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Viking
Precursor
I was originally going to post this in the anime thread, since that's the thread that made me twitch enough to write this. But then I realized that since that thread moves retardedly fast, the post would be pushed ten pages back in no time. So remember that's where I were when I wrote most of this.

I'm gonna take a moment to rant here, because that thread is becoming unreadable for me and is nothing but an exercise in frustration, and is going off topic at the drop of a hat anyway. And yes, I fully realize the stupidity in telling the people who made the actual software and had this utility in mind that they're using it wrong, but I know all too well myself that you need unrelated people to tell you what's wrong with your project. But, clearly, I don't care, and I just picked this example since it was on the last page of the thread. Or was, when I was there. For me, with max posts displayed on one page.

Now, I'm going to start off by saying that I like this here taiga forum (the fact that most of the skins suck notwithstanding). It's a solid piece of software, well-supported, and is overall something new as far as forum software goes. However, at heart, it's still meant to be a forum software, and you presented it as a forum software. The difference, to me, between a forum and instant messaging such as IRC or Skype is the amount of thought and length put into each message. On IRC, I can often write up to 8-10 lines in a row myself, without anyone else talking, and that feels natural to me. In instant messaging clients, messages appear close together, and you can always scroll up and then down, and everything is there in the log.

A forum isn't like that. A thread on a forum has pages. If the conversation started four pages ago, you have to read through all pages if you weren't in on it from the beginning. So you load the pages and read. Traditionally, double-posting is frowned upon on forums, especially when it could easily have been put in the same post. I'm definitely of that opinion.

Which brings me to my example. Hi, ark, you already heard me make a fuss about this on IRC. By the way, "frankly i don't really care what people think a "forum" is or should be" is a bad mindset when you're trying to make a sell.

Now:
Quote from arkarian:
hsotd is just bad

Quote from arkarian:
like

Quote from arkarian:
fucking horrible and not enjoyable in any way


This, to me, is a prime example of using a forum to instant message. There was no reason for this to be three posts. Watch:
Quote from arkarian:
hsotd is just bad. like, fucking horrible and not enjoyable in any way.

Much better.

This is not IRC. This is not Skype. "it's easier/better to type what you're thinking as you think it, sort of like a real conversation" is a valid idea, but when it turns a thread into a 200+ page mess where post/pagecount is artificially inflated by 4x just because people use it as instant messaging, it gets out of hand. Following such topics becomes horrible. It's a good idea to think through what you're about to say in real conversation too.

Part of my problem was that every post was accompanied by the postbox and avatar of the poster. I was told about chat mode. I checked it out. That's not a solution, because you still have the problem with inflated post and pagecount. It's still no IRC.

Now, I clearly understand that nate and ark wanted to make some sort of forum/instant chat hybrid, and realtime updating of boards and threads goes a long way there, and the implementation works wonderfully, but the application of it doesn't. There needs to be more of a distinction. You can't really design a forum but try to make an instant messaging client. Not saying you can't have both.

So?

One of the things is that chat mode doesn't quite cut it. Here's what I feel could be done with it to make it work:

- Minimize it even more. Basically, it should look more like this:

arkarian: so guys
arkarian: what do you think of metroid
arkarian: i think eh's a pretty cool guy
JaggerG: I prefer Halo.
JaggerG: eh doesnt afraid of anything.
Poision Envy: Zelda is better because he has a sword
arkarian: i'm a sexy beast

I'd put lines inbetween the... lines, but couldn't remember if there was a command for that. Bascially just leave little to no space between the content of the post and the post box. And keep the username on the same line to minimize space.

- Here's the big one: more posts per page. If a thread is a chat, you want more than 50 posts per page. If each "full message" takes, say, on average, three posts, that means that on one page, you have 16 messages (alright, 16,666666..., but that's not the point) instead of the 50 you asked for when you set that in your thread options. At the moment, chat mode is an insufficent forum/chat hybrid. With IRC support, it'll just get even worse, if half of the people in a conversation treats it as an IRC channel and the other half as a forum thread. Which brings me to my next point:

- While the "chat mode" view should remain as an option for any thread, the threadmaker should be able to set a thread to chat mode with a checkbox to the left there, together with Static and Poll, which would make the thread default chat mode for everyone who enters it, and not possible to change by people who aren't the threadmaker. These should be marked in the same way as Statics and Polls, like so:

Chat: Who likes bacon?

And as such, threads that are chat should have a higher possible posts per page, and probably a fairly high default as well. And these would be the threads you can hit up via IRC too. Thus, we have a forum, which also offers great support for instant messging, but when one starts getting used as the other, it simply doesn't work in the long run.

I have made my point.
Thread title: 
Edit history:
nate: 2010-10-07 07:27:33 am
yeah, all great suggestions. pretty sure you made this thread because you thought if you did some of this stuff would be implemented. and you're right. ;)

i'm pretty tired atm so couple things to jog my memory since i'll be using this thread as a checklist for the next version:

- can i avoid counting posts in defaultlite threads? index on defaultlite and where not defaultlite in housekeeping
- what's the cpu time for it's good to play together with 500 ppp? 250 ppp? 100 ppp? can we use this to placate people who want smf printer friendly back?
- support fork separating static and defaultlite in board view in js.js - this checkbox could also use a tooltip "posts will not be counted" etc
Edit history:
arkarian: 2010-10-07 07:37:30 am
red chamber dream
i guess i don't get the big deal about post count. it's so 1996 it's incredible.

Quote:
- While the "chat mode" view should remain as an option for any thread, the threadmaker should be able to set a thread to chat mode with a checkbox to the left there, together with Static and Poll, which would make the thread default chat mode for everyone who enters it, and not possible to change by people who aren't the threadmaker. These should be marked in the same way as Statics and Polls, like so:

i don't get why it should force other users to use chat mode. if users don't want to use chat mode for a thread then they shouldn't have to. why would the thread creator care? they can force them to view the thread in chat view initially which is fine.
Edit history:
nate: 2010-10-07 07:39:52 am
lol i didn't think he meant you couldn't change it because he said default. but yeah we can't force people since there's no point. default is the same as forcing for 90-99% of people anyway since they don't bother to learn the software.

yeah i don't care about post count either which is why i'm willing to kill it for chat threads. i was just thinking about this yesterday actually. it wouldn't bother me one bit if none of my posts in the anime thread counted.
red chamber dream
definitely agree about making chat mode even smaller but the problem with that is, like you said, tf is still a forum. that's why i tried to still make chat mode look like forum posts. i'll have to think about this more.
red chamber dream
and yeah ... you can already force threads normal threads to default to chat mode. i didn't think this would be used nearly as often as static/poll threads though which is why it's just a checkbox on the first post edit area rather than an option when creating a thread. i still think that's the case.
static is pretty sda-centric
hey lol lets chat in kmans thread thatll make him real happy
Edit history:
arkarian: 2010-10-07 07:41:49 am
red chamber dream
furthermore, i don't like the idea of labeling "chat" threads differently from other threads because there's no such thing as a "chat" thread. there are just threads, some more popular than others, some of which some people use for different reasons.

it'll be interesting once irc functionality is in to see how it changes things. really hesitant to do anything until then.
what do you think of making a new view /forumposts/ that is the same as /allposts/ but doesn't show posts in chat threads
Bananas GOOD, Kremlings BAD
wow, seeing real-time updating is strange.
sup tjp
Bananas GOOD, Kremlings BAD
Hello -- nate
Bananas GOOD, Kremlings BAD
Hmmm -- I see when I try to click "BACKK" on my browser I go to the previous post, not the previous page...
that's right, that's so that you can hit reload and it won't take you back to the first page you saw when you entered this thread - it's also because people have a strong tendency to hit backspace when not inside the new post box and that's really annoying if you don't have this safety net there
if you click and hold down on back (or click the little arrow, dunno which browser you're using) you should be able to see the posts and you can just scroll down to whatever's below them
Bananas GOOD, Kremlings BAD
... it could get annoying if I want to quickly back out to the new posts/topics page.
Bananas GOOD, Kremlings BAD
I use FireFox
windows? try pressing Shift–Alt-U
the only key combo i use is s for send new post but i imagine they could be pretty useful if you're in multiple places in a single tab
http://support.taigaforum.com/post/forum_shortcut_keys_2.html
red chamber dream
Quote from nate:
what do you think of making a new view /forumposts/ that is the same as /allposts/ but doesn't show posts in chat threads

what are "chat threads"?
red chamber dream
was thinking about this thread in class this morning and here's what i came up with:

what kenny's talking about here doesn't really have anything to do with taiga forum. taiga forum is just a tool that lets you do many different things, and the way some of us on this forum have chosen to use it is totally unlike anything anyone else has ever done before.
making a bunch of short posts in irc-like rapid succession is something a few of us here like to do in the anime thread, but that really doesn't have anything to do with taiga forum. it's certainly not a "feature" we advertise; it's just how a few people are choosing to use tf at m2k2.

some people might not like that, but i don't think the "problem" is with tf but rather with us. i put problem in quotes because i don't think it's actually problem at all -- if users want to do that then great, they're taking advantage of tf's capabilities to do what they want. as an admin of this forum i don't have a problem with that.

if a user doesn't want to chat rapidly with users in the anime thread then they should just not do it. there's an ignore thread feature that will help. so i saw kenny was trying to talk about logh in there but clearly that wasn't a good place for it. the solution is just to make a logh thread. or even a thread called "the real anime thread for sane people". that would be great; then the people who want to talk about anime in a thread like that can do so.

think it speaks volumes that nearly all the threads on this forum follow the old template of single, substantial posts from users even though no one by any means has to do that anymore. clearly that's a formula that works. but there are other formulas that work too.
Viking
Precursor
Quote from arkarian:
i don't get why it should force other users to use chat mode. if users don't want to use chat mode for a thread then they shouldn't have to. why would the thread creator care? they can force them to view the thread in chat view initially which is fine.

Quote from nate:
lol i didn't think he meant you couldn't change it because he said default. but yeah we can't force people since there's no point. default is the same as forcing for 90-99% of people anyway since they don't bother to learn the software.


No, forcing the thread to be in chat mode for everyone was exactly what I meant. Essentially, it would be like making a channel instead of a thread. You can blame ark for this idea because when I complained about the anime thread, he told me to think of it like an #anime, which I can't because it's a forum thread and not a chat channel. But that's what chat threads would be.
Quote from arkarian:
Quote from nate:
what do you think of making a new view /forumposts/ that is the same as /allposts/ but doesn't show posts in chat threads

what are "chat threads"?

defaultlite is true.

looks like we've got a "separate but equal" debate going on here. safe to say not everyone agrees that the best way to handle it is to force some threads to be chat and others to be forum threads. insert your favorite free market capitalism vs. communism analogy here. i mean i agree with pretty much everything k.man's said except not allowing users to toggle things. i think turning off posts in defaultlite ("chat") threads counting for post count and upping max ppp will do a lot of good. ui stuff is fork's domain but it seems like for the sda marathon if you can make a more compact chat view somehow that might be a very good thing for people on smaller reses. if not then oh well, i don't really have much of an idea about such things. one thing i'm pretty sure about is that defaultlite needs to be totally decoupled from static since not every customer wanting a chat will want a static thread along with it and right now if they never use static threads then they will not have the concept of a defaultlite thread that's not a static thread, at least not without reading the nonexistent manual, which no one would do even if it existed.