Split from forum software upgrade (closed)

[Addy Carver]

Why not just fuck off Staff Emeritus altogether? There's no additional benefit like being a donator and all it means is that the holder of the title was a staffer. Big fucking whoop.

[X-SOLDIER]

Addy Carver wrote:

Why not just fuck off Staff Emeritus altogether? There's no additional benefit like being a donator and all it means is that the holder of the title was a staffer. Big fucking whoop.

X-SOLDIER wrote:

The only usergroup that I think might be useful to implement in some capacity would be the Staff Emeritus, since that helps to point to some folk who know what they're about in the community a tad bit differently from the Donators. Whether that's a usergroup, or something else I dunno, but I think that it's a valuable distinction.

X

[Addy Carver]

Yes, I saw your reply and didn't feel like it fitted which is why I asked the fucking question. If new members want to speak to community bods then the FAQ and new members information should have that covered as to who to approach. Existing site staff and contributors are far more pertinent than former staffers for the simple reason that THEY'RE NOT FUCKING STAFF. You're putting an onus on the title that was never there.

[ForceStealer]

I don't think we need the Staff Emeritus title either, wouldn't mind losing it. But I don't see the need to be that aggressive, Mage.

[Lex]

I agree about Staff Emeritus but I thought people would want to keep it. It's a bit pointless IMO.

[Cthulhu]

It's pointless / a vanity title, I agree with that, but I see it as a way of giving thanks and recognition for those that volunteered their time and effort for an x amount of time to TLS. I guess there's other ways to do that, I'm open for suggestions. Else we can just get rid of it, or idk, maybe replace it with a 'free' donator status for those people? Off course, most staff emeritae (?) are also donators so idk.

[Addy Carver]

ForceStealer wrote:

I don't think we need the Staff Emeritus title either, wouldn't mind losing it. But I don't see the need to be that aggressive, Mage.

I'm getting mighty pissed off with valid queries being shut down like that (quotes rather than an actual reply). It feels like I'm being shushed/dismissed and I'm not a fucking ten year old. Coming from a staffer it's a shitty thing to do.

[ForceStealer]

He might have just thought you didn't see it, though. It was a new page and without a quote or directly referencing it. But very well

[Addy Carver]

*sigh* Why would I quote it if it's not relevant?
Actually nvm, there's clearly some sort of sea change here where staff just make the calls without forum consensus any more. It would've been nice to be told that that's the case though.

[Lex]

Cthulhu wrote:

It's pointless / a vanity title, I agree with that, but I see it as a way of giving thanks and recognition for those that volunteered their time and effort for an x amount of time to TLS. I guess there's other ways to do that, I'm open for suggestions. Else we can just get rid of it, or idk, maybe replace it with a 'free' donator status for those people? Off course, most staff emeritae (?) are also donators so idk.

I was thinking we could have small icons to represent some things on XF rather than people having like 50 titles, keeps the postbit looking clean. I know XF can support it but it might require some thrifty CSS and/ or an addon. So for example an icon for donators and an icon for staff emeritus, that we can decide on and create with a nice TLS style.

We could go full throttle with that and get rid of all titles (staff titles like Admin and Mod included), with just a small icon either at the top of the postbit or just under the avatar. That or staff have different coloured user titles or something. Idk obviously all of this is just an idea but our postbits are so gd ugly with all the unnecessary text I'd really like to work on making the new board more visually homogeneous and appealing to read. I think it's important that staff (mods/ admin) are identifiable for if people need to talk to someone on staff, but there's the user list for that aswell.

Addy Carver wrote:

*sigh* Why would I quote it if it's not relevant?
Actually nvm, there's clearly some sort of sea change here where staff just make the calls without forum consensus any more. It would've been nice to be told that that's the case though.

This is absolutely not the case, what makes you say that?

[Addy Carver]

Because it seems pretty fucking sudden that we've gone from Discord to buying the XF licence and it's not like there was much discussion, not like there was last year when things started moving again. It was like a few people went 'XF is neat' and a few more people agreed and then suddenly we had it. No polls or anything. Darth actually said he didn't give any input because he doesn't know much of the technical side of things, but no-one should feel like their opinion isn't valid and yet there you have it and I don't know why I'm the only person who picked up on this, that alone has got me concerned.

IMO this should have been handled differently, like:
-Okay we're fucking off Discord, it's a colossus of overthought-out code with a shit UI
-That's cool (shame about the time sink but you gotta go there to come back an' shit), what's the alternatives?
-Well there's XF, also [insert alternatives], here's some pros and cons
-Seems reasonable, let's see what the community think
-*goes to poll*
-??????
-most popular option goes to beta stage

This just feels like it's been entirely decided by staff and a few tech bods.

[X-SOLDIER]

Addy Carver wrote:

ForceStealer wrote:

I don't think we need the Staff Emeritus title either, wouldn't mind losing it. But I don't see the need to be that aggressive, Mage.

I'm getting mighty pissed off with valid queries being shut down like that (quotes rather than an actual reply). It feels like I'm being shushed/dismissed and I'm not a fucking ten year old. Coming from a staffer it's a shitty thing to do.

Everything that you asked about the Staff Emeritus, had already been spelled out in my previous response though, Mage.

I said that it, "helps to point to some folk who know what they're about in the community a tad bit differently from the Donators." Yes, Donators get special perms, but people who used to be Staff have a knowledge of how this particular forum runs differently than other members, even Donators, do. So there's still some value in signifying that distinction – even if it doesn't come with access to some special sub-forum or whatnot, it's useful to know for someone, especially for new users.

Because it doesn't necessarily need to be a permission's-based usergroup like it is in vB, that's why I also said, "Whether that's a usergroup, or something else I dunno, but I think that it's a valuable distinction." – Hence why I just quoted and monster'd my own earlier reply to yours. You didn't make any specific reference to the values of that role that I pointed out, so it seemed like you just missed it in the sea of replies. I don't know what else needed clarification that I hadn't added already since you didn't seem to make reference to the benefit I mentioned, so it didn't make any sense to type out a whole new response of completely redundant information.



Also, the reason that things moved quickly is that we basically reached a point where we wanted to push into using Discord – we got feedback that it was shit and folk didn't like it. There was quite a bit of hesitation around doing it. We pushed back into looking through the extant options again, and because of previous conversations higher versions of vB were heavily weighed against despite being easy, and XF still felt like the current boards, and everyone with misgivings about Discord had none about XF. Additionally, XF looked technically easier to achieve.

I feel that we're all kind of tired of having this migration having sat about in various stages of development hell, so when the clear answer was to give XF a go, and the test forum went through exceptionally smoothly, it seemed like a no-brainer. If Discord was at all this straightforward, we'd've likely moved already, but thankfully it wasn't so that we found ourselves a better option.

It's not like the staff are unilaterally making decisions without the input of the forum, or things'd've been forced over to Discord regardless of the misgivings of other members when it was brought up. The whole conversation happened at all, because folks felt (rightly) that that move'd be a bit shit, and with XF looking miles better, it's able to be done in relatively short order. Is your issue with actually moving to XF, that it seems to be going (too) quickly, or what? Also, what's the actual NEGATIVE of how quickly this transition's been taking place if so? For once it feels like we've actually all got our shit together towards getting a much-needed upgrade actually happening, so I'm genuinely baffled at all this.




X

[Literally Who?]

Addy Carver wrote:

Because it seems pretty fucking sudden that we've gone from Discord to buying the XF licence and it's not like there was much discussion, not like there was last year when things started moving again. It was like a few people went 'XF is neat' and a few more people agreed and then suddenly we had it. No polls or anything. Darth actually said he didn't give any input because he doesn't know much of the technical side of things, but no-one should feel like their opinion isn't valid and yet there you have it and I don't know why I'm the only person who picked up on this, that alone has got me concerned.

IMO this should have been handled differently, like:
-Okay we're fucking off Discord, it's a colossus of overthought-out code with a shit UI
-That's cool (shame about the time sink but you gotta go there to come back an' shit), what's the alternatives?
-Well there's XF, also [insert alternatives], here's some pros and cons
-Seems reasonable, let's see what the community think
-*goes to poll*
-??????
-most popular option goes to beta stage

This just feels like it's been entirely decided by staff and a few tech bods.

Literally all of that happened in this thread. You even replied while that conversation was happening...

I see a few pages back you alluded to this same issue your having but when given the chance to make your case and expound on the idea you chose to make a one word reply.

Furthermore what other choice is there? Discourse is trash, vB5 is not that great and like all of the other alternatives are like free software that has been on life support since 2006. It's not like we have many options to present the community here.


If this was just the staff saying no u without the help of the community chiming in. Sure I would see what you mean about staff just taking their own way, but that couldn't be further than the truth. Even before the public beta test there was still like 20 of the community members testing it behind closed doors. If that doesn't scream community acceptance I don't know what does.

Also want to point out Discourse is so shit you all already forgot its actual name

[Flare]

Literally Who? wrote:

Also want to point out Discourse is so shit you all already forgot its actual name

Wait so are Mage and X referring to Discourse here instead of Discord? I was reading through and feeling quite confused, I know I've been absent a while but I was wondering when I'd missed talk of moving entirely to Discord, which was kinda blowing my mind as to why it had been considered. But if it's Discourse, than this makes a lot more sense and thanks for clearing that up.

In general I'm still a bit confused as to why so much thought and work was put into Discourse and progress was slow and then XF was put forth, Discourse abandoned, and XF progress went so quickly. I think it's awesome that there's progress being made and it seems like a move is imminent now but it feels like a big 180 from before and I'm just puzzled what happened to make it so. Then again I confess as to not reading every post in this thread so I'm likely just being stupid and these questions are already answered

[f a n c y]

^
On the previous episode of Forum Update Z

Discourse was pretty much ready for use but then folks were like, “This whole thing is really kinda shit tbh wtf.

And so folks were like, “Well, do you wanna give XF a go? It’s kinda a sexier version of what we already have.”

And then there were talks of pros and cons of Discourse vs vB vs XF and more and more folks were agreeing that the move to XF made the most sense.

BUT THEN!!!

There was a moral conflict!

“What about all the hard work that was put into Discourse tho?? Shouldn’t we give it a fair chance given the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it??” And Flint was brought up.

BUT THEN!!!

Flint made a Special Guest Appearance and said, “Nah bruh, it’s coo, ain’t no thang but a chicken wang, son.”

And then folks got excited about the thing.

And Yop got a hard-on when he was poking around the thing.

And then Lex went to Discord and shite and got folks to test XF so The Admins With The Know-How could begin tweaking our new home and members testing this shit also got their ‘ons’ very hard.

And I think it’s mostly been a positive, chill experience.

- f f