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Post by Oliveriver on Dec 15, 2017 13:29:34 GMT
Hi everyone. We've been having a lot of spam attacks from bots on this forum recently, which necessitates a lot of thread purging. Unfortunately it seems somebody accidentally deleted the FAQ thread along with them. Proboards doesn't let you restore deleted threads so for a while I thought we were screwed. However, thanks to my suddenly useful archiving work, all the FAQ questions are still on the wiki. We just need Moopli to login as Admin and make a new thread. So if we just want a replacement FAQ all is well. It's come to my attention that this forum host isn't great. Minimal spam protection, limited customisability, only a few plugins, unrecoverable deleted threads, redirecting visitors to ad websites (especially on mobile), etc. We could take this as a kick in the pants to move elsewhere to a forum we host ourselves, as we do with the development forum. Discourse does have some migration features but they require access to all the backend databases of this forum, which I doubt we have. If it's possible to migrate with everyone's posts and/or profiles intact then I see no reason not to right away. If not, it's a choice between sticking with it and dealing with any problems this site causes, or making yet another forum and requiring everyone to sign up and start fresh there. What do you think? |
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Post by Atrox on Dec 16, 2017 16:21:13 GMT
So when does this vote end and when do we begin preparations?
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Post by Oliveriver on Dec 16, 2017 17:01:05 GMT
I’ll give it until Monday. I would like developers as well as fans to chime in here.
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Post by crodnu on Dec 16, 2017 17:38:12 GMT
I still don't think the situation is really that dire tbh, banning bots is really easy.
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Post by hhyyrylainen on Dec 16, 2017 23:13:17 GMT
Even if the situation isn't completely terrible it could be better.
I would also prefer some other forum software than this one as the post editor is pretty bad and other forum software, like discourse, have cool modern features like automatically showing new posts when you are looking at a thread. Also it might work better on phones and be just all around more pleasant to use.
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Post by crodnu on Dec 17, 2017 1:49:48 GMT
Btw, as serialkiller🌴 mentioned in the shoutbox, normal users can't post in this thread. |
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Post by Oliveriver on Dec 17, 2017 8:54:11 GMT
My bad. I moved its subforum so now that should be possible.
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Post by StealthStyleL on Dec 17, 2017 10:26:04 GMT
I'm with Crodnu, to be honest. I'm not sure the trouble we've had is worth the hassle of moving. As long as we come around every now and then, we can deal with the bots pretty easily. I haven't had any other problems personally with this forum either except the people in it.
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Post by lordclassyus on Dec 17, 2017 13:04:56 GMT
Why not both?
We can try a new forum and if people don't like, we can always head back. If the new forum seems superior to this one, then we move.
We can try that for about a week or so and see which one we like best.
The only drawback is that people would need to post things twice for that week, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem I think.
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Post by serialkiller🌴 on Dec 17, 2017 15:16:35 GMT
Why not both? We can try a new forum and if people don't like, we can always head back. If the new forum seems superior to this one, then we move. We can try that for about a week or so and see which one we like best. The only drawback is that people would need to post things twice for that week, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem I think. worst case scenario would be that this splits the community tho . What if not everybody thinks the same and we're gonna end up with two low activity forums ? |
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Post by crodnu on Dec 17, 2017 15:38:04 GMT
instead of one low activity forum?  |
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Post by Oliveriver on Dec 18, 2017 17:43:43 GMT
We're going to try setting up a new forum with blackjack and hookers hosted on our own domain, similar to the development forum. I've made the domain and handed things over to hhyyrylainen , so stay tuned. It may end up not replacing this one but it's worth a test. |
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Post by Omicron on Dec 19, 2017 14:54:14 GMT
Why not both? We can try a new forum and if people don't like, we can always head back. If the new forum seems superior to this one, then we move. We can try that for about a week or so and see which one we like best. The only drawback is that people would need to post things twice for that week, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem I think. worst case scenario would be that this splits the community tho . What if not everybody thinks the same and we're gonna end up with two low activity forums ? I wasn't there at the time, but I guess it'd be the same as when we moved from the older forum to here. To the people that were there around the time: How did that go? |
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Post by hhyyrylainen on Dec 19, 2017 14:56:04 GMT
The new potential replacement forum is now up: community.revolutionarygamesstudio.comThere is still quite a bit work to do like setting up categories and customizing the theme, but the basic setup is done. If you try signing up make sure to check your junk email folder if you don't get the account activation message. I opened a topic there for testing / commenting about it: community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-this-new-forum/20Right now there are a few not really visible improvements like https support and http2. But it should be possible to have more cool stuff like: embedding the new forum on devblogs to keep their comments better in one place, and replying to topics through email, and better spam fighting plugins (if needed) |
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Post by Oliveriver on Dec 19, 2017 17:16:08 GMT
One other advantage is Discourse's more advanced RSS feed, which allows notifications for specific categories if I recall correctly. So we could integrate it with our existing feeds more effectively than with this current forum.
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Post by Oliveriver on Dec 29, 2017 18:01:51 GMT
HERE IS AN IMPORTANT POLL
The poll asks: should we stay or should we go? Please carefully consider the relative merits of this forum and the proposed new community forum. This forum is unwieldy from the admins' perspective and is filling up with ads and spambots. The new forum is potentially unwieldy from a users' perspective and won't carry over any of your user information. Note that the theme of the new forum CAN BE CHANGED and if chosen we'll try to prettify it a little. While we may have to overrule the community's decision if many developers object, this poll should determine which we go for in the near future at least. I'll leave it open until 2018, by which I mean Monday. Also note that we'll somehow rebuild the FAQ thread here if it's chosen.
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Post by hhyyrylainen on Dec 29, 2017 23:40:06 GMT
Looks like there are a lot of no votes. I'd like to know why people voted no and if it was any other reason than "I don't feel like it / like change".
I very much would prefer changing as I find discourse technically so much better than this forum. The automatically seeing new posts without refreshing and getting desktop notifications when any of your watched threads are updated are so much better than what this forum has that I'd probably be way more involved in discussions there.
Discourse also has very good spam combatting features that don't need as active moderation becase community members that have been around for a long time can flag spam posts and have them disappear with just a few reports.
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Post by serialkiller🌴 on Dec 30, 2017 1:21:50 GMT
I personally voted no because on mobile , the new forum is torture . The site is way to big (what I mean is that I can scroll left and right and completely leave the forum area , which is very annoying .) What's also bothering me is that threads don't have sites like in this forum , and to go to the last post (which is usually the most interesting ) is taking ages (either you have to scroll down or you have to use that button on right side , which usually lags a lot ). This forum on the other hand delivers a perfect experience on mobile imo . Also the bots don't bother me at all . I thought of asking to become a moderator , because I visit this forum regularly and would have no problem with deleting some bots once in a while , if this is why y'all want to abandon this forum so badly .
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Post by Oliveriver on Dec 30, 2017 10:03:38 GMT
If you register for the new forum it takes you to the newest post of a thread automatically.
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Post by hhyyrylainen on Dec 30, 2017 10:46:09 GMT
As Oliveriver said if you are logged in you are taken to the last or the first post you haven't read.
I fixed the top links being too wide on mobile so now it's no longer possible to scroll sideways.
I do too get a little bit of lag while scrolling fast on mobile but when actually reading the posts there's no distracting amount of lag.
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