I'm starting this topic because we are having way too many topics that need moving - at least one every day that I visit. In the past, a topic would need to be moved less than once a month....maybe once every 6 months.
I don't mean this to be a request to people to be more careful (would be futile). I mean it to gather thoughts and opinions why this is happening. Because this moderation system is already too time consuming, and this really shouldn't be happening.
I think it might be related to the forum index (lists of boards) is in small text in a small column, and people aren't bothering to read them all before they make a choice and post a message.
So a solution to that might be when we make the redesign (supposedly when 1.0 is released) that we make the index a full page, like in the other forums. So for example, it would be in larger text, and take the place of Recent Topics.
But maybe others have a different idea about it? Please feel free to share your thoughts 🙂
My main thought on this is that it should be trivial to move topics, but we shouldn't worry so much about leaving a link behind in the previous location, as it just clutters things further. Instead I would prefer it if the act of moving a topic sent an automated email to everyone who had contributed to say that it's been moved. It should also add an automated post to the topic stating where it's been moved from so that it appears in the unread posts list.
Yes we'll get occasional 'where did my post go' messages but hopefully, in most cases, the email will preclude that.
As for the list of boards: I don't mind the list on the left, but it doesn't leave room for descriptions of each board - you only see those once you've selected a board if you look at the breadcrumbs at the top. At the least those descriptions should be added as tooltips to the board list, but preferably exposed by default, as smaller text under the board title (perhaps with a preference in the user profile to turn them off). Seeing the descriptions might help people better target their posts.
Have you considered excluding the board name from topic links? This would avoid the need to create a redirect to start with.
I'm not sure how the internal data storage works (probably only @doctormo knows), but I've seen other forum softwares simply use IDs for topics, which avoids a lot of problems that would otherwise arise currently (e.g. renaming a board or renaming a thread).
To maintain a human-readable link some other forum software appends the thread title to the ID somehow, but usually it's optional (i.e. the link works without it as well).
@doctormo I wasn't aware there was an open issue for this - I was just responding to Brynn's request for feedback, and had seen another post from her saying that topics won't generally be moved until a redirect is available. Having it only show for a week seems like a good solution to me.
Dr. Mo,maybe I'm missing something, but in the screen shot - where does it allude to the topic being moved? Showing for a week is a good idea, but I need to see the words, 'topic moved'. I also like the idea to have an auto email sent, maybe not to everyone who posted, but at the very least, to the orig poster.
Brynn, my take on the issue in the first place - to me it looks like there are a lot of Inkscape newbies posting in 'Beyond the Basics' forum instead of the Basic one. Perhaps they think since they can't figure out the issue, and it's beyond the normal stuff, that it's automatically an advanced question, and so they are afraid no one will answer in a basic forum. Other forums give a brief description, which I think greatly helps know where to post. Perhaps a desc in basic index, could end with, if unsure where to post, post here....
Many visitors won't know if their question is a beginner or advanced... a question is an unknown. The two fora should be combined into "Help with using Inkscape".
Having other categories outside of help/usage, like the Tips/tricks, contests/challenges, personal galleries, news/events, website, forum issues, jobs... those would be useful to have separate.
I also don't see any indication in the screenshot which message was moved either. Unless it's that strange looking icon on the left, and the title being grayed out? I don't really care what it looks like. It doesn't need to look different at all. (Although appending "(moved)" would be nice.) The only thing that really matters is that when you click on it, you go to where the message was moved to. And that needs to be permanent....which is why the "moved" is important.
Because if the visual cue disappears after a week, then the fact the topic was moved is lost. So the visual cue needs to be more clear, whatever it is, and it needs to be permanent.
Not unless you mean that the whole topic disappears in a week? Yes? Make it a month, and I''ll buy it. (Yes, people do post a message and sometimes don't come back for quite a while.)
Xav, in this case, we're talking about cases where whole topics need to be moved. I don't think sending an email would work for that. If I'm a new member, and I can't find my topic, I don't know what to do. Personally, I'd probably post it again. But looking in my email would be the last thing I would think of. And if I saw a message in my email from the forum, I would ignore it. Because I expect the forum to be entirely functional, by itself. Traditionallly, forums work in the forum on the website, and without loads of emails being generated (unlike many newer websites these days, which generate emails for every little thing). If someone wants an email notification about something, they can request it, but the feature should work without email notification.
I realize there are cases where we sometimes need to move individual messages out of a topic, to go somewhere else. But I'm taking it one step at a time. That would seem to be an even more difficult feature to create (which php software doesn't even have), so I'll wait a bit on requesting that one.
First of all, this looks like a custom in-house forum platform, so absolutely no disrespect is meant, and I don't want to deminish the hard work that went into it. :)
With that said, have you considered using the free and open source Discourse platform? It's very modern, works extremely well on mobile (where the majority of social online activity is conducted these days), and most importantly these types of issues become archaic due to the way much of the forum management is outsourced to automated systems and the community itself. There's a reason most forums are migrating to Discource. The one caveat is a bit higher bandwidth cost, which may be an issue for you.
blenderartists.org switched to the platform about a year ago. As a long time regular over there, with no infractions, the system has deemed me trustworthy enough to move and rename threads, so even as a non-modderator, a lot of folks like myself can help lighten the workload.
Just a thought. :)
Hi I'm Cody, by the way. Graphic artist, and long time user of Inkscape. I was going to sign up to the other forum around the time the notice went up about a new forum, so here I am.
Yes, it' been suggested so many times, I'm starting to wonder if they don't give some kind of incentive for convincing a community to switch to that software. And we also considered the older but fully featured php forums.
But we have a developer who wanted to build a forum, and here we are.
Haha fair enough, and no, I'm not an affiliate. If there is such a program, I'm missing out because I find Discource to be the bee's knees. Mainly because of how well it works on mobile where I typically browse forums (So that's what's in it for me. :D ).
Besides, I'd assume an open source project full of devs would opt to just download Discource from GitHub, rather then pay for their rather expensive consulting service.
Not necessarily. This forum is in a trial. Since we don't know exactly what to expect (as opposed to using a well-tested forum software) we hold out the option to switch to another software, if we realize somewhere down the road that this won't work.
I don't know exactly what you mean about a consulting service. You mean Discourse charges for tech support?
Personally, I prefer SMF (which can have support for mobile, if the owner chooses to install it). But then, I'm old, and never have ever had a smart phone..
I haven't looked into that part much, to be honest. I believe they host and help manage it for you (hands on). So consulting is probably the wrong word.
I suppose the real test will be when Inkscape 1.0 launches. I'd imagine that will generate quite a bit more buzz around here.
The project is suffering from a lack of systems administration skills. Since we don't have people who would look after a discourse installation... or even look after a lot of what we already have (i.e. mailing lists which are using mailman3 falling to bits because of lack of sysadmins).
The advantage this forum has is, rather arogantly, is me. I'm a programmer and can't help a lot with sysadmin and devops, but I can put together tools using what we already have. Not ideal by any stretch. If we can get more sys admins into the project then we can open up a bunch of new and interesting community tools and we may not need this forum any more.
I see, well hopefully when the next version of Inkscape rolls out, that also generates more interest for developers and system admins as well. :)
I personally will be if time allows. I recently spent a couple of months learning all about GTK+2 themeing so that I could create an improved dark theme (as a Windows using artist, non-developer, and weilding nothing other than notepad, mind you). That's when I learned about the new version using GTK3, so I may try to tackle that if nobody more qualified is doing so (which from my perspective is most people. I just know pretty colors and shapes.)
Forum Issues, News, and Announcements too many topics need moving
Inkscape.org
Hi Friends,
I'm starting this topic because we are having way too many topics that need moving - at least one every day that I visit. In the past, a topic would need to be moved less than once a month....maybe once every 6 months.
I don't mean this to be a request to people to be more careful (would be futile). I mean it to gather thoughts and opinions why this is happening. Because this moderation system is already too time consuming, and this really shouldn't be happening.
I think it might be related to the forum index (lists of boards) is in small text in a small column, and people aren't bothering to read them all before they make a choice and post a message.
So a solution to that might be when we make the redesign (supposedly when 1.0 is released) that we make the index a full page, like in the other forums. So for example, it would be in larger text, and take the place of Recent Topics.
But maybe others have a different idea about it? Please feel free to share your thoughts 🙂
My main thought on this is that it should be trivial to move topics, but we shouldn't worry so much about leaving a link behind in the previous location, as it just clutters things further. Instead I would prefer it if the act of moving a topic sent an automated email to everyone who had contributed to say that it's been moved. It should also add an automated post to the topic stating where it's been moved from so that it appears in the unread posts list.
Yes we'll get occasional 'where did my post go' messages but hopefully, in most cases, the email will preclude that.
As for the list of boards: I don't mind the list on the left, but it doesn't leave room for descriptions of each board - you only see those once you've selected a board if you look at the breadcrumbs at the top. At the least those descriptions should be added as tooltips to the board list, but preferably exposed by default, as smaller text under the board title (perhaps with a preference in the user profile to turn them off). Seeing the descriptions might help people better target their posts.
Have you considered excluding the board name from topic links? This would avoid the need to create a redirect to start with.
I'm not sure how the internal data storage works (probably only @doctormo knows), but I've seen other forum softwares simply use IDs for topics, which avoids a lot of problems that would otherwise arise currently (e.g. renaming a board or renaming a thread).
To maintain a human-readable link some other forum software appends the thread title to the ID somehow, but usually it's optional (i.e. the link works without it as well).
Topics don't require the forum slug, you can edit that part and already get a "topic has been moved" message.
I've just put in the requested "topic moved" clutter. Didn't know about this discussion before then, this should have gone to the issue on GitLab: https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape-web/issues/396
Otherwise I'm not going to know before I start work on things.
The attached screenshot shows a moved topic. It will only show for 1 week (can be changed).
@doctormo I wasn't aware there was an open issue for this - I was just responding to Brynn's request for feedback, and had seen another post from her saying that topics won't generally be moved until a redirect is available. Having it only show for a week seems like a good solution to me.
Dr. Mo,maybe I'm missing something, but in the screen shot - where does it allude to the topic being moved? Showing for a week is a good idea, but I need to see the words, 'topic moved'. I also like the idea to have an auto email sent, maybe not to everyone who posted, but at the very least, to the orig poster.
Brynn, my take on the issue in the first place - to me it looks like there are a lot of Inkscape newbies posting in 'Beyond the Basics' forum instead of the Basic one. Perhaps they think since they can't figure out the issue, and it's beyond the normal stuff, that it's automatically an advanced question, and so they are afraid no one will answer in a basic forum. Other forums give a brief description, which I think greatly helps know where to post. Perhaps a desc in basic index, could end with, if unsure where to post, post here....
Many visitors won't know if their question is a beginner or advanced... a question is an unknown. The two fora should be combined into "Help with using Inkscape".
Having other categories outside of help/usage, like the Tips/tricks, contests/challenges, personal galleries, news/events, website, forum issues, jobs... those would be useful to have separate.
Have a nice day.
TD
Tyler. That's a good point, does it really need to be divided. A question is a question.
I also don't see any indication in the screenshot which message was moved either. Unless it's that strange looking icon on the left, and the title being grayed out? I don't really care what it looks like. It doesn't need to look different at all. (Although appending "(moved)" would be nice.) The only thing that really matters is that when you click on it, you go to where the message was moved to. And that needs to be permanent....which is why the "moved" is important.
Because if the visual cue disappears after a week, then the fact the topic was moved is lost. So the visual cue needs to be more clear, whatever it is, and it needs to be permanent.
Not unless you mean that the whole topic disappears in a week? Yes? Make it a month, and I''ll buy it. (Yes, people do post a message and sometimes don't come back for quite a while.)
Xav, in this case, we're talking about cases where whole topics need to be moved. I don't think sending an email would work for that. If I'm a new member, and I can't find my topic, I don't know what to do. Personally, I'd probably post it again. But looking in my email would be the last thing I would think of. And if I saw a message in my email from the forum, I would ignore it. Because I expect the forum to be entirely functional, by itself. Traditionallly, forums work in the forum on the website, and without loads of emails being generated (unlike many newer websites these days, which generate emails for every little thing). If someone wants an email notification about something, they can request it, but the feature should work without email notification.
I realize there are cases where we sometimes need to move individual messages out of a topic, to go somewhere else. But I'm taking it one step at a time. That would seem to be an even more difficult feature to create (which php software doesn't even have), so I'll wait a bit on requesting that one.
First of all, this looks like a custom in-house forum platform, so absolutely no disrespect is meant, and I don't want to deminish the hard work that went into it. :)
With that said, have you considered using the free and open source Discourse platform? It's very modern, works extremely well on mobile (where the majority of social online activity is conducted these days), and most importantly these types of issues become archaic due to the way much of the forum management is outsourced to automated systems and the community itself. There's a reason most forums are migrating to Discource. The one caveat is a bit higher bandwidth cost, which may be an issue for you.
blenderartists.org switched to the platform about a year ago. As a long time regular over there, with no infractions, the system has deemed me trustworthy enough to move and rename threads, so even as a non-modderator, a lot of folks like myself can help lighten the workload.
Just a thought. :)
Hi I'm Cody, by the way. Graphic artist, and long time user of Inkscape. I was going to sign up to the other forum around the time the notice went up about a new forum, so here I am.
Yes, it' been suggested so many times, I'm starting to wonder if they don't give some kind of incentive for convincing a community to switch to that software. And we also considered the older but fully featured php forums.
But we have a developer who wanted to build a forum, and here we are.
Haha fair enough, and no, I'm not an affiliate. If there is such a program, I'm missing out because I find Discource to be the bee's knees. Mainly because of how well it works on mobile where I typically browse forums (So that's what's in it for me. :D ).
Besides, I'd assume an open source project full of devs would opt to just download Discource from GitHub, rather then pay for their rather expensive consulting service.
But I guess what's done is done. :)
Not necessarily. This forum is in a trial. Since we don't know exactly what to expect (as opposed to using a well-tested forum software) we hold out the option to switch to another software, if we realize somewhere down the road that this won't work.
I don't know exactly what you mean about a consulting service. You mean Discourse charges for tech support?
Personally, I prefer SMF (which can have support for mobile, if the owner chooses to install it). But then, I'm old, and never have ever had a smart phone..
I haven't looked into that part much, to be honest. I believe they host and help manage it for you (hands on). So consulting is probably the wrong word.
I suppose the real test will be when Inkscape 1.0 launches. I'd imagine that will generate quite a bit more buzz around here.
The project is suffering from a lack of systems administration skills. Since we don't have people who would look after a discourse installation... or even look after a lot of what we already have (i.e. mailing lists which are using mailman3 falling to bits because of lack of sysadmins).
The advantage this forum has is, rather arogantly, is me. I'm a programmer and can't help a lot with sysadmin and devops, but I can put together tools using what we already have. Not ideal by any stretch. If we can get more sys admins into the project then we can open up a bunch of new and interesting community tools and we may not need this forum any more.
I see, well hopefully when the next version of Inkscape rolls out, that also generates more interest for developers and system admins as well. :)
I personally will be if time allows. I recently spent a couple of months learning all about GTK+2 themeing so that I could create an improved dark theme (as a Windows using artist, non-developer, and weilding nothing other than notepad, mind you). That's when I learned about the new version using GTK3, so I may try to tackle that if nobody more qualified is doing so (which from my perspective is most people. I just know pretty colors and shapes.)
Anyway, I'll stop derailing the thread now. Haha