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Topic: Rethinking the "board index" (Read 5788 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: Rethinking the "board index"

Reply #15

I'm all for exchange of opinions.
And I'm trying to see what it can be done.
But then we need to be clear about the expectations.

So, obvious question: what is a "messenger" for you?
And with that I mean: what are the features that you see forums lacking and what are the features that you would see removed from forums?
Bugs creator.
Features destroyer.
Template killer.

Re: Rethinking the "board index"

Reply #16

Quote from: emanuele – So, obvious question: what is a "messenger" for you?
And with that I mean: what are the features that you see forums lacking and what are the features that you would see removed from forums?

In my opinion, the "messenger" function is a real-time communication without reloading pages, as well as notifications without reloading pages on authored and signed topics. These conclusions I made when I watched users who stopped posting on the forum, but continued to communicate with each other in WhatsApp.

In addition, on the forums, you need the "write" buttons to call users to action, and not be in the same row with the other buttons.

It is necessary for users to simplify the insertion of images in the post with one action.

So, developers need to make communication on the forum as easy as in messengers that are installed on users ' smartphones. Then users will not need to go from the forum to the messenger to communicate there.

But this is just my idea. I can't check it because I don't have a forum engine with this feature.



Example: the video shows realtime communication between two users in the Prime Forum plugin (WP-Recall) for WordPress
youtu.be/2MwrFUVYci8?t=1012
Last Edit: August 24, 2020, 02:07:17 am by forumovod

 

Re: Rethinking the "board index"

Reply #17

Example for comparison. How to engage guests in a forum discussion  :)

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Re: Rethinking the "board index"

Reply #18

Dang!
I thought I wrote a reply, but I guess I dreamed about! facepalm (BTW we really need emoji!!)

TL;DR: I partially agree with you.
I have some doubts on various aspects.
I'm going to list the doubts I have, if you have solutions or idea about them, any opinion is welcome as usual. ;)

1. resources - a) I'm not sure websocket could be a solution for most, b) keeping up with ajax calls may be taxing for the server (that depends on many factors,  of course, so there may be ways out),
2. moderation - if you are a forum moderator and have a topic unfolding in real-time you can basically give up any hope of moderating it "normally". The only strategy is to lock the topic before taking any action (and that raises the bar for moderators as well, because being present may not always be enough, if a fight starts out in a board and you are controlling another the number of posts exchanged between the fighters may not be irrelevant as it may be now).
3. topics coherence - from what I've seen in these years, admins are rather picky about how topics should develop, and which boards should be used for what, again giving people the option to "chat" would very, very likely lead to topics that are basically chats where almost any topic can be discussed (yeah, okay I'm exaggerating it a bit here, though it's to give you the idea of the problems I see behind a similar change in perspective), on top of that, chats tend to become pretty difficult to follow if more than three people write at the very same time:
Quote person 1 write
person 2 replies to p1
p3 replies to p1
p2 replies to p3
p1 replies to p2 on the first reply
p3 replies to p1 replying to p2 on the first reply
etc.
The chaos in a chat is always behind the corner.

This on the specifics of the "converting the forum to a chat".

Regarding your suggestions in https://www.elkarte.net/community/index.php?topic=5806.msg41034#msg41034 once upon a time, I would have dismissed as "people that cannot reply should not see the reply button", though now I see the point, and I tend to agree with you, even more because showing the reply buttons consistently makes it easier to work on the template with less variability. :D
Bugs creator.
Features destroyer.
Template killer.

Re: Rethinking the "board index"

Reply #19

Quote from: emanuele – This on the specifics of the "converting the forum to a chat".

No, this is not converting a forum to a chat. This is updating forum pages without reloading. The user can do this manually by updating the forum page in the browser. But this is inconvenient.
Is it difficult to make the forum automatically update the page viewed by the user?

Re: Rethinking the "board index"

Reply #20

I like the idea of using ajax where possible/reasonable. Page refreshes are rather disruptive. Sure, the server takes more frequent requests. Wouldn't that be at least partially offset by not having to send all the info redundantly, time and again? Just periodic checks for differential.

Re: Rethinking the "board index"

Reply #21

Websocket and ajax might be nice but ajax alone, I don't know.

I can see one of Flarum's plugin developers creating one plugin for flarum which you can see here: https://discuss.flarum.org/d/23473-websockets-locally-hosted-alternative-for-pusher

Personally, I do think future forum may use these while maintaining the basic / default forum structure.

I guess it doesn't matter whether you want call them a chat or not, so long the forum is cool? :P

Re: Rethinking the "board index"

Reply #22

Quote from: emanuele – Regarding your suggestions in https://www.elkarte.net/community/index.php?topic=5806.msg41034#msg41034 once upon a time, I would have dismissed as "people that cannot reply should not see the reply button", though now I see the point, and I tend to agree with you, even more because showing the reply buttons consistently makes it easier to work on the template with less variability. :D

I think it should be a Post reply form, but not a Quick Reply form.
Why do users suggest using a Quick Reply form where there is no option to attach an image to a post?

screen.jpg

screen2.jpg
Last Edit: September 04, 2020, 03:04:00 am by forumovod

Re: Rethinking the "board index"

Reply #23

Another idea is to motivate registration on the mobile users forum :)

screen2.jpg

Re: Rethinking the "board index"

Reply #24

How about board descriptions and stats being hidden/collapsed by default for a cleaner look? Or perhaps make it a tooltip?

Re: Rethinking the "board index"

Reply #25

I've done that before. :D Years ago, in fact, as a tooltip. I quite like it myself. One catch is that the standard title attribute is no good for a11y, so you'd probably want a backup of some sort (::after pseudo with hidden overflow is always a good dodge).
Master of Expletives: Now with improved family f@&king friendliness! :D

Sources code: making easy front end changes difficult since 1873. :P


Re: Rethinking the "board index"

Reply #27

Personally I found the Flarum index sight very confusing, although I did get banned while trying to learn and get aquinted with it. But I got into so much trouble with admins and such because of apparently wrong tags. And then of cause the rest which ended up getting me locked out. But, I just wanted the oldschool way of things, but had to try out Flarum as well. And I thought maybe it was the best forum go for as there was really issues all around in regards of forums. And first and foremost it had to be mobile ready. Well... Got started on it and got banned from the support channel and that closed down that for me putting out the fire for further giving it a chance.

But in any case I never reallly like this new modern ways of things. And that was the reason I guess that I initial wanted FluxBB for a forum - but they never got around making it Mobile ready and drowned it pretty much. FluxBB main programmer went for Flarum, so I thought it might be my best hope even if it was in Beta and who knows which direction it will take.

In any case still sniffing around, and there is nothing really solid as such where I am thinking, this is it. Everything seems to have it drawbacks and benifits. Although down on SMF stable or SMF RC and ElkArta for now of choices which I still am testing. In any case - dunno about making it work like Flarum, I guess it will make it differently from SMF, you already made this a pretty nice application already with upgrades and modernizing it. But personally I'm not the person who would like to see any flarum tagging nonsense way of things - But hey, maybe there is a marked for it.

Dunno. Maybe optionalize it.

Re: Rethinking the "board index"

Reply #28

For me boardindex should offer 3 things to be shown at the same time(on desktops, on mobile each could be a tabbed page):

- the boardindex with board names and unread indicators. Other info upon request(if space permits, shown, otherwise tucked away as a popup/dropdown perhaps)
- recent posts, this time just with time indicators(maybe even just human readable times, like "15 hours ago")
- ability to read a preview of the very lastest posts from your unread boards. It should use the already existing "last post" of each board..but maybe not show more than 5-6 of them at the same time.

The idea here is that the index gives you the navigation, the recent posts giving you a log of everything happening- while the third will specifially peak your interest(hopefully).


Just copying the Flarum/Discourse layout would be a miss I feel...better to embrace what Elkarte already is showing. IMHO.