Split from forum software upgrade (closed)

[Geostigma]

We have always operated on community consensus unless something has been time-critical.
Also has it not occurred to anyone here that as I said before, people are hesitant to reply because they're afraid of being shot down in flames or made to look like they're being unreasonable? I've had a fair few PMs and messages on Facebook in my time here for making an unpopular post and being lambasted for it by people thanking me for having the front to say it (and seriously if you're going to do that I'd much rather you post in here kthxbai).

This is some serious Starling tier stuff here, if there are people with concerns there are tons of private ways for them to air said concerns. We can't operate if we continually get hung up on what if tier scenarios that rely on the off chance someone somewhere is to scared to say something sucks. If you don't voice your concern, well tough shit imo. I don't expect staff here to start guessing at problems people might have.


If there are people legitimately scared of the community or staff jumping down there throat I find it hard to believe. This community has made huge fucking strides in this department and hasn't fostered mentality like that in a very long time. It's pretty insulting to just imply both that we'd act like that and that there are people that feel like that.

Need I remind you and anyone who might actually feel like that to go back a few pages where I said the Discourse board we were about to for realsies switch to as our main software was basically shit. And on the same freaking day they intended to announce us switching to it. Hell they even said "Lets give it a chance" lmao. Am I banned? Did Lex jump down my throat? Did Yopy Tentacle smite me?

Oh shit the opposite happened. More people like... chimed in... and were listened to. Oh man. That's gotta suck for your over all point

So unless you have people who personally pm'd you about this specific topic and said the XF board is shit or the way its happening is shit etc. , this is 100% a non-point that just leads to circular talk with 0 resolution. Because from your post it looks like people told you to say shit about other topics in the past, not this one. That also doesn't suddenly make you the arbiter of hidden opinions and give you the ability to champion the inner thoughts of the apparently unheard masses on this board.

And on top of that how many people do you think are actually active on this forum btw? Because a good chunk of them have posted in this thread and if they haven't they got to test out the forum before and after it went into open beta and the general consensus is that it's great. Even the fucking person you listed in your earlier post ended up giving it probably the best glowing review

Darth actually said he didn't give any input because he doesn't know much of the technical side of things,

https://thelifestream.net/forums/showpost.php?p=787861&postcount=287

Also re : Your timeline having happened or not happened in this thread. No u. Read the thread.

Also re: being given a chance to expound on your point. Someone replied to you and acknowledged your concern. That's on you to reply with more than one word. You being lazy isn't a staff ignoring your concerns it's just you being lazy. And if anything it's fucking mixed signals since you said "Both" to an open ended reply that applauded and criticized how this is transpiring. If a single post in this thread needed more words it's that one.

We have always operated on community consensus unless something has been time-critical.

This is like the third thread we've made about this subject. And this thread alone is 2 years old. Considering were running on old ass software that by the miracle of some god somewhere hasn't been hacked yet makes it a pretty time critical issue that we should have dealt with years ago.

Furthermore we are operating on community consensus. No u your timeline sucks, everything you listed happened.

Re :Your list of alternate forum software.

A sizeable chunk of those are the ones i listed as being on life support since 2006 and the rest are noticeable downgrades from even Discourse. So were back at square one where we get to choose between shitty Discourse , bad vB5 and xf.


So your grand standing on this is literally that we didn't test out worse software with in the last 2 years? Ever consider that a majority never made it past chatting stage, or weren't even mentioned was because they are really not that good at all? Hell one of the ones you listed is the one this forum used when it launched (SMF)

Like I know your whole schtick is acting like an ass sometimes Mage, and it's great that your passionate about this and I know we can always count on you being real/not pulling punches to make sure a point gets across. But this sort of comes off as misguided, so many people are happy with thats transpiring right now and the how the new boards looking.

Like you can't sit there and just say "no u staff does what it wants" etc. mean while a good chunk of the active userbase is actually not only helping make this happen, but also praising it.

 

[Mage]

We have always operated on community consensus unless something has been time-critical.
Also has it not occurred to anyone here that as I said before, people are hesitant to reply because they're afraid of being shot down in flames or made to look like they're being unreasonable? I've had a fair few PMs and messages on Facebook in my time here for making an unpopular post and being lambasted for it by people thanking me for having the front to say it (and seriously if you're going to do that I'd much rather you post in here kthxbai).

This is some serious Starling tier stuff here, if there are people with concerns there are tons of private ways for them to air said concerns. We can't operate if we continually get hung up on what if tier scenarios that rely on the off chance someone somewhere is to scared to say something sucks. If you don't voice your concern, well tough shit imo. I don't expect staff here to start guessing at problems people might have.

If there are people legitimately scared of the community or staff jumping down there throat I find it hard to believe. This community has made huge fucking strides in this department and hasn't fostered mentality like that in a very long time. It's pretty insulting to just imply both that we'd act like that and that there are people that feel like that.

Need I remind you and anyone who might actually feel like that to go back a few pages where I said the Discourse board we were about to for realsies switch to as our main software was basically shit. And on the same freaking day they intended to announce us switching to it. Hell they even said "Lets give it a chance" lmao. Am I banned? Did Lex jump down my throat? Did Yopy Tentacle smite me?

Oh shit the opposite happened. More people like... chimed in... and were listened to. Oh man. That's gotta suck for your over all point

So unless you have people who personally pm'd you about this specific topic and said the XF board is shit or the way its happening is shit etc. , this is 100% a non-point that just leads to circular talk with 0 resolution. Because from your post it looks like people told you to say shit about other topics in the past, not this one. That also doesn't suddenly make you the arbiter of hidden opinions and give you the ability to champion the inner thoughts of the apparently unheard masses on this board.

Well I thought it was clear enough but I'm not referring specifically to this subject where I've had PMs from people. No-one has told me what to say (because they'd get told to fuck off).
How do you know if people are self-conscious about speaking up when your first reply to my post is jumping down my throat? Kinda contradicted yourself there. Describing me as the 'arbiter of hidden opinions' is hilarious, apart from citing that I've previously had PMs on the matter and being concerned about people being unwilling to vocalise opinion, I am literally speaking for myself and no-one else and this should be pretty obvious.

And on top of that how many people do you think are actually active on this forum btw? Because a good chunk of them have posted in this thread and if they haven't they got to test out the forum before and after it went into open beta and the general consensus is that it's great. Even the fucking person you listed in your earlier post ended up giving it probably the best glowing review

Darth actually said he didn't give any input because he doesn't know much of the technical side of things,

https://thelifestream.net/forums/showpost.php?p=787861&postcount=287

That post was made after the request for feedback was made.

Also re : Your timeline having happened or not happened in this thread. No u. Read the thread.

It's not a timeline, nor did I ever imply it was.

Also re: being given a chance to expound on your point. Someone replied to you and acknowledged your concern. That's on you to reply with more than one word. You being lazy isn't a staff ignoring your concerns it's just you being lazy. And if anything it's fucking mixed signals since you said "Both" to an open ended reply that applauded and criticized how this is transpiring. If a single post in this thread needed more words it's that one.

So if a tree falls in the forest after I've already expressed misgivings about it's stability, is it still my fault? I mentioned a few pages earlier that I'd like to see things done differently if we were abandoning Discourse.

We have always operated on community consensus unless something has been time-critical.

This is like the third thread we've made about this subject. And this thread alone is 2 years old. Considering were running on old ass software that by the miracle of some god somewhere hasn't been hacked yet makes it a pretty time critical issue that we should have dealt with years ago.

I agree, which is why I can't understand why there's been two years of procrastination.

Furthermore we are operating on community consensus. No u your timeline sucks, everything you listed happened.

I literally have no idea what point you're trying to make here.

Re :Your list of alternate forum software.

A sizeable chunk of those are the ones i listed as being on life support since 2006 and the rest are noticeable downgrades from even Discourse. So were back at square one where we get to choose between shitty Discourse , bad vB5 and xf.

I don't recall you saying this but I'm happy to concede I could be wrong there, particularly if it's a long post.

So your grand standing on this is literally that we didn't test out worse software with in the last 2 years? Ever consider that a majority never made it past chatting stage, or weren't even mentioned was because they are really not that good at all? Hell one of the ones you listed is the one this forum used when it launched (SMF)

I didn't see this discussion happen. Would've been nice to see a recap at the start of the thread if that was the case.

Like I know your whole schtick is acting like an ass sometimes Mage, and it's great and all but right now it's kinda misguided I think.

Like you can't sit there and just say "no u staff does what it wants" etc. mean while a good chunk of the active userbase is actually not only helping make this happen, but also praising it.

Actually from what I'm seeing an active chunk of the userbase just isn't active ATM.
This isn't some 'schtick', if I was deliberately being obtuse then I'd be using a lot more. At some point there's been discussion about this that I'm clearly unaware of. I've offered to help and no-one's taken me up on it, I honestly haven't felt like part of the process at all but I'm not knocking anyone who's gotten stuck in. Like I've already said, despite my misgivings, it's nice that things are moving forward and XF seems like it ticks all the boxes.
I've expanded on my comments and said what I wanted to say but I honestly don't expect people to start jumping down my throat or baiting me simply because they disagree or take exception to it.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

You have basically just expanded on your original comment. My follow-on point which I'd hoped would clarify matters was that by having Staff Emeritus visible based on your explanation is that you're putting an onus on former staffers that shouldn't be there. You're also overlooking outliers like myself who chose not to display the badge. You didn't explain that bit. People leave staff for various reasons, principally because they don't want the responsibility of the post any more. Expecting someone to be available in the same sense as a staffer (admittedly without the relevant permissions) even though they're not is unreasonable.

It's just like having a retired military rank – sure it doesn't mean anything, won't get you into any secret base, and you don't HAVE to display it – but it IS something potentially useful to interactions with others if you CHOOSE to display it. Nowhere did I suggest that there're any expectation of those members to be available in the same sense as a staffer but without any permissions... What the hell are you on about?

One of the easiest ways to gauge how a community works as a newer member is to see who's who, and who does what when posting. While merit/post count is often used as a gauge for that, sometimes those folks are just extra chatty cunts who care a lot about their e-peen size (one of the many reason that post count hidden from the default display). Staff and Staff Emeritus happen to be roles that are entirely merit-based, so unlike Donators it's not just people who chuck some cash at the community. The community itself has to place that role onto those members.

If you were to skim and look at posts by members with those roles, you'd have a better picture of how things are run or how things work, compared to just trying to look at a random selection of users. Something as simple as, "Hey man, knock it off" looks very different coming from any random member vs. coming from one of those community-elected roles – both active and former. As such, Staff Emeritus has an active value to our community that I was arguing we should maintain in the transition when we flatten permissions upon transition (especially if the forum hits a growth spurt in the future with the Remake). Since that's the case, there's clearly value to retaining the usergroup list of that particular role on the new forum software and making something of it on XF (which is why I suggested possibly using an alternative for maintaining the role on XF that weren't perms based).

People are still more than welcome to choose if that's something that they want to retain on their profiles in this and the new forum, we're not FORCING anyone who has it to retain it now or on XF. Finding a way to translate that idea of merit-based distinction over to XF makes a ton more sense than us unilaterally scrapping it outright with the forum software transition just because it's not something with explicitly permissions-defined benefits.


Lastly, none of that line of more-detailed inquiry was at all even hinted at when you just said, "Why not fuck off with the role altogether?" and then explained what the role was and that it came with no permissions-based benefits, so yes – I just expanded on my original comment in my previous clarifying post, because there wasn't any other detail that it was even remotely clear that was needed at the time.





X

 

[Geostigma]

Feels bad seems you started replying to me while I was still editing my post. Needless to say my first draft was way more douchey then it needed to be and I shouldn't have hit reply as quickly as I did. None the less I apologize.

Well I thought it was clear enough but I'm not referring specifically to this subject where I've had PMs from people. No-one has told me what to say (because they'd get told to fuck off).
How do you know if people are self-conscious about speaking up when your first reply to my post is jumping down my throat? Kinda contradicted yourself there. Describing me as the 'arbiter of hidden opinions' is hilarious, apart from citing that I've previously had PMs on the matter and being concerned about people being unwilling to vocalise opinion, I am literally speaking for myself and no-one else and this should be pretty obvious.

My replies to you are a whole scale tamer thent he ones you made to X like a page ago. I don't think just disagreeing with you and talking to you in the same tone you generally use on the forum is jumping down your throat. Known you since back in SO, I figured you wouldn't mind me adding in a few extra fucks into a post lol.

Idk. I consider jumping down someones throat as like telling them to fuck off etc.

That post was made after the request for feedback was made.

Fair. It's still worth pointing out he still chimed in anyway and this threads really old and even though I haven't re-read some of the older posts yet I'm sure the most recent feedback request isn't the first.

It's not a timeline, nor did I ever imply it was.

Couldn't think of a better term on the fly

I literally have no idea what point you're trying to make here.

I'm just disagreeing with your general point. Nearly everything you said should happen, has happened in my opinion. Yeah we didn't try out other forum software aside from considering the top 3. But they are the top 3 for a reason.

So if a tree falls in the forest after I've already expressed misgivings about it's stability, is it still my fault? I mentioned a few pages earlier that I'd like to see things done differently if we were abandoning Discourse.

lol come on. Plus reread his post he was asking if you felt the change was positive or negative basically. You just said both. I'm not faulting you or anything but the onus isn't on us to guess what your point is when you make a one word reply. If you didn't want this to keep moving forward so quickly why did you not bring it up again even while still posting and talking about the purchase of this license? Why wait till now? I just don't get it.

Actually from what I'm seeing an active chunk of the userbase just isn't active ATM.

Yeah that's what I mean lol. We don't actually have a ton of daily active users and a good chunk of that userbase is involved or aware of this discussion in various ways

Re: the next part of that last bit, yes im being lazy about quoting now.

We can't make everything happen. That doesn't mean a post wasn't read or considered though. I mean part of the discussion here is choosing what's good to just get up and running now and what can be shelved for active development later on down the line as we further grow the xf board. It's very much a matter of time and resource allocation right now , not a diss against you. Your a back bone of this community were not trying to diss you or anything, we all just have a lot on our plates especially people like Lex who as far as I can tell apparently manages everrrrrything on this site? like holy shit dude, before I joined the youtube team staff thing I had no clue he did so freaking much here lol.

 

[Lex]

Sorry I don't have the time to formulate a big response to your stuff right now Mage, but I understand your concerns and feel like they've been fully addressed already. I'll write a full response when I'm home. I can't help but feel like things like "I didn't see the other discussions about forum software, would have been nice to see a summary at the start of this thread" isn't anyone's fault though. You seem determined to be pissed off. When Yop made this thread in 2016 was he supposed to anticipate you'd get annoyed that he hadn't written an essay about the 90 previous forum software discussions two years down the line when stuff was actually getting done?

The short story is that all the other software was determined to be shite a long time ago. vB5 was one of the very first things we discounted (while Aaron was here, consider how long ago that was). It's OK to ask questions but you've been mighty pissed off in this thread and forgive me - I feel like saying this will enrage you but there's no reason it should - you have no reason to be that pissed off. Not only has the due dilligence actually been done, everything you're complaining about has also been done, aside from beta'ing every single software (which is an unreasonable expectation when we can research them first). If someone takes the time to look into older threads they'd know for example the board started on SMF, and we have discussed it here aswell.

It really feels like there's something else pissing you off and you've latched on to this as an outlet, but I can only choose to trust what you're writing. If you have any concerns you don't want to air in public, feel free to PM me any time.

 

[Airling]

As much as I appreciate Mage's sentiment of being a lioness guarding the weak babs, you may be missing one thing, kind lady: Those of us invested in this community enough to care about this move aren't babs anymore. We're not scared to say anything here anymore. The amount of poop and sex talk around here is testament to that.

So if the reason most of us haven't chimed in isn't nervousness, what then?

I think, talking from my own experience of this, it might be because we all know each here, and we certainly all know the key people in this process. We've seen all the discussion they've had surrounding this. And because the majority of us understood jack shit about the actual technical stuff discussed, we simply stepped back, trusting, KNOWING, that at the end of the day, they would do what's best for the community.

And lo and behold, they have.

I may nope out of this thread and enjoy the rest of the move now, if that's okay?

 

[Lestat]

Not to stir shit but I kinda see where Addy is coming from in her replies.

As much as I didn't like discourse and found it hideous on mobile I do think it's better to take time in testing new software packages before making a jump.
I work with multi million pound contracts who have all fallen pray to the "it looks shiny and we've waited a long time for this so let's buy it" stick and you get 6 months in and end up going....fuck.

That said I think she does in fact raise some good points (although some seem to have a touched a nerve with some folk here)

1) the titles, is there really a need for a long list of different titles? You basically need three for any other site I see e.g admin (aka site owner) moderator (self explanatory) and finally member the rest are just ego boosting titles IMO.

2) In regards to the point she raised about member consensus it's great saying this chat has been going on for a while but let's face facts.

I joined in January and at that time discourse was just in it's beta format. It's been that way all year until the last two weeks or so where the decision to run with xf was fast tracked.

A lot of people have in fact went over and had a look and provided feedback but when your talking about community forums you kinda need things like global announcements etc to really make sure that everyone k Les what's going on. If it weren't for the fact I'm a nosy bugger I would have continued to think this thread was still about discourse and thought little of checking it afterwards.

So yeah kinda see both sides a bit but just didn't want valid points being shot down just because of tones used.

#mytwocents

 

[Roger]

Not to stir shit but I kinda see where Addy is coming from in her replies.

As much as I didn't like discourse and found it hideous on mobile I do think it's better to take time in testing new software packages before making a jump.
I work with multi million pound contracts who have all fallen pray to the "it looks shiny and we've waited a long time for this so let's buy it" stick and you get 6 months in and end up going....fuck.

That said I think she does in fact raise some good points (although some seem to have a touched a nerve with some folk here)

1) the titles, is there really a need for a long list of different titles? You basically need three for any other site I see e.g admin (aka site owner) moderator (self explanatory) and finally member the rest are just ego boosting titles IMO.

2) In regards to the point she raised about member consensus it's great saying this chat has been going on for a while but let's face facts.

I joined in January and at that time discourse was just in it's beta format. It's been that way all year until the last two weeks or so where the decision to run with xf was fast tracked.

A lot of people have in fact went over and had a look and provided feedback but when your talking about community forums you kinda need things like global announcements etc to really make sure that everyone k Les what's going on. If it weren't for the fact I'm a nosy bugger I would have continued to think this thread was still about discourse and thought little of checking it afterwards.

So yeah kinda see both sides a bit but just didn't want valid points being shot down just because of tones used.

#mytwocents

This isn't a multi million dollar deal tho, this doesn't have that kind of pressure behind to make something, anything, happen. Things can easily drag on for another year. If people want to do it sooner rather then later, because they feel motivated now, I don't think that's wrong.
And I don't think it's that easy to be active on this forum, not know a forum upgrade is happening at all and miss the opportunity to give one's opinion before it' s done and over completely.

 

[Lestat]

Not to stir shit but I kinda see where Addy is coming from in her replies.

As much as I didn't like discourse and found it hideous on mobile I do think it's better to take time in testing new software packages before making a jump.
I work with multi million pound contracts who have all fallen pray to the "it looks shiny and we've waited a long time for this so let's buy it" stick and you get 6 months in and end up going....fuck.

That said I think she does in fact raise some good points (although some seem to have a touched a nerve with some folk here)

1) the titles, is there really a need for a long list of different titles? You basically need three for any other site I see e.g admin (aka site owner) moderator (self explanatory) and finally member the rest are just ego boosting titles IMO.

2) In regards to the point she raised about member consensus it's great saying this chat has been going on for a while but let's face facts.

I joined in January and at that time discourse was just in it's beta format. It's been that way all year until the last two weeks or so where the decision to run with xf was fast tracked.

A lot of people have in fact went over and had a look and provided feedback but when your talking about community forums you kinda need things like global announcements etc to really make sure that everyone k Les what's going on. If it weren't for the fact I'm a nosy bugger I would have continued to think this thread was still about discourse and thought little of checking it afterwards.

So yeah kinda see both sides a bit but just didn't want valid points being shot down just because of tones used.

#mytwocents

This isn't a multi million dollar deal tho, this doesn't have that kind of pressure behind to make something, anything, happen. Things can easily drag on for another year. If people want to do it sooner rather then later, because they feel motivated now, I don't think that's wrong.
And I don't think it's that easy to be active on this forum, not know a forum upgrade is happening at all and miss the opportunity to give one's opinion before it' s done and over completely.

Regardless of it being a multi million pound deal or a five pound subscription to babestation it's still money.
Money which if it all falls on its arse (like discourse did) could be used elsewhere.

All I'm saying is maybe make the decision making part of this more open. Pretty sure VB has the ability to send all registered accounts a pm from the administrators.

Even a pm along the lines of "shit is changing" would go a long way rather than having it in a thread that's spent months stagnating.

 

[JechtShotMK9]

It's not the users' money, though. It's the staff's.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I'd also add that most of the this thread is about stuff most of the users don't know anything about. Data migration, server set-up, etc. That isn't stuff the majority of us have any need or desire to weigh in on. So long as this thread focused on that kind of technical stuff, I don't think any of the "normal users" were going to weigh in on it.

The people for who that stuff matters though? (Lex, Yop, etc.) They've been the ones discussing it for a long time. What would have felt weird is if those guys hadn't been around for those discussions.

Lo and behold... once the topic of the thread goes to things most users on the forum can test and stay something about (how the front-end feels and how it feels to post in the forum) a good number of the active users start posting about how they felt about Discourse.

And staff listened. The staff who do mess with the technical stuff looked for other options and came up with one they could set-up quickly and gave the non-technical forum users another forum to test out. The forum users tested it and posted about how they felt about it again.

I don't know... I don't think the workflow of that had to be different then it was. I know I checked out this thread when it popped up that new posts had been made in it. I just didn't have anything good to contribute so I left as soon as I got in it. Once I did have something meaningful to contribute, I made sure I did.

 

[Shademp]

All I have to say is that I am pleased with the efficient initiative that's been happening here lately in regards to the forum upgrade/move, I like the Xenforo test site and the sooner the new forum gets online the better. Full speed ahead, I say.

 

[Carlie]

Yeah no money made from the site was used to buy the Xenforo license, it was a personal purchase. Forums aren't exactly the future of the web and most are outdated as fuck and have ceased getting support ages ago. That's why Discourse and Xenforo were the only options to move to. Discourse was originally chosen because is open software meaning the chances of us avoiding being in this same situation years down the road was higher but clearly from the feedback from the test version it is incompatible with what we want of the forum to be.

There has been already a consensus from people to move to Xenforo, the due diligence was done and the feedback from the test forum has been positive. We cannot keep going around in circles discussing where to move because we're way past the point were we should've left. Like it has been said before is a fucking miracle we haven't been hacked already.

We have always gotten the community involved in what we do and I love that, and Yop and Lex have done their best to get people involved with the Xenforo move but at the end of the day the final decision falls on Yop as he's the owner, and we have to trust that him and Lex know what they're doing.

 

[Lex]

Not to stir shit but I kinda see where Addy is coming from in her replies.

As much as I didn't like discourse and found it hideous on mobile I do think it's better to take time in testing new software packages before making a jump.
I work with multi million pound contracts who have all fallen pray to the "it looks shiny and we've waited a long time for this so let's buy it" stick and you get 6 months in and end up going....fuck.

That said I think she does in fact raise some good points (although some seem to have a touched a nerve with some folk here)

1) the titles, is there really a need for a long list of different titles? You basically need three for any other site I see e.g admin (aka site owner) moderator (self explanatory) and finally member the rest are just ego boosting titles IMO.

It was actually me who brought up the point about flattening the user titles. In the next post Mage took issue with that because I think she thought I was declaring the removal of titles without consulting anyone. I can see how my post could have read that way, which is why I wan't offended when she said this:

RE: shit like user titles, isn't that the sort of thing that needs to be thrown out to consensus rather than one or two persons making calls? I can kind of understand signatures being restricted but the one thing that happens that annoys fuck out of me is when one post stretches the border so the page loads weird to accommodate it. Is there a way of preventing that on XF?

So for the record I agree that we should remove the vast majority of user titles, but it's not something I would do without consulting the board. The reason I was talking about it before is because doing it would make the move a lot easier, and we can reinstate any we want to post-move. They'd all still exist.

2) In regards to the point she raised about member consensus it's great saying this chat has been going on for a while but let's face facts.

I joined in January and at that time discourse was just in it's beta format. It's been that way all year until the last two weeks or so where the decision to run with xf was fast tracked.

A lot of people have in fact went over and had a look and provided feedback but when your talking about community forums you kinda need things like global announcements etc to really make sure that everyone k Les what's going on. If it weren't for the fact I'm a nosy bugger I would have continued to think this thread was still about discourse and thought little of checking it afterwards.

So yeah kinda see both sides a bit but just didn't want valid points being shot down just because of tones used.

#mytwocents

Before I start I'm just going to say this:

- A global announcement was made on this board to beta XF last week
- This thread, its predecessors and mentions of it exist
- An @everyone was made on the discord server (twice I believe) to get their feedback on XF

I literally made a global announcement here to go test the XF beta last week. Yop has @ everyone on the TLS server twice. Also I don't see any valid points being shot down either, people are just presenting facts in response to questions? I feel like maybe people are getting a bit worked up over nothing here. Either that or - as I indicated earlier - something else is triggering this discussion that isn't being openly discussed.

XF wasn't fast tracked either, I just worked on it for 5 days straight after Yop set it up. At this point it's been in open beta for two weeks, people have tried it and given us feedback. The people who complained about Discourse have said it solves all the issues they had with that. The people working on the technical side have said they find it preferable.

I'm sorry but I'm just having trouble with this. A global announcement was made and everything has been carried out in open discussion. It's absolutely ridiculous to expect the people who have been actively involved to chase people down and beat them over the head with a stick with "WARNING YOU MIGHT NOT LIKE THE FACT WE'RE MOVING SOFTWARE" when they have a choice to pay attention to the threads, announcements, discord @here's and everything else to begin with? That's unfair. Literally every channel we have has been used to get people's feedback on this.

People have had more than a fair chance to have their say on this stuff, and they'll continue to have that fair chance, I dunno what more can be said about that. If this was literally any other board all of this discussion would have happened behind closed doors and non-staff would simply have clicked to the forums one day and found a completely different site. We always take the time to take in community feedback, and we're doing so here.

This isn't a multi million dollar deal tho, this doesn't have that kind of pressure behind to make something, anything, happen. Things can easily drag on for another year. If people want to do it sooner rather then later, because they feel motivated now, I don't think that's wrong.
And I don't think it's that easy to be active on this forum, not know a forum upgrade is happening at all and miss the opportunity to give one's opinion before it' s done and over completely.

Regardless of it being a multi million pound deal or a five pound subscription to babestation it's still money.
Money which if it all falls on its arse (like discourse did) could be used elsewhere.

All I'm saying is maybe make the decision making part of this more open. Pretty sure VB has the ability to send all registered accounts a pm from the administrators.

Even a pm along the lines of "shit is changing" would go a long way rather than having it in a thread that's spent months stagnating.

The decision making part was and is completely open though, as discussed above. Also, Discourse was free. IDK what the money discussion is even about.

Your suggestion about using a mass PM before the move isn't a bad one. Mass emailing was decided against in general a long time ago though, I think in part because the email system on vB3 is completely broken (another reason we're moving!).

 

[Cthulhu]

I think a mass email would still work though; emails were broken for a while after we moved to a private server, but they should be fine now that we use an Amazon e-mail server. If it doesn't work through vB, we could always do some creative SQL, get e-mail addresses and make a script to send a bulk e-mail.

I think a loooooooooooong time ago I / we decided not to bulk email our members though, er. I forgot why. I would definitely have used it if we were moving to Discourse though, given how people would need to reset their passwords.

I'm not going to engage in the rest of the current conversation for personal reasons.

 

[Joe]

I believe it had something to do with Kupocon ^

As someone not paying a dime for this move and who has nothing to lose with it, I've more or less felt it fine to leave in the hands of like Yop and Lex. That remains the case, but since the timidness of members not posting here was brought into question I felt the need to clarify.

As Shadycakes said above. The sooner we move and upgrade, the better imo.

 

[Mage]

I'm not going to engage in the rest of the current conversation for personal reasons.

Or you could say that I spoke to you three weeks ago about the stuff I raised here but your answer was so phenomenally CBA that I ended up getting more and more annoyed every time I mentioned it. You told me that there hadn't been an assessment of other software options, you could've at least pointed me in the direction of relevant links that indicated otherwise. Pretty much every misgiving I had could've been allayed three weeks ago if you'd actually addressed what I raised with you.

 

[Geostigma]

Good gosh leave the poor sea monster alone lol.

Running this site is basically a hobby, a not free one at that. Imo Yops cba'ness is pretty justified when it comes to keeping this community alive post ACF era. I'm sure coming home from a long day of work to see a pm asking for likely 2-4 year old links and information well with in the realm of being cba. Especially when a few are likely behind the staff section too.

I mean this section alone has 19 pages worth of threads. And the old thread may or may not be in the Archive. vB's search function is abysmal to so it wont be helpful.

For what it's worth Mage I'm trying to find relevant old threads and discussions on this topic for you and will try and edit them into this post if I find them


As a side note , and really I'm not trying to patronize you, but isn't Staff seeing you be the only person with misgivings and seeing that generally the idea of an XF board was being praised both here and on Discord basically what you were asking for?

I get it sucks to feel like you were ignored, but your singular voice doesn't outweigh the many that were in favor here. I mean even multiple people were so into it they were offering to pay for it, the youtube team was trying to think of cool Patreon ideas to fund it (on the creator Disc) etc.


Inb4 "yeah but that was mostly staff" It's really worth pointing out a really big chunk of TLS's active userbase are staff lol. Even people without the usergroup like Claymore, Bforbriggetta(sp?sorry lol) myself and a few others are technically staff too haha.

Anyway like I said I'll try to find the old thread and go from there.


edit:

Haven't found shit yet I know older threads of this discussion exist, I'm pretty sure I've even posted in them. What's problematic is that a good chunk of the discussion also occurred during the infamous Drama period and I bet a chunk of that discussion was in unrelated drama threads as I recall a few of those going all over the place.


edit:

Heres a 4 year old, 51 page thread that does have talk about upgrades in there. Somewhere.
https://thelifestream.net/forums/showthread.php?p=603440#post603440


I'm pretty sure there was another mainline thread about design and upgrades, I'm pretty sure that thread there may have been split off from another thread as well. I'll keep looking for other discussion may have happened over the years.


edit:

Ok I should have just had more faith in vb's search function

a 5 year old 3 page thread


Another 4 year old thread with 5 pages. Bonus points for also containing a vB vs Discourse, vs Xenforo discussion from antiquity , even as far back as 2014 they were the only worthwhile options to consider lol


Technically unrelated , but d'awwh the old "upgrade" thread from when we were on SMF and wanted to switch to vB

Still can't find the old discussion from the drama threads, but considering it was discussion made when there was a monumental amount of bitching its probably best to leave it be?





With all that said, is the move going down this weekend-ish still and stuff? Dredging up just a small portion of old discussion and seeing 5 year old posts saying "We need to do this NOW!" really hammers home how we should probably get around to doing that

Especially since the license is already bought and the board looks and feels damn good to. I think the permissions thing is still fucked though right?

 

[Lex]

I'm not going to engage in the rest of the current conversation for personal reasons.

Or you could say that I spoke to you three weeks ago about the stuff I raised here but your answer was so phenomenally CBA that I ended up getting more and more annoyed every time I mentioned it. You told me that there hadn't been an assessment of other software options, you could've at least pointed me in the direction of relevant links that indicated otherwise. Pretty much every misgiving I had could've been allayed three weeks ago if you'd actually addressed what I raised with you.

Mage I totally accept that you might not be in the best mood with me right now given how I've been responding here, but remember you can talk to me too. I geddit, Yop's the owner and the Top Dawg and shit, but he's notorious for not remembering/ knowing what's actually going on in situations and just kind of having a general overview. Meanwhile I'm a bit more detail oriented/ involved, so I can always give you a full (tl;dr) but in-depth answer if you need it. If you're going to respond to me directly please don't be too mean because I think i just cracked a rib, have been ill for two weeks and don't think I can hack your rage on top of all that

FWIW I am genuinely sorry you've gotten to this stage of feeling like this, if I'd known how strongly you felt I'd have made more of an effort to include you in all the stuff/ provide more robust descriptions of past discussions as I went through this process. As I've stated I don't think we've done anything wrong but rest assured every detail of the new board will be discussed to death/ given its fair chance for criticism before it's finalised (unless it's like, a technical absolute requirement), as is the way with TLS.

With all that said, is the move going down this weekend-ish still and stuff? Dredging up just a small portion of old discussion and seeing 5 year old posts saying "We need to do this NOW!" really hammers home how we should probably get around to doing that

Especially since the license is already bought and the board looks and feels damn good to. I think the permissions thing is still fucked though right?

We haven't decided yet. A solid date needs to be set where a bunch of us are available, and I'm not available this weekend because of Pride. I might cancel because as mentioned before I feel like absolute shit and I don't think getting drunk in a park while watching Steps is going to improve that, but the company might.

Anyway I'd really rather I was there for the site coming back up, because I've done a lot in the backend (har de har) and the move is essentially a fresh install. That and we need a bunch of folks there to deal with permissions and stuff. So idk discuss, but I don't think it's happening this weekend.

So we need to be talking about what's gonna happen with the user permissions, right? What are the options there? Should we start discussing them and then make a poll or something?

So currently there are about 20-30 user titles with bespoke permissions. Some of them grant access to sections (like donators to the donator section, mods to the mod section, staff to staff section etc.). This stuff transfers over OK permissions wise, but most of the "base" permissions are based on the user ladder. Also while the titles transfer over, they're invisible on the actual board.

Separate from user titles is the "user ladder" which is the thing that gives you permissions and another title based on posts. When you join you're a "newbie", after x posts you become "member", x more posts you become "epic member" etc. all the way up to great old one. At the lower levels these grant permissions like the ability to edit posts, delete posts, so on and so forth. NONE of this transfers over, and this is the biggest bit that requires a fix as soon as the transfer is done because it means every single post requires moderation. Even people with admin permissions needed posts to be mod approved because this ladder broke in the transfer.

To "resolve" it, for testing purposes, I just created an invisible usergroup in the backend called "Trusted" and ticked it for people who were logging in and posting to test the board out. That's obviously not an actual solution.

So the easiest way to deal with it is to "flatten" (i.e. disable most of) the usergroups we have here for now before the transfer, and give the appropriate permissions to our generic usergroups like Admin, SMod and Member.

XF has all sorts of fancy features to customise membership, so we could do something like all newbies first 5 posts require mod approval before they're allowed to post unhindered etc. And we'll have to rebuild a user ladder over there anyway. So that's the kind of discussion we need to have now.

We can do things like "require 2FA" (some people don't like 2FA so I would argue against enabling this), but another is "require a verified email address so someone can post" which IMO is probably a good move.