Conversion Discussion

[James Gryphon]

I've not totally forgotten y'all. There's just been a lot going on, and I never felt 'right' to post a response yet. Obviously the 'schedule' has been pushed back a bit further than I intended, but I suppose that gives everyone more time to look at the options.

Ah notice on ze Ruddaring forum ze perzonal text under ze profoile picture iz mizzin'. Are ve ztill gaein' tae 'ave zat, und ye juzt 'avenae gaetten tae it yet, or iz it zummat zat'z gaein' tae be lozt in ze converzion?

It's possible to include custom profile fields. The hard part might be including it without a prefix (like "Personal Text:"). If it's not too difficult I'd like to do this quickly, but otherwise people might have to either live with the ugly prefix, or put more things in their signatures, at least for a while. But the Status field, at least, is in.

Und iz zere ze pozzibility o' ze zankin' ozerbeaztz' pozt feature comin' back? Ah ken zeveral member bezoidez mezelf mizz zat.

Probably not as it was. The main reason why it was taken out was a philosophical decision, that the way it was implemented didn't help build the community. My opinion on that hasn't changed, but much more importantly, the current staff, in our discussions, seem to be in agreement.

Thanks as they were implemented had several problems and unfortunate side effects:
1) They reduce the amount of meaningful connections and conversation. People just push a button instead of expressing actual gratitude. Also, a post is an opportunity for detail - it's possible that once you've started to put the effort into posting, other thoughts might come to you, and you end up saying more than you originally thought you might. This 'time-saving' feature prevents that from ever happening.
2) It contributes to a general distasteful trend of 'gamifying' the forum, common to social media these days.
3) Perhaps most importantly, it helps polarize the forum. In a regular discussion, people who are invested in the subject will type out their thoughts, which might have important nuances that can't be captured by a general statement of approval or disapproval. If you're not invested enough to post, you don't, and so you're not involved. It's a conversation, not a competition.

Thanks change the equation. They're all or nothing: you're assumed to like all of someone's post, in a binary decision. If their post is opposed to somebody, it's implicitly assumed you agree with their opposition to that person. And since there's no effort required to like something, people who would normally be bystanders can now be easily included in 'battle lines', one group vs. the other. Instead of having a discussion and trying to understand your fellow forum members, you're consciously or subconsciously counting your side's likes vs. your opponents' likes, figuring out how many are with you and against you, and trying to 'win the battle'. That's unproductive at best, and dangerous and destructive at worst. This system gives people all of the information they don't need, and little or none of what they do.

However, I understand the 'Thanks' feature offered more than just keeping score. A lot of us (myself included) used it as a bookmarks feature. My decision to remove it so quickly without taking that into account has haunted me ever since. I would like to see that functionality, which never should have been removed in the first place, reimplemented, this time to stay. I'm not sure off-hand what mod or feature would suit the purpose, but this is something that bears checking into, either before conversion or in upgrades and feature enhancements afterwards.

[Verdauga]

While I agree with your thoughts on the thank feature, I wonder if you'd be able to institute a post bookmarking feature using it (that is, a bookmark button instead of a thank button.)

[James Gryphon]

Yes; that's actually the same as how I realized I should have done it with the previous version. If there is a dedicated bookmarks mod, we might use that, but otherwise, tweaking a 'thanks' mod to produce the desired effect is the most likely solution.