1. Improvements to the forum ?
- Posted by GreenEuphorian Jan 23, 2015
- 1673 views
Hello,
I am sure I am not the only user who would like to see improvements to the forum system. There are so many features that should be added (see the other forums).
Looking forward to seeing the improvements soon...
Cheers
Green Euphorian
2. Re: Improvements to the forum ?
- Posted by ryanj Jan 23, 2015
- 1577 views
Hello,
I am sure I am not the only user who would like to see improvements to the forum system. There are so many features that should be added (see the other forums).
Looking forward to seeing the improvements soon...
Cheers
Green Euphorian
I agree. In fact, I was thinking about some specific details we could discuss, and was going to post a proposal in the next few days, maybe tonight if I have time. Are there any devs who have time to start working on a few new features once the community decides what should be added?
3. Re: Improvements to the forum ?
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) Jan 23, 2015
- 1587 views
Looking forward to seeing the improvements soon...
What kind of improvements are we talking about?
-Greg
4. Re: Improvements to the forum ?
- Posted by GreenEuphorian Jan 23, 2015
- 1661 views
Looking forward to seeing the improvements soon...
What kind of improvements are we talking about?
-Greg
Notification for thread reply, personal messaging, karma points, etc
5. Re: Improvements to the forum ?
- Posted by ryanj Jan 28, 2015
- 1731 views
I noticed it is possible to categorize forum messages, just like wiki pages. This seems like a useful feature if we want to mark important announcements or answers to questions about specific topics.
What if we went a step further:
- Whatever categories are assigned to the first post of each thread determines the thread category.
- In the forum thread view, add a category column to the forum page to show the category of each thread. If multiple categories are assigned, show a comma-separated list of the first 3-4 categories (limit how much space it takes up in the table cell).
- Add a category filter section at the top. We could discuss what this would look like (drop-down box, horizontal list, show most popular or most recently discussed categories, etc.) It could default to showing all categories.
I think it would beneficial to be able to look at specific categories such as Euphoria development, website issues, standard library help, or specific projects like WEE, EuGTK, Redy, etc. which tend to have multiple threads that get lost in history. This would also work well with my "projects" page proposal. Each project could have a link to a category with the same name, which lets you see all discussions on the forum about that specific project. If someone will implement this, i am willing to go through the forum threads and categorize them.
6. Re: Improvements to the forum ?
- Posted by ryanj Feb 01, 2015
- 1480 views
Let me explain a little more:
The forum can be viewed in two ways: "Topic List" (threads) or "Message List" (indiviual posts in chronological order). I propose changing the topic list to a categorized view.
A category filter section at the top lets you select any category or all categories with a dropdown box and a Filter button.
Below that, i could imagine a few different options. Show threads from all categories by default. Or, a few separate tables of threads of main categories. Or, a table that shows main categories and information about the last posted thread of each category, which you must click on to set the filter to show threads of the selected category. Perhaps the main categories could be something like: Project, Support, Development, Website, Other.
This would use the category system that is already in place. The difference is it allows categories to be assigned to threads not just individual posts, and it makes categories more useful. This would be different from most forums, which force threads to be put in specific sub-forums. My proposed system would let posts be assigned to multiple categories at the same time, so you can filter them in different ways. For example, threads related to WEE would be assigned to Project, Editor, Application, and WEE.
7. Re: Improvements to the forum ?
- Posted by GreenEuphorian Feb 01, 2015
- 1495 views
I agree that categorizing messages is a good idea. However, basing the categories on the tags does not sound so good, because: it would lead to an indefinitely growing number of categories, and the categories' names would not be very well defined, as each user would be tempted to use his own term for a tag/category. What we need is a fixed classification scheme. And there should not be too many categories.
I venture a scheme like the following:
- Announcements, polls, administrative issues (creating a new thread here might be restricted to the administrators)
- Language development & various issues (discussions)
- Code, code code... (the code-focused area)
- Beginners & learners area (questions, resources, etc)
- Off-topic
In any case, I don't think that ther categories should be many.
8. Re: Improvements to the forum ?
- Posted by ryanj Feb 01, 2015
- 1460 views
I agree that categorizing messages is a good idea. However, basing the categories on the tags does not sound so good, because: it would lead to an indefinitely growing number of categories, and the categories' names would not be very well defined, as each user would be tempted to use his own term for a tag/category. What we need is a fixed classification scheme. And there should not be too many categories.
I venture a scheme like the following:
- Announcements, polls, administrative issues (creating a new thread here might be restricted to the administrators)
- Language development & various issues (discussions)
- Code, code code... (the code-focused area)
- Beginners & learners area (questions, resources, etc)
- Off-topic
In any case, I don't think that ther categories should be many.
You have a good point. I think multiple categories should be assignable for searching/filtering purposes, but perhaps each thread should have a "main category". which can only be one of the few specific categories that are defined by the admins. The main forum page would show those main categories, but if you want to filter for a more specific category such as "gui" or "WEE" or "Redy" or "tutorial" or whatever, than you can do that. How does that sound?
9. Re: Improvements to the forum ?
- Posted by petelomax Feb 01, 2015
- 1453 views
I agree that categorizing messages is a good idea. However, basing the categories on the tags does not sound so good, because: it would lead to an indefinitely growing number of categories, and the categories' names would not be very well defined, as each user would be tempted to use his own term for a tag/category. What we need is a fixed classification scheme. And there should not be too many categories.
Well, yeah, I agree the number of official/publicly-viewable tags should probably be limited. However I would also certainly not mind an unlimited number of personal/private tags, such as ignore-post/ignore-thread and, as you say, things that only have meaning for me, like sqops, strings, fp, repl, specs, exec, pbr, regex, preproc, threads, doc, todo, done (I could go on and on). What would be really cool is to click on a tag I have privately defined and get a list of all the posts that I've personally tagged with it.
Pete
10. Re: Improvements to the forum ?
- Posted by GreenEuphorian Feb 01, 2015
- 1456 views
It sounds very reasonable. So we would have a double classification system: broad categories (limited in number, as decided by the forum admins) and tags (unlimited, decided by the users).
