Discussion thread for XenForo 2.2 upgrade - Your input requested

bpratt

Senior elf
Joined
Mar 31, 2019
Messages
562
Location
Jimboomba, Queensland
is it possible to allow members to include an image in chat, without uploading it somewhere?

Copy a image to clipboard, then paste it in to chat?

possibly too difficult/not possible, just thought I'd ask.
 

Mark_M

Annoying Elf
Joined
Dec 30, 2018
Messages
914
Location
Christmas Light world
Notifications are working fine on both my devices.
Unfortunately, there is no concept of read tracking or ability to recall sent push notifications.
I can tell this is a fact lol.

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@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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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 🙂.

Opinions from the Annoying Elf:
1. All good from me. Could remove "most media" or "most albums" to make extra room for these. That's if you would like all widgets to fit in a neat grid.
2. I don't use Giphy much, but it is used from time-to-time by others. Given how little they have used it, I don't think it will get (badly) abused.
It's a small setting in the chat, surely it can't be that bad to enable it and remove it later if needed.
Will be best if Giphy has a fish slap gif.
3. Never left a comment (at least I think), it's nice idea to be able to.

4. I can see where others may get snappy. The idea for a moderator at their decision to make your content public from the private chat will have a lot of complication with it.

Would the idea work for a separate forum that's accessible to members only?
Something like "Chat memorable moments" or "Chat mentionable moments".
@darylc 's mention should be a must to this feature.

Cue my crappy image representation of how it could be displayed.
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ryanschristmaslights

Senior elf
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Giphy [...] It's a small setting in the chat
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.



Would the idea work for a separate forum
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.

I feel as though it's a "You snooze you lose" moment when people aren't in chat to see messages...
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.

Then again, I look at it from another angle - I've been intended on sharing progress on my build this year to the forum, but find it all a little overwhelming
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.

If this is done, you must be able to opt out, otherwise I suspect it'll just kill chat.
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?

Chat's a great resource and the aim with the proposed idea is about preserving some of the great discussions for the community's benefit, not to discourage people from chatting.
 

Mark_M

Annoying Elf
Joined
Dec 30, 2018
Messages
914
Location
Christmas Light world
Could there be a dedicated media section or entire section for sharing sequences?

Can also be (I strongly suggest) limited to users who are at least "New Elf" level for downloading.
Gives an idea to have an award tally on users profiles for number of sequences shared (and 'top sharers' table).

Just a thought on ACL community sharing in a dedicated place rather than the incredibly long thread.
 

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
Community project designer
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Dec 27, 2010
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Eaglehawk
2. If Giphy could be done on chat and not the forum that'd be good. IMHO GIPHY gifs are used extensively on facebook for reactions to comments or for sarcastic replies to stupid posts. The majority of ACL is educational and it's not really the place for that sort of comment. It's likely that eventually GIPHY will go the way of myspace or other once popular sites or else it will change format and it would potentially break lots of links on ACL.

4. The chat to forum thing is something that could be beneficial. I have no idea how it would be implemented but there is a lot of information that makes it's way into chat that never makes it's way onto the forum or the wiki. When someone asks in chat what's the specs of something or how do you do something that information is possibly known by the members in chat as there is generally a lot of experience in there and there is also the option that someone will see a question and answer it hours later. Currently if there's specifications, procedures or something like that discussed in chat it never makes it into the forum unless someone goes to the effort of grabbing that info and putting it into a post which allows the info to be accessed forever and also via searches. Whether a raw chat log gets saved and a moderator/admin post processes it or some other method I do think that there is too much good info shared in chat for it just to go to waste. I do know that I have gotten info from chat that I have used and I have also created posts based on chat discussions. Obviously not every line of chat would make it's way onto the forum but some of it does deserve to go on there.
 

algerdes

Al Gerdes
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289
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Lebanon, Illinois
I agree with #4. Great information is being lost when done in Chat, or on Facebook, or on any direct contact site. I wonder how many questions could be solved with answers presented to problems in Chat/FB/whatever.
 
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bpratt

Senior elf
Joined
Mar 31, 2019
Messages
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Jimboomba, Queensland
I like the idea of stuff in chat possibly going in to the forum for future reference sake.

Often I've seen the same questions in chat being asked again and again, and we'll see the same thing going on in the future.

Chat is great, and helped me out many times, but if you're not there you miss out. A bit like stalkbook, questions get asked dozens of times, but because how it operates, you can't look up your problem.
 

darylc

404 darylc not found
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Dec 8, 2012
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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?

Chat's a great resource and the aim with the proposed idea is about preserving some of the great discussions for the community's benefit, not to discourage people from chatting.

How would you do that if not all the people are there or respond to the moderator's question? I post a lot of photos in that on the basis that they are seen by the people there at the time only. If they were to be saved and published on the Internet I'd be a lot more careful about what I shared.
 

algerdes

Al Gerdes
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Messages
289
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Lebanon, Illinois
How would you do that if not all the people are there or respond to the moderator's question? I post a lot of photos in that on the basis that they are seen by the people there at the time only. If they were to be saved and published on the Internet I'd be a lot more careful about what I shared.
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.
 

ryanschristmaslights

Senior elf
Administrator
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Anyone have trouble using the chat in Chrome on Android? The keyboard enter just gives me a new line in the input box, no way to submit.

@Katekate Please try reloading chat and if that does not work then try logging out then back in. Can you submit messages OK now? When did you first notice this issue?

If it is not resolved then please provide more information, like Android version, Chrome app version and even the keyboard you use. I've checked Chrome for Android 93.0.4577.62 with Samsung keyboard and I can send messages just fine.
 

ryanschristmaslights

Senior elf
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Ok, I can reproduce moving to a new line with Gboard (Google keyboard). This behaviour doesn't happen with Samsung's keyboard, which is the default on my device. This only occurs when shift is activated (for a capital letter) prior to pressing enter (Edit: Actually no, it happens outside of this too). I'll provide these details back to the chat addon developer.
 
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David_AVD

Grandpa Elf
Community project designer
Generous elf
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Jun 12, 2010
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Victoria Point (Brisbane)
I don't know that copying content from chat to the forum would be workable.

It could be a minefield with regards to who decides what to make "public".
 
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