Quote from: doze at Aug 23, 2006, 04:15 PM
Paul, have you seen the xforum snippet that uses Replix? The planned features for replix’s successor looks great for this becoming more evolved..
I have, and basing things on that work was actually part of my original "cobble something together" plan. Having been approached by bS following my original post, I can confirm that the Replix successor will definitely be part of anything I do forum-wise. However, I am keen to identify the areas that make sense as individual modules/snippets/whatever.
Quote from: Mitch at Aug 23, 2006, 05:34 PM
Main advantages for me would be that the contentmanagers can also manage the forum from the same environment as the content.
Yes. I’m thinking it will at least be integrated as a module, or a couple of modules similar to Polls Module.
Quote from: Mitch at Aug 23, 2006, 05:34 PM
- sticky topics
Yes.
Quote from: Mitch at Aug 23, 2006, 05:34 PM
- private forums (probably covered by "restricted access", but just to be sure )
It was indeed. Actually, there is scope for another kind of private forum - a cross between a PM and a forum, where a user could create his own restricted-access thread just by inviting people in. Anyone know of any examples of this in other systems? Indeed, I’d like to have PMs grouped into threads, kinda like Google Mail does mail.
Quote from: Mitch at Aug 23, 2006, 05:34 PM
- Smilies
Actually, if treated right as a secondary parser sweep, "Smilies and Other Automatic Text To Image Conversions" could be quite exciting for MODx. You could potentially have all sorts of image references that could have shorthand forms - eg :companylogo:
But that’s probably getting ahead of ourselves.
is in.
I am less keen on.
Quote from: RussLipton at Aug 24, 2006, 03:30 PM
[Vanilla] (or SMF) is apples-and-oranges to an elegant MODx forum offering, especially one that is factored for reuse of its objects and functions in other parts of a MODx app.
True. Although there’s every chance that I’ll need to write some MODx-based interrogation of other forum DBs soon; I think it’s important to remember that behind every PHP/MySQL forum, there’s a MySQL db that MODx can happily query.
Quote from: RussLipton at Aug 24, 2006, 03:30 PM
I don’t have a lot to add to the features already described but I’ll tell you that what I like most about Vanilla is that it can be engineered to ’blur’ the lines between ’blogs’ and ’forums’ or, more precisely, ’blog posts’ and ’commenting’.
Yes, this I like. The line is blurred in real life - BBC’s Newsnight keeps plugging its "forum cum blog". I fully intend to keep things modular.
Quote from: RussLipton at Aug 24, 2006, 03:30 PM
I have found that anything reducing the impedance level so end-users ’post/comment’ without even noticing that they are part of a conversation is awesome. Classical ’forums’ impose a now-canonical set of interface/behavioral assumptions that don’t match well to blog/site posts/articles ... while blog commenting is so transient and noise-driven (as well as hard to cite/search/organize) that many blogs simply give up on conversation.
Actually, the one thing that I find is crucial to Vanilla is that the default view is the "Recent Posts In All Categories". Sure, the "Here’s A Load Of Confusing Categories" view is available, but if you want to join in an existing conversation all you need to do is skim the subject lines to find the sort of thing you have an opinion on. This here MODx forum clearly has a lot of people who mainly read the "What’s Been Going On" section, because there are many times when an answerable post has languished for days - even at the top of a forum - but not heated up until someone has found it again and got it back on the recent posts view.
Yes, what impedes conversation is increased thought. Although I’ve been responsible for a net increase in forums here at modxcms.com, I’d much rather view things together. Much of a Moderator’s role is filing stuff into the right subforum. I have a solution. But first, more on your illuminating post.
Quote from: RussLipton at Aug 24, 2006, 03:30 PMIn other words, to me the still unaddressed use case is blog/article seamlessly linked/related to conversational threading. A user could come at that conversational thread either by way of the article or by way of the forum or, for that matter by way of RSS, etc. The blog/article with its attachable thread represent different, bi- or tri-directional entry points to a single conversational node.
I think we’re largely on the same page here. I want to link conversations together. If a blog post is prompted by comments in a forum, I want them linking to each other. I want a third choice between New Reply and New Thread - sort of New Thread In Response, which would start a new thread but leave a link to it in the main thread. That is, an actual system for off-topic tangents. Yes, keeping it simple is a challenge but I’m all in favour of that.
Quote from: RussLipton at Aug 24, 2006, 03:30 PM
If your work provides that explicitly or ’just’ makes it possible to assemble such an interface from your parts, I’ll be thrilled.
I truly hope you will be thrilled.
Oh, I said I had an idea to solve the complex subforums problem: restricted-list tags. I’ll come back to that later...