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Wishlist -- what could be.

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21:29 / 13.04.04

I was thinking the other day how much I'd like something similar to a Trackback button on a blog entry, only within the Barbelith structure only... such that when you make a link in a post in one topic (say, a discussion of Hell over in the Temple) to another, similar topic (say, an old discussion of Dante over in Books), the linked-to topic would automatically register that it's being linked to by another Barbelith topic.

That way, in the example above, someone who stumbles across the older thread on Dante would be able to discover that there's a newer discussion on something closely related, but with a whole 'nother emphasis in another area of the board.

I have no idea if this is practical or possible, but it's fun to dream about it.

Anyone else have any?

02:51 / 14.04.04

By clicking on a user name, you could see what topics they had started, or maybe even with links to all of their posts...

I'm not stalking anyone... honest! It would just be fun...

10:13 / 14.04.04

I think Trackback on threads would be a great idea - not just internally either, I sometimes link to Barbelith threads - and it could be done I reckon, but it might kill the poor old server if people used it extensively, which I think would happen if it was automatic.

I don't know if there are any sites that use that sort of system internally around. Actually, Barbelith might be an excellent arena to test such a thing; it's busy but not too busy, and there are people here who would be interested in testing its uses and observing its effects.

Probably an internal non-standard pinging system would be a lot lighter on the database than an external one. Each post could be scanned for URLs internal to Barbelith, then a little bit of metadata with the URL of the referring post could be added to the post or thread being linked to. Proper Trackback would be a bit of a pain to implement I think, from what I know of the technical details, which is not admittedly all that much.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

11:44 / 14.04.04

Well, seeing as de Jade seems determined to try and rot this thread because he doesn't like what people are saying about his favourite film of the year, perhaps giving moderators the ability to lock people out of specific threads in boards outside of the Conversation or Policy?

00:06 / 15.04.04

This is pretty prosaic but if Barbelith parsed http://www.whatever links, I'd be a lot happier as a mod. People who've used other boards expect them to be parsed and they don't understand how to make links because they don't know any HTML and they post questions and they don't read the wiki and ARGH.

02:25 / 15.04.04

i only learned any HTML because i was forced to by a board, though.
the linkless are not that big a problem, are they?

and while i agree that jade ended up being a bit of a dick about it, i dont think locking people out of threads is in any way a good idea.
that way little but acrimony lies.
for one, wouldnt it push folks like jade to seek to approach the ganesh side of the situation in other ways?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

04:49 / 15.04.04

Yeah, I've thought about it since posting and although I trust the moderators enough that it wouldn't be misused I guess that if they could do it it could be perceived as having the ability to be misused and then we have fights about whether the moderators are using their powers for good or evil which never end well. At least it's rare that we have someone who isn't a troll who can be ignored setting out to try and completely rot a thread.

07:35 / 15.04.04

At the risk of being accused of beating a dead horse: Some kind of mechanism to show that activity has taken place within a forum. This could be something like the old 'three top threads' display or a discreet dot or something.

I admit that in the time since the new board design went up, I've gone into some fora that I wouldn't normally have gone into. But some fora just move slower than others, and after a couple of checks I find myself just not accessing those. For example, AF&D was quite active in the first week of the design, but now it seems to be slowing down again.

12:31 / 15.04.04

One thing about barbelith is that you never know who is viewing the board and sometimes it feels like you send a post out into nothingness, especially when the board is moving slowly. Another board I frequent shows on the main screen who is online, and for each forum it says how many people are viewing it at any time. I quite like the idea as it makes you feel like you're kinda hanging out with people even when there's no posting going on. After all, the majority of the time spent on a board is reading rather than posting.

Maybe people wouldn't feel comfortable with a list of actual names, but simply "Conversation (8 viewing)" etc. can tell you where people are reading and so when you open up the forum you feel like you're entering a room with people in it rather than groping your way down a dark hallway.

13:37 / 15.04.04

Barbelith once had a "who's online now?" function. I'd very much like it back.

By clicking on a user name, you could see what topics they had started, or maybe even with links to all of their posts...

Used to have a function like this, also. You can Google, but it's a pretty messy process.

16:51 / 16.04.04

A Preview Reply button in the Moderate Post screen!

(When fixing images and HTML, you would be able to see if you're actually fixing things...)

18:11 / 16.04.04

I'd like to see a better search function, specifically one that lets you see more than the first ten results.

18:13 / 16.04.04

RTFW

18:28 / 16.04.04

Another cool thing would be if we could get some kind of function that shows all the threads with new posts since your last visit to the board. That could be a bit tough, but an alternative would be to show who made the last post in a thread. It would make easier to know if there's been new posts or not.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:28 / 16.04.04

What I'd most like is to be able to see the last few posts in a thread when you're on the "reply" screen. All the other shit I've whinged about, I can do without. THAT's starting to bug me.

23:16 / 16.04.04

the edit function sent to mods is a tad annoying when your spelling is as atrociuos ( sp) as mine.

Can we have pics under our name or is that too handbagesque?

.

09:47 / 17.04.04

On threads with multiple pages, if the pages number over a certain amount, the Photos thread in the conversation for example, the page numbers are displayed like this:

Page: (1) 2 3 4 5 6 ... 22

OK, so what if I want to jump immediately to the penultimate page rather than to the very last one? I guess I'm not the only person to want to backtrack a bit when reading long threads - how about making the last two pages accessible from the first page, sacrificing page six if necessary:

Page: (1) 2 3 4 5 ... 21 22

10:31 / 17.04.04

Geez, Tom'll be pulling his hair out soon! I'd like to see a who's online function too, and also a link to the other Barbelith pages, interviews/the bomb etc like there used to be, it gives the whole thing something extra.

And flashing lights and stuff, a flashing Barbelith sphere that sends a beam of red light out of the screen and does an RVM scan on your current brain activity/body/energy levels etc.

Oh, and Tom if you do the Barbelith scanning thing in co-operation with the Barbelith entity, i'd like to have a function included so that i can turn it off if i want.

Anyhow, i'm keeping patient like Tom asked, i think he'll be putting more stuff on when he has the time.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:38 / 17.04.04

Ella, it takes a little getting used to, try using preview to see what your post would look like. Though Tom will correct me if I'm wrong, I think the situation is that if it were changed so you didn't need any votes to change something then moderators could change what you've written without anyone being any the wiser, and when you have people who may write one thing then change it after someone has replied it does need some kind of overview to try and make sure people don't misuse it.

I agree with .'s point. I don't always remember what page a thread was up to, and if it's just rolled over you have to go to the new one, then go back which is a bit fiddly.

As things currently stand, when you join your log-in name is your first user name and then displayed as (previously called...) when you change it. An extra field could really be done with here, so your log in name is never displayed as your user ID.

08:03 / 20.04.04

Baz: A Preview Reply button in the Moderate Post screen! (When fixing images and HTML, you would be able to see if you're actually fixing things...)

I totally second this, it would be really, really helpful. I just had to copy/paste a moderation I made into a reply window in another thread so that I could check if my code was right. (It was, but you have to check, don't you?)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:41 / 20.04.04

Actually, yeah, that'd be cool too... us mods also have the ability to fuck up html... and it's doubly embarrassing requesting an edit for the second time cos you were being spacky the first. (Or maybe that's just me.)

Dunno who else I speak for here, but- before you get too stressed out by all these demands, Tom, remember this is just a wishlist. We're not hassling you to actually DO this stuff- just saying what we'd like to see in an ideal world, and suggesting reasons why you might want to consider it.

(Sorry... I'm having an incredibly bad day so I'm overcompensating for everything I do and say today. Ignore any posts I make that make me sound like some kind of woolly hippie liberal. I'm just trying my hardest not to be a cunt.)

12:24 / 20.04.04

While I'm still fuming about ginger disliker or whatever the hell the wanker's calling hirself now, I would like to see some kind of mechanism installed where a user can be identified as someone who needs keeping an eye on. Some way in which mods can be told en masse that someone's being a dick. Perhaps combine this with some way of displaying all of a user's posts so the mods can see everything the user's posted and get a picture of their behaviour across the board, rather than just in the fora they're in charge of watching. Then, just to one side, a selection of actions to be carried out...

This might help stop a troll/spammer from rampaging all over the boards before they do too much damage or cause too much offense.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:30 / 20.04.04

That also sounds good... (although I may just be thinking that cause of the case you're talking about now, which is pissing me off mightily also.) It would need to be handled VERY, VERY carefully though...

I've PMed a couple of people today over this very thing... it would have been much more convenient to send one message. BUT if that were an available option, there'd probably be a lot more of the "nazi snobtroll" accusations against mods... I dunno. Personally, I'd say YES! It does, however, have the potential for disaster.

14:59 / 20.04.04

I think my dream version would also have an anonymous area, like a confession booth or something.

Am I imagining it, or did we have one of those way back when?

I remember when the "help" area got lots of the pleas for advice that are showing up currently in the Conversation....

Didn't we used to have a nameless space?

16:15 / 12.06.04

I'd like the board to start recognising URLs and automatically making them into links, because the laziness about this seems to be on the increase and having to alter them in the posts of those who can't be bothered is getting tiresome.

02:50 / 13.06.04

My jerkoff wishlist?
Some kind of footnote or metatext thing so I could digress without either starting a new thread or being accused of "threadrot".
Some kind of area where I and other relative noobs could try out the "multiple fictionsuits" thing we had before my time, without arsing up the rest of the board.
Some really fucked up emoticons- worthy of Barbelith in both spectacle and meaning.

03:29 / 13.06.04

Oh, here's one- something for running polls? Do we have that already?

08:29 / 13.06.04

Some kind of footnote or metatext thing so I could digress without either starting a new thread or being accused of "threadrot".

LM - we have a footnote/metatext function. You start a new thread and link back to the post/thread you're spinning off. It takes maybe thirty seconds longer than pressing the "footnote" button would. Or is there something that I'm not getting here?

As for "threadrot" accusations - if your post is off-topic, then people who want to talk about the thread topic either have to ignore it (and if you want your posts to be ignored, why make them?) or engage with it, which then skews the thread and makes it harder for new posters to come in and talk about the original topic. Which is why moderators usually ask people to start new threads if their digressions are interesting.

giving moderators the ability to lock people out of specific threads in boards outside of the Conversation or Policy?

Mods already have that ability de facto, and I think it's much, much safer to delete all rotting posts (maybe after a warning) on a case-by-case basis than to have a poster-lock function.

10:06 / 13.06.04

Hypertext. I meant hypertext. And I was thinking of a link forward. Like a pretty shiny word in a different colour clicky clicky. The point being, it would be SHINY!
Oh, you're repressing my right to be vague and incoherent.
It's political correctness gone MAD, I tell you! Sob.

16:08 / 17.06.04

I guess this is the place for this. Can someone remind me why we have to wait a month to change our names again? Was it because of trolls? I liked changing my name a lot.

08:34 / 18.06.04

I H8 the the underline that makes Bobossboy call me "Lord Morque". I SHALL POUT!

16:21 / 18.06.04

What, you mean this thread wasn't started by qrant?

16:37 / 18.06.04

Nor galyn.

06:45 / 22.06.04

I'd really like to see a drop-down menu or navagation box that would allow me to skip from forum to forum without having to go to the index or type the address in maually. My computer's a bit long in the tooth and having to go through the index page can take some time, and I'm lazy.

07:32 / 22.06.04

Seconded Levkar. I really miss that since the revamp.

Also - about pages; if it were going to be changed to be 1,2,3,4,5, ... 16,17 as suggested above (ie including the penultimate page) - would it be just as well to include all pages? The main thing I'd really like to see is the page number selection on the forum page rather than the thread page - ie you could hop straight to where you left off, rather than going throught the first page of the thread.

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