XenForo 2 and our post-upgrade itinerary

[Null]

XenForo 2 is nearing the first release candidate. You can preview it here:
https://xf2demo.xenforo.com/

According to their developers, the existing framework will be changing so dramatically all mods will break. I'm using this as a good excuse to rewrite some things and change a lot.

Lets start with things I hate. I hate a lot of shit. I'm going to list what I hate and how I intend on making them less shit.


Arbitrary categorization.
We have 2 topics on this website: schadenfreude, and everything else. Organizing the forum is a fucking chore and it's a constant fight trying to figure out how we get people the content they want to see, and how to hide content they don't want to see.

A favored solution I have is merging Lolcows/Comwatch/Tumblr/Salt together and changing the categorization and tagging of them so people can filter out what they don't want to see and hide or favorite individual threads. The question is how we should go about doing these categories so that they actually work for you, because even right now the Lolcow board by itself is too big to serve its purpose. Trying to split it into two boards doesn't really work: one always languishes.

Another solution is to add some sort of thread rating system and letting people filter out poorly received threads. Both ideas can work in conjunction.


Thread format.
Threads have serious flaws to them but I enjoy the traditional scroll of conversation. A paginated, traditional forum thread is very easy to read (as opposed to say, reddit, which is fucking awful to read and is completely counter to how humans have conversation).

The problem is two-fold.

Good posts are quickly buried. I'm going to remedy this by writing a new rating system from scratch that bookmarks highly rated posts so people just wanting a "best of" highlight reel can get those high points of a thread without any problem.

Very long threads have bigger issues than bad posts getting buried. This is especially true with old threads. The Brianna Wu thread(s), for instance, not only eclipse good posts, they are a running muck of various phases in this weirdo's life which get forgotten. You can quickly fall out of date. If Jaimas's fucking essays are any indication, Wu deserves their own board -- but the number of people who would post in such a board is very few, and few people outside of that group would check an individual Wu board at all.

I want some way for threads to turn into boards more naturally and without making the content obscure. I have a vague idea for some way to allow threads to become sub-threaded, but the details aren't clear.


Lolcow wiki.
The wiki doesn't work. We've seen steady contributions and we've seen a few good articles spring up but the main issue is that people don't like to hopscotch between two different sites. It's become very clear there is appreciation for auxiliary sites I run, but if that content is not on the Kiwi Farms it will be used less.

I have plans to finish my Lolcow Wiki bridge by dropping the lolcow.wiki domain and moving it to kiwifarms.net/wiki/, and then replace or insert above the OP of the thread the actual article. This would solve an additional issues: huge or old threads have very poor and out of date OPs, unless the author of the thread is an active maintainer.


Media gallery.
The media gallery is shit and I have no idea what I want to do with it. Taking suggestions.

Discuss.

 

[cumrobbery]

Can you add some cool new ratings?

 

[Null]

Can you add some cool new ratings?

An idea I have for the rating mod is having fewer ratings, but more flavors of each.

Example: There is a "Winner" group, but it has "Winner" and "Semper Fidelis". Special flavors are unlocked through different means or based on the board, but they're counted from their categories. This will let me add a ton of fun ones without cluttering the rating bar.

 

[AA 102]

Good posts are quickly buried. I'm going to remedy this by writing a new rating system from scratch that bookmarks highly rated posts so people just wanting a "best of" highlight reel can get those high points of a thread without any problem.

The only problem I have with this is that some of the highest rated posts are shitposts people make on the first page of a thread, basically every CWC thread. Maybe only have certain rating bump posts instead of any positive rating bumping posts. Like have the informative rating bump posts and have feels not count.

 

[Locksnap]

Some solid ideas. The ability to filter out threads that don't interest us is particularly appealing. With the growth of the site, theres been a growth in the sheer amount of content being posted and to be quite frank, I'm having a hard time trawling through the junk on the main Lolcow board to find threads I actually want to read. . I think you should consider implementing the ability to manually hide specific threads as well, rather than just by tag.

In regards to Chris I had wanted Updates to be brought back, but the new changes to filter posts might just render it moot.

 

[Smutley]

The only problem I have with this is that some of the highest rated posts are shitposts people make on the first page of a thread, basically every CWC thread. Maybe only have certain rating bump posts instead of any positive rating bumping posts. Like have the informative rating bump posts and have feels not count.

Shut up, Chris IS gay

 

[Chan the Wizard]

I like having separate boards.
I personally find the majority of Tumblr cows to be boring or not amusing, but there's a few I do want to read. I'm concerned that with a tagging system, I'd filter out what I don't want to see with the ones I do and I might miss something new unintentionally.
That's true of most boards for me. I'm probably just misunderstanding the potential implementation of the tagging system.

 

[Null]

The only problem I have with this is that some of the highest rated posts are shitposts people make on the first page of a thread, basically every CWC thread. Maybe only have certain rating bump posts instead of any positive rating bumping posts. Like have the informative rating bump posts and have feels not count.

Tying into the below quote, you could view the most "Informative" only, for instance.

Example: There is a "Winner" group, but it has "Winner" and "Semper Fidelis". Special flavors are unlocked through different means or based on the board, but they're counted from their categories. This will let me add a ton of fun ones without cluttering the rating bar.

Some solid ideas. The ability to filter out threads that don't interest us is particularly appealing. With the growth of the site, theres been a growth in the sheer amount of content being posted and to be quite frank, I'm having a hard time trawling through the junk on the main Lolcow board to find threads I actually want to read. . I think you should consider implementing the ability to manually hide specific threads as well, rather than just by tag.

Yeah, hiding and favoring individual threads will be a taller priority. We have a "Watched Thread" system, but I don't think too many people use it. I want to make the front page as useful as possible, like this:

 

[Lurker]

Another solution is to add some sort of thread rating system and letting people filter out poorly received threads. Both ideas can work in conjunction.

Wouldn't this be an issue because people could just brigade threads out of spite, even if the threads don't actually suck?

 

[Milktheturtle]

As long it's easy to navigate i'm all in.Not a huge fan of merging boards tho,but if you think it could work well I aint complaining.

I'm all in for thread changes too.Some big thread need sortings options or bump for important shit because 2/3 of the times,people dont update the OP and lot of good post are lost so it's confusing to read big thread.Would be nice to get something that make reading 100 pages thread easier.

 

[Null]

Wouldn't this be an issue because people could just brigade threads out of spite, even if the threads don't actually suck?

The actual algorithm used to decide what post is a best of is a legendary programming problem. It's hard to decide what is a good piece of content mathematically. No matter what I do, it will be an imperfect system that can be abused, but it's better than what we have now.

 

[CatParty]

@Null just don't change the font

 

[EthicsInCheesePizza]

I'd like to resubmit the idea I posted earlier of having manual bookmarks, or 'threadmarks' instead of or as well as bookmarks generated from ratings. Thread OPs could add them as a low effort alternative to uplating the OP, as could moderators.

If you're going to do bookmarks by rating, you should separate the bookmark lists by type. For example you could have the main list be basedan off of Informative ratings and that's the default one. Users could then show/hide the bookmarks for the funniest posts [ (eg Winner ratings) separately.

This would stop "lol die chris" from being marked as important just because it has a lot of points. You could do other stuff with dynamic bookmarks too- for example you could create a bookmark list of the most autistic posts, or most disagreed posts, which would be hidden by default.

 

[wagglyplacebo]

Whatever happens just make sure the font is changed.

 

[Charles Morgenstern]

Is it possible to allow responses to be rated as having contributed to the on-going narrative? Informative is useful, though it could be used in a sweeping fashion as to be overly broad. This would be a subset of a highlight-reel rating, as highlights can include just about anything of interest, though not necessarily in furtherance of the story as it unfolds.

Then again... I suppose that would turn a thread into a wiki page. Nevermind, prank caller-prank caller.

 

[Cosmos]

I'm opposed to merging boards because I think it keeps things neat and organized, but everything else sounds really cool.

 

[Hodor]

Merging the boards seems like a bad idea, since it'd just make the lolcow board even more of a clusterfuck than it already is. Everything else sounds pretty good though.

 

[Batman VS Tony Danza]

Is this the update about the font change? I'd like to suggest the Matrix font. I don't know if it's called "Matrix font" but I feel that will yield the best results when googled to download and install the Matrix font.

 

[wagglyplacebo]

Is this the update about the font change? I'd like to suggest the Matrix font. I don't know if it's called "Matrix font" but I feel that will yield the best results when googled to download and install the Matrix font.

 

[Null]

I'm opposed to merging boards because I think it keeps things neat and organized, but everything else sounds really cool.

Merging the boards seems like a bad idea, since it'd just make the lolcow board even more of a clusterfuck than it already is. Everything else sounds pretty good though.

The important element is that we're not just throwing out boards, we're replacing them with something tidier. In the end, you're going to have good threads about communities sitting next to good threads about people.

Whatever happens just make sure the font is changed.

I don't know what Audentio's plan is with themes but we'll probably have to redo a lot of our customization with that as well. I'll review our use of fonts.

It's note worthy that we're very odd in the web design world. We use Sans-Serif fonts for most things, but our UGC (except for chat) is Serif. I had a lot of requests after our change from PHPBB to XenForo to use a Serif font for text walls. I guess it just makes it easier to read for some people.