link to up in the OP here as a sort of central organizing space. I think the big ones that would benefit from more dedicated discussion are probably:

• New forum's formatting code:
  
  1. What code effects are desired? What should be avoided?
  2. Restricting use of particular codes? EX: Warn tag only works for mods. But are there any other visual formatting effects that should be limited by forum?
• Post/thread "likes" or other reacts:
  
  1. Should we even HAVE likes/reacts?
  2. Should likes apply to threads, or individual posts?
  3. What about upvotes/downvotes like exists for Dispatches?
  4. Should we have a variety of "reacts" such as thumbs up/down, hearts, etc a la Facebook?
  5. Potential areas for abuse (like-spamming/notification spamming and harassment), and ways to mitigate it. (EX: Players get a limited number of reacts per day?)
• Thread tags:
  
  1. Apply to specific forums such as RP or to all forums? Or have specific tags only available to specific forums (for instance IC/OOC available to RP forums but not NSG.)
  2. What tags would be most useful?
  3. Should there be an upper limit on number of tags, or restriction to prevent use of conflicting tags?
• Foe lists:
  
  1. Hides quotes by the Foe'd user as well?
  2. Merely hides posts by the Foe'd user, but the hidden post can still be clicked to view like it currently works, or posts by Foe'd user are completely invisible to the Foe-ing party (similar to how FB blocking does it)?
• API integration:
  
  1. What information should be available via API? What's useful?
  2. What functions, if any, should scripts be able to perform via the API?
• Subforum-specific bans:
  
  1. Would these actually be useful?
  2. Subforum bans vs full-forum bans in practical application (how often do we really need to bar somebody just from a specific subforum?)
  3. Should permanently applying a subforum-only ban be an option on the table? When might this be practical?
  4. Should players be able to request to be banned from a specific subforum? (EX: Player is aware they get worked up into a rulebreaking rage any time they stick their nose into NSG, and requests to be blocked from accessing it.)
  5. Heck, related to the above, would it be useful to give players the option to hide specific subforums from their view?

So if someone would like to start some threads on these (or dig up old threads that already exist on these subjects I suppose), please feel free and post the links here so I can keep the OP organized. These aren't the only ones, if you can think of some other forum-related subject that could benefit from discussion, go for it!

[Great Algerstonia]

I think a good compromise is having forumbans default to every forum except the Moderation forum so that rulebreakers could appeal their bans there

[Rhim Flavezztowland]

I've created a dedicated discussion thread for the suggestion of a like/react feature in the new forum system as Reppy felt like it could benefit from having its own discussion thread: https://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=508243

[The Hazar Amisnery]

Are you creating one completely from scratch or are you integrating some 3rd party software into NS?

[Merni]

Are you creating one completely from scratch or are you integrating some 3rd party software into NS?

Wouldn't integrating a third-party forum package cause all the same problems we have currently with phpBB?

[Reploid Productions]

I've created a dedicated discussion thread for the suggestion of a like/react feature in the new forum system as Reppy felt like it could benefit from having its own discussion thread: https://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=508243

Awesome, thanks! I'll link that in the OP momentarily.

Are you creating one completely from scratch or are you integrating some 3rd party software into NS?

Wouldn't integrating a third-party forum package cause all the same problems we have currently with phpBB?

Exactly. We're coding this one from the ground up to be tailored specifically to our sometimes rather uncommon needs.

[Equestrian States]

An extremely minor request, and one that might not even be necessary as there are a few NS Sports mods who are probably aware of this already, but I'd like to specifically ask that the [pre] function be kept in the new forum, as it is extremely useful for us event hosts in the NS Sports community.

[Great Algerstonia]

Once the RMB-forum merge / new forum is completed, will players still have to report regionside rule violations via GHR?

[Frisbeeteria]

Once the RMB-forum merge / new forum is completed, will players still have to report regionside rule violations via GHR?

That question is unanswerable. We'll see what it looks like if/when it comes out.

[Esternial]

1/ Will there be (some) additional fonts?

Might be a nice-to-have so people can "fancify" their OPs and such - within reason.

2/ Could be useful to allow users to "report" a post to Moderation from the thread itself rather than having to trot to Moderation and make a bespoke thread on it. Through some automation/parsing magic it might also make it easier to trawl through these reports.

[Merni]

2/ Could be useful to allow users to "report" a post to Moderation from the thread itself rather than having to trot to Moderation and make a bespoke thread on it. Through some automation/parsing magic it might also make it easier to trawl through these reports.

This has already been suggested under Moderation Tech Dev.

[Strike]

Since you are coding the forum yourself you should be able to easily avoid some of the common fouls that re-development through third party apps frequently runs in to.

But as always, the common mantra applies:

• Don't remove any functionality that already exists
• Don't complicate things that aren't complicated (Example, trying to group formatting tags into sub groups that would then double or triple the amount of clicks required to actually apply them)
• Don't make things bigger for the sake of making them bigger or 'more modern' (If you can currently see 12 widgets on a single page, making it such that you can only see 2 of the same widgets on a single page is not an upgrade). This is a common "looks" upgrade that reduces functionality and long term user experience
• Anything that breaks any of the above rules should be user-configurable to put back the way it was

As far as feature addition, the only thing I remember about the Jolt forum that was nice that the current forum doesnt have was the ability to click the number of replies in a thread on the forum page and get a pop up that listed how many of those posts were contributed by each nation participating in the thread. Certainly not required, but it was neat.

[Wymondham]

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.

[Esternial]

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:

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.

[Haganham]

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