If this is done, you must be able to opt out, otherwise I suspect it'll just kill chat.
I can tell this is a fact lol.
@AAH The missing email issue is unrelated to the upgrade. Sometimes an ISP will decide to reject our emails at their end, and despite contacting them to request unblocking this can drag on and on. Until the ISP responds and takes action, there is a targeted notice pinned to the top of every page for any accounts with affected email addresses. The person that you're referring to did complete their registration with a confirmed email address.
Also thanks @OzAz, I adjusted the wiki editor shortly after you posted this. There's potential confusion as the wiki page and regular URL button both use the chain icon. So what I've done is change the wiki page icon to use a heavier, bolder icon variant. Another option might be to instead use the 'W' icon (as in Wikipedia). Which of these options makes the most sense to you? I have reorganised the buttons within the wiki section so that the third group is exclusively for wiki commands. Other buttons from this group not unique to the wiki were moved into the second group.
View attachment 17660
I have some additional site tweaks that could be introduced but first I'd like your feedback on whether any/all of them should be implemented.
- Notable members section: Proposing two new lists, one for Generous elves and another for Community project designers. I'm particularly interested in hearing from current/past Generous elves and Community project designers for whether you'd be happy (or not) with these potential additions to Notable members.
- A Generous elves block would consist of members with Generous elf shown beneath their name in posts. This would be a way of offering greater recognition to our current Generous elves in return for their contribution towards site costs. I could set up this list to either be sorted alphabetically or by last seen date. My preference is last seen date as then the names would shuffle around regularly. This would not be a leaderboard.
- A Community project designer block for members with Community project designer beneath their name in posts. The aim of this list would be to make it easier to know who is one. The order could be alphabetical or sorted by last seen date, with the latter IMO being more useful as it promotes those who were most recently logged in. This list could also include a very short (e.g. 2-3 words) description of the designer's involvement (E.g. The broad category of item or project that this person is known for that fulfills a particular need in the community). The reason this has to be short is that it would display alongside their name (like the number of messages for members in the most messages list) and there is not enough room for anything longer.
- View attachment 17661Forum and chat messages and Giphy: Included with XenForo 2.2 is Giphy support, although it is disabled by default. This is an additional editor button and works similarly to the smiley/emoji search menu. The difference is that the results are animated GIFs. Does anybody want this Giphy feature or do you think it could get annoying? I think that I'm inclined to keep this off unless there is a reasonable amount of feedback requesting for it.
- Display videos and commenting: Has anyone ever wanted to leave a comment on a display video? Right now you can't, but it is something I could implement at a later stage. This would not be a trivial change, so your responses would help me determine whether it is feasible to add this functionality.
- Chat to forum idea: Ever since chat was rolled out many years ago it continues to be home to interesting and/or helpful discussions, such as from sharing progress on a prop you're building or offering suggestions to someone's query, just to name a couple. One ongoing limitation is that only the people who are logged into chat at the point a discussion unfolds will get to see it. But what if moderators in the chat were provided a tool that lets them copy some of these discussions into the forum? The aim of opening up some chat discussions to a wider group of members via a forum thread would be to give more people the opportunity of reading and learning from them. Copied chat room messages would be posted under the original author's account, just as if they posted it in the forum themselves. For those that do utilise our chat room, do you have any concerns with this 'chat to forum' export idea?
Two sorts of chat discussions come to mind that copying to forum thread might make sense for:
- Showing off construction of a prop (e.g. pictures and follow-on discussion) - perhaps someone else will see and like how you made it and will want to do something similar with their own display, and
- Helpful solutions and suggestions to some queries - this might be the sort of thing that other members may face and so it could be a help to them with copying the discussion into the forum.
Please do tell me what you think of this. If a chat room discussion you were a part of was copied into the forum would you be OK/happy about that or is it all a bad idea? Would it discourage you from chatting (I'd hope not)?
So what do you think? Thanks for reading.
To clarify, if enabled this will be something available when composing forum posts, too. The question is whether this is something you and everyone else wants. Think about it not just from writing your own messages but also reading through messages from others.
The plan at this stage would be for a moderator to choose the most appropriate destination forum. So for example, if someone shares progress of their mega tree build, then creating a thread under Custom creations -> Mega, mini, spiral & pixel trees would seem the most appropriate, IMO. I feel having a 'catch all' forum would make it more difficult to find a particular thread again. One potential concession might be to initially place exported chats in a member-only forum for review prior to moving the thread to its final destination. Once exported, messages would be editable by its author the same as any of their other forum posts.
What if, for instance, someone is researching ideas for building a prop that happens to be quite similar to something that was shared in chat a few weeks ago. Or flip it around: someone's been looking through a thread discussion that was originally from chat and has a fantastic idea/point to add as a new reply. A different way of making the prop, perhaps, or a gotcha they encountered that being aware of could avoid future headaches.
Is that from an editing perspective, or the size of audience? Also, surely one of the reasons chat is chosen as the platform to share something is convenience ... no need to think of a thread title or what forum section to post in. And usually a quicker response, too.
One possibility would be for the moderator to ask publicly in chat whether those in the room give permission to copy the current discussion. Are you suggesting that a formal account privacy setting would be desired? And if this setting was available then would your opinion change?
auschristmaslighting.com
Two sides of the equation, for sure. The question remains - "How to capture all the knowledge that is shared (and lost) in the different versions of Chat without including those remarks someone didn't mean for posterity?" I don't have the answer, but will keep the question in mind.
