Update on Administration & Community Changes
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@loopback0 said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
"Fake the real number of posts sent to the client" seems like a fairly easy hack to slap on. Keyword: fairly.
@boomzilla said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
It might be doable via an extension.
But it shouldn't be done, IMO.
Alex's concern is that megatopics are unwelcoming and having them exhibit some behaviour that's unique to this forum and totally weird to anyone who's ever used a forum before isn't going to make them more welcoming.
Yeah. It's not something I'm terribly concerned about either way. Pretty much any new community can be kind of intimidating, which is why a lot of people lurk for a while before they start posting. Of course, there are also extreme extroverts who just jump in and do their thing right off the bat.
People, eh?
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@boomzilla said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
which is why a lot of people lurk for a while before they start posting
In my case, years!
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@boomzilla said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
People, eh?
Yeah, I think this community would be better off without them.
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@error said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@boomzilla said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
People, eh?
Yeah, I think this community would be better off without them.
What do you mean? We're all @boomzilla, so there's really only one person here.
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@error it's "execute", because of the racial connotations of that other word. Also, pretty sure the SockDevs have all moved on.
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@loopback0 said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
"Fake the real number of posts sent to the client" seems like a fairly easy hack to slap on. Keyword: fairly.
@boomzilla said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
It might be doable via an extension.
But it shouldn't be done, IMO.
Alex's concern is that megatopics are unwelcoming
They're unwelcoming for a specific reason. I'm trying to find a way to remove that reason without removing megatopics.
and having them exhibit some behaviour that's unique to this forum and totally weird to anyone who's ever used a forum before isn't going to make them more welcoming.
Every forum I've been to has at least a few megatopics. It's not the idea of them that's unique, but rather their number, and how big share of overall forum activity happens in megatopics.
Compare megatopics to modern social networking platforms. Over there, you have one huge feed with everything everyone ever said. And everyone posting only to that feed. To me, megatopics represent a modern way that internet communities interact - one huge pile of everything that everyone adds to. It could be argued they're more natural than splitting discussions into many small topics. I'm not going to argue that myself, though.
@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
since the forum main page a.k.a. recent posts is how most users navigate the forum, the probability of finding a megathread before finding the instructions for megathreads is very high.
But a previously unvisited topic takes them right to the first post, which (as per @abarker's suggestion) would have a link to the guide.
Oh, you mean like that. Okay. That makes sense.
Dumping users near the end of a topic rather than the start misses this so you're still going to need some way of explaining this suggested weird behaviour of megatopics.
When you put megatopics in separate category, a custom CSS could be used to add a message at the top about how megatopics work. This could be combined with hiding old posts for an ultimate solution to making megatopics friendly to newcomers.
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@dcon said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@boomzilla said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
which is why a lot of people lurk for a while before they start posting
In my case, years!
I think that's true of most people around here.
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@TwelveBaud said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
Also, pretty sure the SockDevs have all moved on.
At least officially.
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@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
Every forum I've been to has at least a few megatopics.
Totally but I've never been to a forum where they have a special behaviour.
@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
It's not the idea of them that's unique, but rather their number, and how big share of overall forum activity happens in megatopics.
Yeah, that might be a fair point. That and the mostly unobvious titles.
@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
one huge feed with everything everyone ever said.
That's part of what the megatopic guidance needs to convey. As well as simply guiding users that they can start at the top if they want or they can jump to the last page and get stuck in from there. No special functionality required.
FWIW I don't disgree with the idea behind the suggested special behaviour, just the implementation.
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@loopback0 said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@abarker said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
The rest would require a bunch of custom development, which would likely mean a fork of
as I don't see a broad use case for limiting what can be viewed in a topic by default.It's essentially jumping to the last page (or second-to-last page) if the topic happens to be in a special category and you've not visited it before which is... odd behaviour.
But then you get all the "what's a page?
" people...
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@error said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@boomzilla said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
People, eh?
Yeah, I think this community would be better off without them.
Then we need an extension so @Tsaukpaetra can like his how own posts.
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@topspin I like myself just fine, I don't need public proof of that...
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@Tsaukpaetra how would you remember which parts you like though?
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@boomzilla said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@Tsaukpaetra how would you remember which parts you like though?
I'm sorry, I don't understand the question...
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@Tsaukpaetra that's OK. It was rhetorical.
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@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
only the most recent 14 days/50 posts (whichever is smallest) would show up by default in each thread, and the user would have to click a special button on each thread they'd want to read in full.
Paging?
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I think megatopics could start deleting posts from the start and keep only the latest 1000 posts or something
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@sockpuppet7 said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
I think megatopics could start deleting posts from the start and keep only the latest 1000 posts or something
BLASPHEMY!!!
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@sockpuppet7 said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
only the most recent 14 days/50 posts (whichever is smallest) would show up by default in each thread, and the user would have to click a special button on each thread they'd want to read in full.
Paging?
Plus directing newcomers into recent-ish part of the topic instead of the first post, and also breaking the instinct for how to read earlier part of the topic.
@sockpuppet7 said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
I think megatopics could start deleting posts from the start and keep only the latest 1000 posts or something
@obeselymorbid doesn't approve.
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@sockpuppet7 said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
I think megatopics could start deleting posts from the start and keep only the latest 1000 posts or something
502 JEFF.
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@loopback0 said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
Every forum I've been to has at least a few megatopics.
Totally but I've never been to a forum where they have a special behaviour.
I've also never been to a forum where megatopics are considered a problem.
@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
It's not the idea of them that's unique, but rather their number, and how big share of overall forum activity happens in megatopics.
Yeah, that might be a fair point. That and the mostly unobvious titles.
Status Thread? Funny Stuff Thread? Bad Jokes Thread? Which titles are non-obvious? (Of course I'm not counting Garage, which is made entirely of in-jokes, but Garage being unwelcoming isn't exactly a problem.)
Edit: okay, there's that Blakey's thread about 3D printing, but we can just rename that one and that's all.
@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
one huge feed with everything everyone ever said.
That's part of what the megatopic guidance needs to convey. As well as simply guiding users that they can start at the top if they want or they can jump to the last page and get stuck in from there. No special functionality required.
We both know that people won't read the instructions and physically stopping them from doing the wrong thing is the only way to avoid them doing the wrong thing and complaining about it.
FWIW I don't disgree with the idea behind the suggested special behaviour, just the implementation.
I don't follow. So far all your objections seem to be about whether special behavior is needed at all?
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@dcon said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@sockpuppet7 said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
I think megatopics could start deleting posts from the start and keep only the latest 1000 posts or something
BLASPHEMY!!!
Why you hate @fbmac ?!!!
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@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
I've also never been to a forum where megatopics are considered a problem.
Because Jeff deleted them before they got big?
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@dcon as I said, I have never been to such forum.
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@M_Adams said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@dcon said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@sockpuppet7 said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
I think megatopics could start deleting posts from the start and keep only the latest 1000 posts or something
BLASPHEMY!!!
Why you hate @fbmac ?!!!
Because he keeps deleting shit. That's enough reason.
I remember one time when he deleted like 10 posts from an active discussion, and I flagged them all complaining about deletions - and the mods restored them!
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This post is deleted!
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I would upvote
, but I can't upvote or reply to a deleted post.
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@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
and complaining about it.
Of course, complaining about stuff is our raison d'etre. We definitely shouldn't discourage that.
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@apapadimoulis said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@Gąska @pie_flavor addressing concerns like yours is why I'm taking such a long time; my goal isn't to "gut the place" (it would have been easier to shut the place down and start over if that were the case), but to refactor things a bit. I don't know what that means yet, either, but I'll put it this way -- you might be surprised at some of the things I consider "unwelcoming".
For example, the so-called "megatopics" are not welcoming, because they aren't intuitive how to use. That doesn't mean we ban "megatopics", we just find a way to make them more newbie friendly, such as explicit categories, instructions at the top of each topic, tags, or those sorts of things.
I'm sure some of these things are
ed.Can NodeBB do threaded comments, that can easily be expanded or collapsed?
I like playing in the garage, and I don't have to keep track of details as much as I would in the technical threads. I'd truly miss my interaction there if it were gone because it is probably the only place (online or IRL) that I can say my actual thoughts on the particular topic. Bonus is that there are people who agree with some of my positions. It has been a place I can vent my frustration that almost everyone I interact act with hold different positions.
I read the forum in the Community Server days primarily for the Side Bar. Now, most technical threads go off on tangents that I can't keep up with. With the ability to ignore some comment threads I can still get to the technical issues (that I could help with, that could help me, etc.).
Technically, I've learned from asking questions, as well as other questions. I'd like to think I helped others.
As for the front page, Tales from the Interview was my favorite section.
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@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@dcon said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@boomzilla said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
which is why a lot of people lurk for a while before they start posting
In my case, years!
I think that's true of most people around here.
I was some time before I signed up too.
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@MrL said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
After the Great Changes, will I still be able to call people names and insult them anytime I want? This is what interests me. I mean inside the Garage of course.
For me this forum is the only place where I can say what I think, how I think it, without this insufferable forced politeness that infected everything.Similar to what @Zecc said, as long what you "want" is within reason. There are some undocumented lines that no one has crossed (that I'm aware of), and those are all the "common sense" ones. Beyond that, because we're a community, it ultimately comes down to intent.
Going with extremes, if your intent were to come here to discover what words will hurt specific people the most (example: maybe someone lost a child?) so you can "attack" them at every opportunity (whether overtly or subtly, on-forum or off), then you wouldn't be welcome here. Period.
If you were to learn that the way you were saying what you think / how you think it (example: making a lot dead child jokes) had the unintentional impact of hurting specific members, I'm certain you would self-moderate and find a different way to express your thoughts. And moreover, I don't think you'd find that to be "insufferable politeness" -- you're just being a decent person, like nearly everyone here is, nearly of the all of the time.
The reasons things got ugly are somewhat complicated (I'm learning them), but like Megatopics, the solution to fix things will be a lot simpler than you might be thinking, and not nearly as drastic.
@dfdub said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
I'm still convinced that third-hand accounts of the garage are much better than actually participating in it. Opening that thread cannot possibly as amusing as watching you try to explain it.
Having been studying it for weeks, this is my impression, too.
@Karla said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
I can say my actual thoughts on the particular topic. Bonus is that there are people who agree with some of my positions. It has been a place I can vent my frustration that almost everyone I interact act with hold different positions.
This is how a lot of people refer to the place too... I haven't "felt" it first hand, but I think I can understand. But in any case, Diversity of opinions/ideas is an important value.
@loopback0 said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
That's part of what the megatopic guidance needs to convey. As well as simply guiding users that they can start at the top if they want or they can jump to the last page and get stuck in from there. No special functionality required.
Pretty much this; something as simple as putting
[Metatopic]in the title, changing the owner, and appending a sentence or two of guidance (what to post, how to read, etc.) would solve 80% of the unwelcoming feeling. The next 80% might be to put them in sub-categories to help with sorting. Maybe the next 80% would be to figure out a sort of "graduation process" so administrators know when to convert a topic, start a new one, etc.As @boomzilla mentioned, nearly everyone starts as a lurker. Being more "welcoming" is about helping visitors become lurkers, and lurkers become contributors.
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@apapadimoulis said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
changing the owner
But... that's how I identify some topics!
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@boomzilla said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
complaining about stuff is our raison d'
eêtreAlso
ry...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@apapadimoulis said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
changing the owner
But... that's how I identify some topics!
We could potentially have a different owner/icon for each; doesn't have to be
for all of them.
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@apapadimoulis said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
Pretty much this; something as simple as putting
[Metatopic]in the title, changing the owner, and appending a sentence or two of guidance (what to post, how to read, etc.) would solve 80% of the unwelcoming feeling. The next 80% might be to put them in sub-categories to help with sorting. Maybe the next 80% would be to figure out a sort of "graduation process" so administrators know when to convert a topic, start a new one, etc.Broadly, those seem good ideas. But I think the last bit highlights one key issue (but you're certainly already aware of it), which is that it requires an active moderation (
).Very roughly, I see two kinds of megathreads: those that started as such, like the Funny stuff or Status; and those that evolved into it. But some of the first group likely failed to catch on, so tagging them as "mega" from the start would be misleading (plus, given our strong commitment to keeping a thread on-topic, some might have been intended as such initially but ended up discussing something else). And for those of the second group, it's impossible to know at which point e.g. the 3D printing thread moved from being "one person asking for help" (well not really since it was Blakey "I'm not asking for help!" Rat), to "mega thread for 3D printing." So in both cases, some sort of active monitoring (not just based on the number of posts!) is needed to decide when it's crossed the threshold, which isn't easy for a continuous growth.
Which actually also highlights something that, to me, is specific to this community: creating a thread is so expensive that we don't do it often. We tend to prefer finding a thread that already talks about a similar topic and reuse it -- and several threads end up created either as arbitrary Jeffing, or voluntary one, when it becomes obvious a topic becomes too much for the thread it started in.
I mean, look at the "recent" page (or your "unread" or whatever reflects activity): at the time I'm writing, I can see two new threads in the Help category (which is where we tend to create very specific new threads for each issue) and the rest is just old stuff -- some of it not hugely old (the Coronavirus threads are obviously fairly recent), but still old ones. I need to scroll further down to see a couple of recent-ish (less than a week or so) threads, but they're really the exception, not the norm.
So it's not just that we have mega-threads, it's that we almost exclusively have old threads. Some mega, some not, but all will have strayed somewhat from the original point being discussed, even when the overall topic stayed the same. In a sense, threads act like old-time newsgroups did, with a broad subject set and several very loosely related discussions around it.
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@remi said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
creating a thread is so expensive that we don't do it often
The solution is obviously a more efficient multi-threading model (
)You articled the unwelcoming aspect pretty well; I thought the forums were kinda dead for the longest time when I would pop in from time-to-time, because it was a bunch of old threads. I'm certainly others would feel the same.
But anyways all easily addressable through some a lot of small changes made over time, that we test, measure, and rollback if it they don't work. Before trying those though, getting the general direction/strategy is important, which is what's "taking so long" for me to get a feeling for. All on track though
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@remi said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
the Coronavirus threads are obviously fairly recent
The fact you are describing a 4 month old thread as recent is telling. Many would put that boundary at a week at most.
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@apapadimoulis said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
If you were to learn that the way you were saying what you think / how you think it (example: making a lot dead child jokes) had the unintentional impact of hurting specific members, I'm certain you would self-moderate and find a different way to express your thoughts.
I'd like to note that many forum members intentionally cling to these hurtful jokes for months with the express intent of making particular people feel bad. At least in garage. But the garage often leaks.
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@remi said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
creating a thread is so expensive that we don't do it often
Is it technically expensive, or culturally? There certainly seems to be an unusual aversion here to creating new topics - most communities are far too happy to make a new one without seeing that someone already did it yesterday.
One thing that confuses me about threads, and particularly megathreads, is them showing with the icon of the OP in the listing. The avatar of someone from 4 years ago isn't really relevant. Can we use the thread icon to show 'normal'/'sticky'/'mega' (by some heuristics or manual modding)?
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@Karla said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
I read the forum in the Community Server days primarily for the Side Bar. Now, most technical threads go off on tangents that I can't keep up with.
Wait, you're saying you COULD keep up back then?
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@bobjanova said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@remi said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
creating a thread is so expensive that we don't do it often
Is it technically expensive, or culturally?
Culturally. It's a running gag to complain that creating a thread is costly. I don't remember but there may also have been some
quirk in 
that made this even more relevant. Some users (blakey...) were particularly adamant in telling people to create new threads, which by contrast and to spite them (him...) probably helped making it into a meme.Somehow the fact this meme is still alive shows how the expected behaviour is to not create new ones... and how much this is part of the identity of the forums!
One thing that confuses me about threads, and particularly megathreads, is them showing with the icon of the OP in the listing. The avatar of someone from 4 years ago isn't really relevant. Can we use the thread icon to show 'normal'/'sticky'/'mega' (by some heuristics or manual modding)?
I agree, although like someone said up-thread, it helps with the visual memory of what thread is what. But that's really a detail and focusing on the wrong thing. While we're talking technical changes here, could we remove the number of votes in the thread list (it's the number of votes on the first post I think, which is totally irrelevant given, well, what we're discussing here)?
And if we could also have the number of unread posts instead (or in addition, whatever), that would be great, but I understand that this one is harder since it requires queries for each thread etc.
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@remi said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
Which actually also highlights something that, to me, is specific to this community: creating a thread is so expensive that we don't do it often. We tend to prefer finding a thread that already talks about a similar topic and reuse it
I wouldn't say this is specific to this community. But what makes us unique is that we don't ban for it. On every other forum I've been to, there's at least one person each month who'd be like "sorry for bumping an old topic but I don't feel like creating a new one" and be promptly dealt with.
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@apapadimoulis said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@MrL said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
After the Great Changes, will I still be able to call people names and insult them anytime I want? This is what interests me. I mean inside the Garage of course.
For me this forum is the only place where I can say what I think, how I think it, without this insufferable forced politeness that infected everything.Similar to what @Zecc said, as long what you "want" is within reason. There are some undocumented lines that no one has crossed (that I'm aware of), and those are all the "common sense" ones. Beyond that, because we're a community, it ultimately comes down to intent.
Going with extremes, if your intent were to come here to discover what words will hurt specific people the most (example: maybe someone lost a child?) so you can "attack" them at every opportunity (whether overtly or subtly, on-forum or off), then you wouldn't be welcome here. Period.
If you were to learn that the way you were saying what you think / how you think it (example: making a lot dead child jokes) had the unintentional impact of hurting specific members, I'm certain you would self-moderate and find a different way to express your thoughts. And moreover, I don't think you'd find that to be "insufferable politeness" -- you're just being a decent person, like nearly everyone here is, nearly of the all of the time.
That's reassuring. I don't think I ever went after someone's personal tragedy or tried to make people feel bad in that way. Or seen something like that here ever.
The reasons things got ugly are somewhat complicated (I'm learning them), but like Megatopics, the solution to fix things will be a lot simpler than you might be thinking, and not nearly as drastic.
You mean BBI? I have my theory, but I don't think it's suitable outside of garage, and probably even inside in current situation.
@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
I'd like to note that many forum members intentionally cling to these hurtful jokes for months with the express intent of making particular people feel bad. At least in garage. But the garage often leaks.
Nah, calling someone a retard or horrible human being for months is fair game, IMO, and very different from exploiting personal subjects to really hurt people.
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@bobjanova said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
One thing that confuses me about threads, and particularly megathreads, is them showing with the icon of the OP in the listing. The avatar of someone from 4 years ago isn't really relevant. Can we use the thread icon to show 'normal'/'sticky'/'mega' (by some heuristics or manual modding)?
Back in disco days when nearly everyone could edit titles they'd change so much that you never knew what you'd be looking for (though to be fair they tended to change only slightly at each iteration) and so for some of the big ones @PJH put some kind of special CSS thing for each one so you'd be able to find them.
Of course, removing the OPs would confuse many regulars because you know to look for
when you've got a 
bite.
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@remi said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@bobjanova said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@remi said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
creating a thread is so expensive that we don't do it often
Is it technically expensive, or culturally?
Culturally. It's a running gag to complain that creating a thread is costly. I don't remember but there may also have been some
quirk in that made this even more relevant. Some users (blakey...) were particularly adamant in telling people to create new threads, which by contrast and to spite them (him...) probably helped making it into a meme.Somehow the fact this meme is still alive shows how the expected behaviour is to not create new ones... and how much this is part of the identity of the forums!
Actually, as I recall, discourse does not handle large threads well, and certainly the likes thread was created to showcase that.
:
actually suggests similar already-existing threads based on your entered subject in the new thread screen, so that may contribute as well.@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@remi said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
Which actually also highlights something that, to me, is specific to this community: creating a thread is so expensive that we don't do it often. We tend to prefer finding a thread that already talks about a similar topic and reuse it
I wouldn't say this is specific to this community. But what makes us unique is that we don't ban for it. On every other forum I've been to, there's at least one person each month who'd be like "sorry for bumping an old topic but I don't feel like creating a new one" and be promptly dealt with.
I have seen forums which prevent necromancy using access restriction: If the last post in a thread is more than N months ago, only moderators can post to it, which automatically re-opens the topic for everyone else.
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@MrL said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@Gąska said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
I'd like to note that many forum members intentionally cling to these hurtful jokes for months with the express intent of making particular people feel bad. At least in garage. But the garage often leaks.
Nah, calling someone a retard or horrible human being for months is fair game, IMO, and very different from exploiting personal subjects to really hurt people.
I don't want to talk about garage content here, but some people did something that almost made me ragequit the forum out of anger, and the only reason I haven't is because I have nowhere else to go to (online). Some people kept referencing that even years after - specifically because they know how much it pisses me off.
And I'm not the only one. There were a few people who actually left because of shit like that. Hell, the latest ban wave was directly caused by a certain person figuring out how to push the admin's buttons and using that knowledge to maximum effect.
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@remi said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@bobjanova said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
@remi said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
creating a thread is so expensive that we don't do it often
Is it technically expensive, or culturally?
Culturally.
This is a thing.
I registered my account whenever I finally figured out that you couldn't see the garage as an unregistered user, but I've been posting regularly for less than a year.
In that time, I've created exactly one topic, and it was about my experience during the TWF Crisis and thanking Alex for running the site.
I thought much more than I would have on a normal forum about whether I should have tried to fit my post into a different TWF thread, or the status thread, or something like that.
In the end, I did make my own thread, but that second thought is part of the culture of the site.
While we're talking technical changes here, could we remove the number of votes in the thread list (it's the number of votes on the first post I think, which is totally irrelevant given, well, what we're discussing here)?
And if we could also have the number of unread posts instead (or in addition, whatever), that would be great, but I understand that this one is harder since it requires queries for each thread etc.
I think the more useful way to change thread displays is to display the time of the most recent post instead of the time of the first post. Presumably, the view has access to this information because it's the default sort criteria.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
I think the more useful way to change thread displays is to display the time of the most recent post instead of the time of the first post. Presumably, the view has access to this information because it's the default sort criteria.
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@izzion See, things are getting better already!
Seriously, was that time added recently? Or am I TRWTF?
