Thanks for this poll. Turning the old ones read-only seems the only sane option to me; and having these newer, slicker forums might as well make people want to talk more - at least for me, the drupal forums are a bit more cumbersome to use than it ideally should be.
Stay with the old forum, or at least keep it active. Every time a forum is moved, it loses people. Every. Single. Time. This one has been around for over a year, and almost nobody uses it (10 CC posts since April of last year! Why lose people for no reason? This doesnāt make any sense at all.
Is the benefit of using a new āslickerā formatāfor reasons that elude meāand closing the old one worth losing people AGAIN?
I suggest we keep thing as-is for now, until the new one is ready to take over. For example, a new darker skin that is easier on these old eyes. After that, keep the old one as a read-only archive.
I have to say, moving really needs to have a much better reason than ābecauseā given the damage it will do. Weāll lose people. Maybe a few, maybe a lot. I would rather not lose anyone. Small communities can ill afford it. And this community is important to me.
The Discourse forum has a bunch of features that the Drupal one doesnāt have, like
Polls.
Spoiler blurring.
Automatic video embedding.
People can just drag-and-drop images into their posts to upload them. (this one is huge!)
Tracking topics.
Bookmarking topics.
Quickly alerting/inviting other people to topics.
Itās much faster.
It saves drafts.
Searching for existing threads is also much faster and easier.
It lists new posts since the userās last login on a single page (see the Latest button).
It lets users view the āTopā threads for specified time periods.
Liking a post leaves an ā(Username) liked this.ā notice, so itās easier for a poster to see how many people ālikedā something. Itās not just ā100% of users who voted liked thisā.
Other forum users can be linked to/alerted(?) via @Username. Example: @Proleric
Weāve got avatars again.
We can visibly reply to other people again, and are alerted to replies to our posts.
Itās unfamiliar. Changing to a new, more complex environment is always stressful; thereās so many new buttons to learn.
The downvote button is gone. Thatās arguably something that makes an online environment less stressful for people, but it also ends the anonymous feedback thing we had going on in the other forum. I liked that; public approval or disapproval is much more inhibited. Personally, Iād argue that disapproval is more constructive and less stressful than silence in the long run. o_Ć“ Like-only forums have this thing going on where everybody is throwing likes at eachother while some people just get ignored, like you donāt even exist if youāre not pleasing the group.
No dark theme so far. Hard on the eyes.
Changing to the new forum will displease the people who really want to keep the old one.
No signatures.
The ānewest forum postsā widget on the main page would be gone.
Forum posts would no longer show up in the āTrackā section of users on the main page; thatād be all for comments on projects and blogs from there on. Not necessarily a 100% bad thing, I think.
FPās expressed concerns about how deleting an user along with all their posts would work, in case of spambots. I donāt know whether that problemās been fixed, but it looks like it might have been.
Weād need to migrate stickied posts from the old forum over here by hand.
So, basically, thereās good arguments either way. Iād like to try to challenge the āpeople lossā and ādata lossā arguments, though.
I think ālosing people when moving forumsā is usually more because that normally goes hand-in-hand with changing web addresses altogether - which is the argument in favor of deactivating one of the forums/putting the old one in read-only mode. If there is only one working forum on the site, users on the site canāt split up between the forums.
Also, one of these options does include us keeping the old forum, in read-only mode, so none of the old threads would be lost.
Having used both forums over the past year, I very much favor this one. IMO the biggest reason why most of the activity is going on in the old forum is just because most of the activity is going on in the old forum (an object in motionā¦). Iāve been using this one for private messages, to post progress pictures. Itās extremely convenient; you can literally go ALT+Print and then CTRL+V to paste an active-window screenshot, like you would in a messenger.
@Proleric TLD change? The current domain for this is forum.neverwintervault.org. The one for Drupal/the main page is neverwintervault.org. Swapping them around would break every single link in existence. Please explain what you mean!
What we can do is:
Embed this forum in an iframe on the main page (though it sounds to me like it would be less comfortable to use).
Add a dark theme one Discourse gets on that bandwagon (or we make dark the default, though I personally dislike dark themes, and Iām sure Iām not the only one there).
Add a newfeed of new forum posts to Drupal - should be easy.
Amend most of the other niggles mentioned above. Though I would argue that no signatures is a feature, not a bug!
Moderation and user deletion is not a problem.
Eventually back-import the old threads, once I/someone else writes the script for it.
Iām not sure how to take the user-losing concern myself. I didnāt think anyone would refuse to visit because weāre āupgradingā (whatever you want to call it). Thereās a small transition period, but I donāt think any losses are guaranteed.
Iād never delete the old forums. They would be kept around to finish old threads (i.e. disallow new ones), then switched r/o eventually.
@niv I believe we are currently on v 1.8 of discourse. The latest stable version is 1.9. Any chance of upgrading? Also the preview is no longer working. Any chance of that being fixed?
OK if changing the TLD is that difficult, better to leave it as is.
While leaving the old forums read-only, could you also export them as a bunch of html files we can add to NWN Omnibus?
If someone could do the same for the BSN SQL archive, weād then be able to search the entire history EXCEPT this new forum, for which Google search would suffice.
Youāve made 9 posts and created 1 topicā¦in a year. If they board is the catās meow why have you not used it more?
Still see no rational for closing something that works and really is being used.
Does everyone not remember the enormous loss of people when the Bioware boards closed? The Vault was available and promoted all across the NW boards and yet the loss was still huge.
Little secret @3RavensMore some people have made extensive use of pmās on here due to the ease of use of posting images and videos. It makes developing custom content a lot faster. Just try it. Resize your browser, drag /drop an image into the edit window, re-maximise your browser. You donāt have to post that message, you can cancel at any time.
With pmās on here you can edit them after youāve sent them. Definitely not doable on the original boards.
Since there is no re-registration or site change, I do not see people leaving in droves.
Summaryās not counting private messages. Iāve been using it to ferry progress pictures in PMs. Check your inbox. Ia! Ia! Picturespam fhtagn! <- Spoiler blurred because I was too slow. Tarot said it firstā¦ which I saw happen in real-time, with the post appearing while I was writing this reply. Saw him edit it, too. 's more like an instant messenger than a forum.
So, yeah, I can vouch for the existence of a minimum of one person that would prefer to use the new forum but continues(god this editing is so smooth) to primarily post in the old one, for no reason besides that there is more going on in the old forum. I rather expect there are others in the same position.
Taking your train of thought for an example, I think maybe we can see why some of the other people didnāt make the switch. Adjusting to a new environment takes time and effort. The judgement call that itās not reasonable to spend time and effort learning to use a different kind of software when youāve alredy got something thatās working just fine is perfectly reasonable.
The new forum really does have a pile of extremely useful features, though. Sudden changeās uncomfortable, but the benefits here are pretty damn amazing. And, the site address doesnāt change. Thereād arguably be less splitting up of the community into different forums, since weād have only a single forum once again.
edit2: ā¦ wait did I just see thereās an āInvite Othersā button on private messages?!
Iām not suggesting getting rid of the board you favor. You can still do what you do right here. PM, create topics, whatever. Iām just advocating keeping the board that most people use as well.
No worries. 's why weāre voting on it, anyway, and āKeep both of themā is an option. Just seems a little weird to have two different forums on the website, yāknow? Itās been sitting there for a while, and itās been added in the first place because there used to be a pretty loud demand for a better forum. Hold up, Iāll see if I can dig up the old thread.
Itā's so amazing that there have been ten (10!) CC Topics created since itās inspection.
And really itās a bit insulting when keep trotting out the trite āsudden change is uncomfortableā line as if anyone that disagrees is just dim, backward, or afraid of change.
Ia! Ia! Picturespam fhtagn!