Forum (Discuss) Enhancement suggestions

Quote from: BobRay at Jan 14, 2013, 10:08 PM

Another enhancement I'd like to see is the automatic creation of a Forum thread (either a support thread or an announcement -- or both) when an Extra is submitted or updated.

I agree. One thing that I keep thinking about is that if I post a note here on a specific Addon, that I also need to PM the author so that they can comment on their code. (Of course it's FOSS and others can/should pick up the baton, but authors should be notified/involved.) If there is an existing thread for the addon version then the author will be notified by default.

Another way around this (and I understand the complexity) just applies to this site: If someone uses @AddonName in their text then the author(s) of that addon will be identified from a table and then sent a forum PM. The @ reference will be removed when it matches a table entry so that quotes and other copies don't trigger a flurry of notes to the author. For extra credit, the author is only notified once per week of @references in a given thread - since no one knows if the author was PM'd, everyone might want to do the thread a favor and get the author involved. The @reference could also force a note at the bottom of the posted text that the author was notified of activity, that way everyone knows.

A less complicated alernative to this, usable anywhere and on any site, would be for people to intentionally @reference the author (or any person), triggering a twitter-like PM saying "you were mentioned in this thread". That would be good for all of us when someone says "that @captainstarbuck guy is a real PITA". Note: the @id must be correct, but that's the responsibility of the person inserting the reference. Again, the number of notifications needs to be moderated.

Finally for now (as if!), it would be nice to have an improved mechanism for creating links within a posting:

Select text, click the Insert Link button, and you get the URL tag wrapped around your text, but no URL of course. So you want to link to a specific thread/posting. Right-click the Reply# timestamp and copy link location, then go to your tag, hit the '=' key, and paste the URL. Personally I also remove the domain so that the link always applies to the 'current site', even if the domain changes. There are too many old links in this forum that are broken simply because of domain name changes.

Anyway, I'm thinking that it would be good to have two components available for better linking:

First, right-click a link and get a context menu which allows you to copy the full link or just the portion for local navigation. Maybe even provide another short-form which uses redirection to go directly to a posting, as /thread/#id rather than /thread/#threadId/header-text-here?page=X#dis-post#id. There's a lot of wasted space there.

Second, with a URI in your copy buffer, select your text and click Insert URL, and the URL=URI gets automatically pasted into the text. Sure there can be confusion for those who don't have a URI in the buffer when they do that. That's why this should be an option checked in the profile.

Thanks for your time and patience.

I've been hoping and waiting for the re-release of this. Thanks much Mark et al for making it fly. Has anyone implemented this in the wild yet (outside this forum)? I have been looking at this but the modifications to the templates looking daunting ATM. FWIW, I do like the way it works generally much better than the previous MODX board. I also concur with the rating enhancement suggestion (and would have "thumbs-uped" it had that feature been available *cough*.

[ed. note: harveyev last edited this post 11 years, 3 months ago.]

Enhancement suggestions for /user/subscriptions:

1. Sorting (optionally?) should not include alpha-numerics. "quoted text" and [bracketed text] sort at the top above A, B, C...
2. Allow for sort by Posted On date, Board, (or Author?)
3. (Local styling) The column widths are biased toward having the Posted On field wrap, but all rows will then wrap if a single huge thread name is present. I propose a mod to the CSS ("f7 f-padinall", etc) which will force long thread names to wrap before forcing every other row to wrap in another column.
4. Allow for display for "Posted On" to display date/time rather than using 'ago' format.
5. Make Board names a link to the board.

BUG? : The Author column doesn't show names, only "By".

Thanks.

I would find it very handy to have a forum based bookmarking system where I can easily sort, categorize, keep track of threads I want to find later from (multiple machines so browser bookmarks dont help). Sort of like a subscribe without having to receive emails.

Quote from: captainstarbuck at Dec 30, 2012, 02:53 AM

Quote from: frogabog at Dec 30, 2012, 12:47 AM

Use the "by email" button next to the RSS button to subscribe to threads. It's a little obscure, but it's actually the subscribe button.

I'm talking about subscribing to boards. For example, I want to know if there is a new posting just to this board about Discuss. I can't subscribe to threads if I don't know they're there.

Really, this one is at the bottom of my list considering we Can subscribe via RSS. I just prefer to get all notifications in one place (email) rather than having to open my browser for the RSS. (yeah yeah, I need to build an RSS reader into my email client, ok ok...)

You can tell browsers to sync bookmarks; that may be a solution in the short term I've used that myself for a while using xmarks across two machines with two different browsers each.

I'll take a look at it. Clicking a little bookmark this icon on the post would be uber convenient. I do like the profile synching feature of chrome honestly. But with an Android phone, and an Ipad in addtion to 3 different computers i use it becomes unwieldy. Anyway, just a wish. Many don't come true. But you never get what you don't ask for:). Thanks for the work on this.

Quote from: markh at Jan 28, 2013, 03:49 PM

You can tell browsers to sync bookmarks; that may be a solution in the short term I've used that myself for a while using xmarks across two machines with two different browsers each.

Just installed it. $12/tr for premium to support droid and IoS. Not too bad. Thx for the tip. I do think you just like it b/c it has "Mark" in the name <.< >.>

Quote from: harveyev at Jan 28, 2013, 04:43 PM

I'll take a look at it. Clicking a little bookmark this icon on the post would be uber convenient. I do like the profile synching feature of chrome honestly. But with an Android phone, and an Ipad in addtion to 3 different computers i use it becomes unwieldy. Anyway, just a wish. Many don't come true. But you never get what you don't ask for:). Thanks for the work on this.

Quote from: markh at Jan 28, 2013, 03:49 PM

You can tell browsers to sync bookmarks; that may be a solution in the short term I've used that myself for a while using xmarks across two machines with two different browsers each.

Quote from: BobRay at Jan 14, 2013, 10:08 PM

Another enhancement I'd like to see is the automatic creation of a Forum thread (either a support thread or an announcement -- or both) when an Extra is submitted or updated.

Seconded, big-time. The Forum thread should be auto-linked linked from the official Extra page for the Extra. That way people thinking about installing the Extra can get a quick idea about the state of it. At the moment, Extras are a bit of a gamble until you do a bunch of googling.

I totally agree with the risks of installing Addons and rating the support forum will be helpful for those trying to find the least risky solution to solve a need. Though this may be better handled by a Review & Rating system on the Addons themselves like Joomla http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/clients-a-communities/ratings-a-reviews and the other biggies do. Mixing a support thread with unstructured adhoc reviews would be better than nil, but more ambiguous than a dedicated way to represent the sum of public opinion on an Addon.

FWIW, I design enterprise information solutions as my day job, so this subject is really in my wheelhouse and as a user one I am fairly passionate about. And this may be slightly off topic and a 20,000 ft. observation but:

<!-- soapbox start -->
Extending the Package Management functionality, including the ability of the providers and the MODx Manager, to represent the quality of addons (as a function of public ratings, reviews, and install base) would be exceptionally useful for all users, most especially the casual and less technical users of MODX, improve adoption and increase the overall overall utility of MODX.
<!-- soapbox end -->

This I guess is a bit of a grander ask than a feature request for an Addon or even MODx itself as it touches everything to do with MODX from RTFM, to REST, to Package Management, to publishing and promotion. Not sure where to begin with something like this but I for one would assist in whatever I could do to help make it happen. Maybe I'm not the first to suggest this, but I didn't try to search the forums for it either since that is a whole other subject;)


Quote from: shorewalker at Jan 29, 2013, 07:01 AM

Quote from: BobRay at Jan 14, 2013, 10:08 PM

Another enhancement I'd like to see is the automatic creation of a Forum thread (either a support thread or an announcement -- or both) when an Extra is submitted or updated.

Seconded, big-time. The Forum thread should be auto-linked linked from the official Extra page for the Extra. That way people thinking about installing the Extra can get a quick idea about the state of it. At the moment, Extras are a bit of a gamble until you do a bunch of googling.