So what does the new boards provide these cannot?

Brawlnstein · 07-25-2009 05:56 PM

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Anyone know a lot about message boards? Why are we changing? I assume because you either have a lot more access or perhaps less upkeep. Can anyone post in some layman terms the differences between the board softwares?

Does this mean the star system is going away?

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I personally would like a system where someone can rate a person and not a thread. Sure, people might get Karma bombed, but it'd be very entertaining to watch.

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Why are there any ratings and post counts and other dick measuring attributes at all? Dump them all IMO. They are all gameable/abuseable as far as I can tell. People should have to draw their own conclusions.

Brawlnstein · 07-25-2009 06:18 PM

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When you report a post to a moderator, you will be able to add a comment to let the moderator know what the problem is. No more need to send an extra PM or announce the problem in the thread and report yourself so that the mod will see what the problem is. Also, it allows multiple reporting of threads/posts so that when a mod gets into work in the morning, they'll head directly to the disastrous thread that got 403 reports first rather than slog through the 20 other reported threads with only one or two reports.

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Man, that's a rough slog for a forum mod to have to go through, 20 threads, ugh.

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Besides better pruning, they can also.... MERGE threads. That's right, when we start getting 20 threads about when I16 is being released, they can all be merged into one giant SOON thread. People who think their post deserves special attention by being the first in a brand new thread so they get more attention will be forcibly put to the back of the line where they belong, the cutters!

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Never seen the attraction in merging or the fascination some forumites have with, "WE ALREADY HAVE THIS TOPIC GAH." Most of the AT forums are already low enough traffic that I would do as little as possible to discourage participation.

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Because this forum software is 5 years old. It is also terribly overburdened for the amount of people we have using it (in terms of what it was designed to handle). There's a reason we had to have periodic purges, the database structure of the forums would break if not.

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It doesn't FEEL that incredibly obvious from an end user viewpoint and this may be a bit overstated but thus far it is one of the best reasons I've heard, thanks!

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Newer software allows better moderation tools No more mass deletions when one post needs to be pruned.

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I've never cared about this. Although I understand you sometimes can't blank the "trouble-causing post" because it's already been quoted downstream but sometimes a good earth shattering pruning does more to calm things. Sounds like more work for the mods actually, as they will be looked at to prune only the offending post and responses too it while leaving the thread intact and legible. Hmm.

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No more periodic name changing to avoid/confuse your past posting history.

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Hell yeah, name changes are a pet peeve of mine. Then again I understand that people love to be able to change their name and sometimes need to for a variety of legitimate reasons. The only solution I've ever seen to this was to make it something you have to PM a mod to do for you but we probably have too many users and too much traffic for that here. Loss of functionality is generally bad IMO.

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We will be able to have a more elaborate forum structure (forums with subforums for special topic areas) without getting bogged down in one huge page with a ton of sections.

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Blargh! How many more friggin' forums could we possibly need? Do we need a Blapper sub forum in the Blaster forum (or does it go in the Scrapper forum? ha) to help subdivide and make more false choice flame wars in the community? Maybe just another pet peeve of mine but I hate when people wander around in posts saying things like "As a Tanker" or "As a Corrupter" I understand the need to have subforums for ATs but I hate that people are so willing to divvy up into teams and cling to positions because of it.

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All of this will happen with a much lower server load when it comes to building pages people request, or adding new material.

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Sure, if it's better written and is less of a load on the server. My experience with software has lead me to believe that newer is not always better with regards to this kind of thing. In fact, you usually need some brilliant, nigh-revolutionary, software for this to be the case. I freely admit, I know very little about BB software so maybe our new one IS that!

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Additionally, it will look a lot better, and have more user options when it comes to how things are displayed.

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Looking better is purely subjective and I'm such a curmudgeon I hope it has a "old forums" skin option. But more options sound good even though you've mentioned we are losing options like name changes I'm sure it will probably be a net gain.

Thanks for the info! How did you come by it?

Brawlnstein · 07-25-2009 06:25 PM

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The new boards will:
- enforce minimum standards of spelling, grammar, and civility in discourse.
- the star system will be available but all star settings will be adjusted to reflect the actual value of a discussion.
- trolls will be identified before hitting send. Not only will their posts be filtered out but they will be painted bright blue as they sit at their keyboards.
- housing prices will adjust to reflect actual value, not artificial market fluctuations.

It's really GOOD software.

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LOL but can it stop me from quad posting like a [censored]?
Sorry everyone I just noticed what I did.

Orion_Energy · 07-25-2009 06:58 PM

More importantly, can we put spaces in our names?

Anywho, I've been around the forum circut in my day, and vBulletin is one of the best forum softwares out there. Not saying that UBB is bad (I think that's the name of our current software.), but.. I've just seen a lot of great things with vBulletin.

Chill_Out · 07-27-2009 07:54 AM

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All of those things and more. I assure you from what I heard from Ocho today, the new forums will be the cat's meow.

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But I wanted all that and a bag of chips.

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How about the whole ball of wax? ^_^