Four years of BBS

meta
#1

BBS launched around June 2013. It is currently (almost) January 2017, so I thought we could introspect a little in advance of our four year anniversary.

  • What’s working on BBS? What makes you feel good about BBS?

  • What’s not working on BBS? What makes you feel… not-so-good… about BBS?

  • We’ve improved a ton since 2013, but that doesn’t mean we’ve hit every item on our roadmap. If you could pick one feature that you’d like to see BBS add or improve in 2017, what is it?

BBS has a special place in our hearts since it was the first sizable Discourse installation on a public site – and thus also has the longest community history to glean lessons from.

Your feedback is welcome!*

Well, except for that one guy. His feedback isn’t welcome. Am I referring to you? Well, ask yourself – am I?

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Five years of BBS 📅
#2

I know I’ve had a comment of mine deleted but I think it was only because the parent comment was deleted – and with that went mine. A message when a comment gets deleted would be nice – and perhaps why. Also, I’ve never gotten a message that a comment of mine has been flagged. So either I’ve never been flagged (quite possible) or that doesn’t generate a message either.

Overall … BBS is working and working rather nicely. I have no complaints…

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#3

Animated square user icons.

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#4

A proper blocklist. [quote=“codinghorror, post:1, topic:92006”]
What’s working on BBS? What makes you feel good about BBS?
[/quote]

Nice layout, like the use of space, good options for handling gifs, polls, oneboxes etc.

Lack of mod feedback/notification.

Ahhh fuck. It’s always me, innit.

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#5

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#6

zomg! Ralphie from A Christmas Story was in something else?
[jk]

Jeff, the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is when I click a pic to enlarge it, it pulls it up the same size and then I have to click it again to see it full sized. why the extra click?

anyway, it’s not a big deal but that’s all I got.

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#7

Omission of the definite article when referring to the BBS in question.

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#8

If it were a much bigger forum maybe, but I haven’t run across anyone who sorely needs blocking whom the moderators haven’t taken care of in short order.

The ellipsis next to the Reply button opens up a Flag option that you can use to report objectionable posts. It even lets you specify a reason.

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#9

Ahem…

I am That One Guy, and the one feature I would want is one I that I already know ain’t gonna happen.

But that being said, the BBS is as decent a forum as any that I have ever been on, and the flaws that do exist are tolerable.

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#10

Threading?

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#11

Sometimes I wish I could change my username without losing my whole history.

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#12

Lucky you. My experience differs.

The flagging options are fine. But an automated notification when a post is deleted (even as by-catch) would be awesome.

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#13

You would only lose mentions. We discourage people from changing usernames since it is awkward for continuity of conversations, quotes have the username baked in, etc. But if you really need to change it, you can, just ask Falcor to do it. @enso for example changed his.

Also @daneel I know you probably aren’t serious but we have considered topic filtering.

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#14

It has been discussed; there are some nuances to it that I want us to get right.

I am one million percent in favor of suppressing manifest user behavior badness, as I think that hurts everyone, but one thing I struggle with is this:

You’re merely pointing out that User X may not want to see User Y for … reasons. Which is fine, those may be perfectly reasonable reasons, but no badness was manifested on the site. It could be User Y posting “it’s awfully sunny today!” and User X simply can’t tolerate the presence of User Y in any form whatsoever.

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#15

I understand the concern; but hyper-intolerance isn’t something I’m advocating.

For example:

There is one member here who actively doesn’t like me; who was actually pleased when I got my little time-outs, and who has gone so far as to passive-aggressively suggest that I would be “more comfortable” on some other site… and so I avoid engaging this person like he’s the Plague.

But he still insists upon commenting in certain posts of mine, despite the obvious mutual disdain.

No one is breaking any rules, yet it’s still needlessly antagonistic.

And that’s actually the case for a few people here that I can think of; they know how to skirt the site’s parameters just enough not to get into any trouble, while still being persistently annoying.

Situations like that should have some sort of option for resolution.

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#16

Interesting, so the proposal is a method of preventing people from replying directly to you. The existing user mute option on your user preferences prevents notifications of any kind from that user and that has been possible for a while. Preventing actual replies would be a step further.

On the other hand I know Falcor has asked people to refrain from replying to each other and I think that is a totally reasonable request. Since you can easily reply to the topic it is not like anyone is asking people to stop posting altogether.

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#17

How long until we create the perfect filter bubble of people we don’t agree with if blocking gets implemented?

Hell, I passively (because I’m lazy) dislike a couple of people commenting on this thread (and I’m sure it is mutual) but I can usually just about manage to ignore them and never reply to them. At least one of them is responsible (AFAIK) for my last “time out” as well and probably took personal joy in it. That said, we run the risk of creating a hermetically sealed echo chamber.

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#18

I’d like that. The mute function’s a bit… underpowered. It doesn’t stop the muted one PMing you and it seems to reset if the mutee is given a ban.

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#19

So then we manually quote each other but we just leave the User ID out of the quote? I mean, if I can see your text, I can put it within quote tags in a variety of ways.

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#20

Yes, exactly.

Indeed it is, but that’s no guarantee that BOTH sides will consistently adhere to such a request, no matter how reasonable.

Additionally, my feeling is that as good of a job as Falcor does moderating, the members shouldn’t always have to go bother him (or her) for every little thing.

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