(The quickest way to register)

Forum

Dear visitor! The webpage is only available in English. We're sorry for the inconvenience.
  1. User picture
    • phantazm on Fri 12 Dec 2008
    • 09:38:06 AM UTC

    5 ideas for a more efficient forum

    Delete post (even after replied)

    Sometimes, and especially in the test thread, a post makes no longer any sense. So why not delete it? To preserve continuation a popup or hover text could ask people to consider the context.

    Edit post (even after replied)

    Sometimes, and especially in the test thread, part of a post makes no longer any sense. So why not edit it? To preserve continuation a popup or hover text could ask people to consider the context.

    Images float left/right

    This would make text 'float around' images, and make layout more compact.
    Especially if a thumbnail links to a large version.

    Use the second column

    Almost half of the screen space is now wasted. Why not use it? Without disturbing the present left column layout, the right column could list all titles in the actual category. By default alphabetically, but why not an option to sort by time or size..?

    Use the first post to sum it up

    Forums can be quite difficult to follow, if you arrive later and try to get an overview afterwards. A forums structure can grow extremely nonlinear, and eventually grow for ever. A lot of information is generated, but it is scattered all over the threads many branches of branches. Why not let the first post offer the present conclusion, perhaps a minimenu, thereby acting like a wiki element. In that case the thread starter would also double as a kind of moderator of that particular debate and page.

    PS: We could use this already existing possibility to test
    the moderation potential of the forum / blog users..?

    Location: Copenhagen, Denmark, Scandinavia, Europe. Languages: Danish, English (and a bit Norwegian and Swedish).

Comments:

  2. User picture
    • Timo on Sun 14 Dec 2008
    • 11:30:00 AM UTC

    Re: 5 ideas for a more efficient forum

    Re: Delete post (even after replied)
    I think this is not a good idea. If the first post is deleted then all the replies should also be deleted and this would give the user a possibility to delete other peoples' postings.

    Edit post (even after replied)
    This feature seems nice to have. We will put it to our to do -list.

    Images float left/right
    It seems that in most cases the image is so big that it barely fits to the text column. Also the text area beside an image would be quite small especially in comment replies.

    Images in comments is still a new thing for our forum and we will monitor how the users will use it. It is still possible that we might even remove the image tags in the future. Let's see.

    Use the second column
    At this point we won't change the forum layout, see a couple of reasons for that.

    Use the first post to sum it up
    It would be nice to have a summary of all the posts in the forum thread. However, the current tools for summarizing texts have been developed for continuous texts like newspaper articles etc. The tools even for that don't work very well, or should I say they suck. To summarize a forum thread would be a much more complicated task. So, in conclusion, there won't be any summary node for the forum threads.

    Update: The Edit function has now been enabled to the forum and blog comments.
  3. User picture
    • phantazm on Sun 14 Dec 2008
    • 02:56:48 PM UTC

    Delete...

    Timo: "Re: Delete post (even after replied)
    I think this is not a good idea. If the first post is deleted then all the replies should also be deleted and this would give the user a possibility to delete other peoples' postings."

    Yes, I can see the problem. But how about deleting a post without replies..?
    All post start unreplied, but it should be possible to remove a post: if it was a mistake by itself. If it was posted in the wrong thread. If it was only a test. Etc..
    This would keep the forum less cluttered...
  4. User picture
    • phantazm on Sun 14 Dec 2008
    • 03:05:45 PM UTC

    Use the first post to sum it up

    Timo: "It would be nice to have a summary of all the posts in the forum thread. However, the current tools for summarizing texts have been developed for continuous texts like newspaper articles etc. The tools even for that don't work very well, or should I say they suck. To summarize a forum thread would be a much more complicated task. So, in conclusion, there won't be any summary node for the forum threads."

    I was thinking of the manual version. Like I did in the "Image" thread...