Split from forum software upgrade (closed)

[Literally Who?]

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.

I think it's a testament to how much of a pain in the ass Discourse is to actually work with. It took A LOT of work and time to get it to the point it was left at.

Meanwhile Xenforo is apparently so easy to work (apparently minus a few items hidden deep in seemingly unrelated menus) with that Lex was able to make an imo (sorry Flint) better looking and feeling forum with the built in page editor with in hours.

It's not really that XF suddenly has a whole ton of community man hours put into it, I'm pretty sure it actually has barely a fraction of that time compared to Discourse. It just is way more friendly in basically every department.


edit:

Ninjad by Fancy by 2 minutes. Ninja'ing wouldn't be a thing anymore if we were on the new forums

[JechtShotMK9]

It seems to me that the people who pay for and run the site should have the say on what decisions to make concerning it. Ultimately, the new forum is more or less a cosmetic upgrade, with some new shiny stuffs thrown in. It's not like they're changing user content or anything.

As for "not listening to use feedback," well....maybe there would be more listening if there was more feedback. This thread has been here for years, yet it's more or less the same people posting in it. It seems to me that's a tacit "whatever, go ahead" from the general forum base.

[Claymore]

JechtShotMK9 wrote:

As for "not listening to use feedback," well....maybe there would be more listening if there was more feedback. This thread has been here for years, yet it's more or less the same people posting in it. It seems to me that's a tacit "whatever, go ahead" from the general forum base.

*praises Jecht*

Seriously. I remember trying to jog things along in this thread so many times, get people to post, get feedback on both the frontpage and the forum change, and it was like watching paint dry. It was excruciatingly painful. Announcements were eventually made, test stuff were organised, but it was only a handful of people helping out. Back into development hell it went. It's so depressing and I'm so over it now. Gaining a clear consensus on anything is difficult in itself - especially when people are not even engaging.

As much as I'm for the hippy-commune aspect, there also comes a time when Staff have to - you know - do their jobs and put their foot down and actually do stuff. If this thread proves anything, it's that not every single little thing can, or should, be done by consensus.

[Lex]

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.

All of this discussion happened a long time ago though, that's the thing. It was pretty much universally agreed that XF was the best option a long time ago in terms of being like what we have now, but it was decided against because it cost money. Which is why I was so gung-ho about paying for the license now, my thinking being 1. I owe something to TLS and 2. If I removed the monetary concern, what would stop us from getting the best option? So I did. For the record if I had bought the license and XF was trash we wouldn't be moving to it.

Also would like to point out that it's because community feedback was actually listened to that this decision was made. Yop was about to pull the trigger on the Discourse move and if people (like Gabe) hadn't vocalised their concerns about it, we wouldn't have put the brakes on that. I don't think there's a single person who preferred the look of Discourse over XF, it's just that it was free.

Btw trying to get a big amount of community participation on the technical side of things is difficult, I put out an announcement about the XF beta and there still hasn't been a LOT of participation.

Flare wrote:

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

What Gabe said is true but another factor is that Flint leaving motivated me to do more work. I had difficulties working with Discourse and found the XF backend much easier to work with, then spent one weekend and every night after work for 3-4 days learning XF and creating the default theme.

It's not that "suddenly this is all happening" it's that this discussion/ argument has been ongoing forever and as has been said for a long time we need to get off vB3 with far more urgency than we've been exhibiting here. I think it was Tres who said something like "I might really like the ship, but if the ship is sinking, we take the lifeboat" way back when this all began.

I don't want anyone to think community feedback isn't taken on board, I also understand there are jitters about moving to new forum software. This place has looked like this for nearly 10 years and it's been home for almost 10 years to a lot of us. It's a big change. I myself am nervous about it. But the truth is we have to move, and it was determined a long time ago that XF is the best option for maintaining as close as possible the look and feel of TLS while adding modern options, a good built in mobile browsing experience and actual security.

The move to XF is going to be a challenge just based on the fact we're transferring a decade worth of posts and custom permissions. It's not going to be 100% perfect right away, but an ongoing project. Community input is key and there'll never be a time you hear me say otherwise.

Honestly the short answer to "why is this all happening so suddenly" is that I got to work on XF as soon as Yop installed it and didn't stop until it was finished. We've all talked this to death and it's time we take action. We could have moved last weekend but I wanted more community input and we still need to set an actual date anyway. But it's also pointless to beta it for another year when it's sitting there basically ready to go. A lot of issues we aren't going to actually know about or resolve until it's being fully utilised by the members as TLS normally is. I put out an announcement about the beta and Yop has also been pushing on Discord to get people involved but we haven't discovered any problem we didn't know about before (board permissions and the user ladder permissions being the biggest so far, but those can't really be fixed prior to the move, which is why I suggested flattening the user titles prior to the move to make it easier).

[Obsidian Fire]

I'll just put it this way... my reaction to Discourse was "Where did all the stuff that we use all the time go?" (mainly BBC Code) and "can that be fixed". Coupled with "BBC Code being broken makes the 10+ years worth of imported posts look like shit". The learning curve from vB to Discourse would have ended up being crazy. Like, "relearn how to format posts from scratch" crazy.

My reaction to Xf was "everything mostly works" and "all the previous posts look passable". Followed up with "can we move to this soon?". Yeah, there will be a learning curve, but said learning curve looks like it will be more along the lines of "no more in-line spoilers" and "sweet! We now have dedicated buttons to this BBC Code" and "new layout to learn" which happens every time I sign up for a forum.

Finding out that staff wanted to go to a forum that felt broken right from the get-go was a tad alarming. So people let staff know that and started putting forth other options that hopefully would feel less broken. Xf feels like it can be TLS's new home once everyone starts posting lots over there. At the very least, the majority of our posting habits won't have to change (hiding images behind spoilers, quotes of quotes, emote craziness, etc.). They would have had to with Discourse.

[Flare]

Makes sense guys, thanks for explaining it and bringing me more up to speed.

[Lex]

I concocted that post at like 5am this morning so I missed a few things I wanted to say. One of them was that community feedback is the very reason we're no longer moving to Discourse. The feedback about XF has been pretty positive so far. Have you tried it yet Mage?

[X-SOLDIER]

(All of what was said previously, but yes I meant Discourse when I was talking about what I was talking about. Clearly I use Discord enough that I remember its name is different from that forum software we're no longer using. )





X

[InterfaceLeader]

Thank you to the people who've put the money and time into XF to make it happen so quickly. Having tried to use TLS on my phone over the weekend, I was sharply reminded of (one of) the many good reasons to move asap.

[Addy Carver]

Okay I loathe TL;DR posts (I literally don't have the attention span to read them personally but I know a few people like them) but in this case I feel it warrants an exception.

Firstly, take the cunt hat off; I wear it better than any of you bastards. Secondly, pay attention because I've put a lot of effort into scribing this post and if anything isn't clear by the end of it then IDK what more I can do.

X-SOLDIER wrote:

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.

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.

X wrote:

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

Right I'm going to hopefully address all of this below all the quotes because clearly an expansion on my last post (as quoted below) is needed.

Literally Who? wrote:

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.

Actually it did not. Again see below all the individual replies.
No-one asked me to expand the point, Tres asked if it was one of two things and I replied 'Both'.

Gabe wrote:

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

Gonna refer you to the text underneath all the replies again and also add that I've been mixing up Discourse and Discord for aeons now.

JechtShotMK9 wrote:

It seems to me that the people who pay for and run the site should have the say on what decisions to make concerning it. Ultimately, the new forum is more or less a cosmetic upgrade, with some new shiny stuffs thrown in. It's not like they're changing user content or anything.

As for "not listening to use feedback," well....maybe there would be more listening if there was more feedback. This thread has been here for years, yet it's more or less the same people posting in it. It seems to me that's a tacit "whatever, go ahead" from the general forum base.

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).

Claymore wrote:

JechtShotMK9 wrote:

As for "not listening to use feedback," well....maybe there would be more listening if there was more feedback. This thread has been here for years, yet it's more or less the same people posting in it. It seems to me that's a tacit "whatever, go ahead" from the general forum base.

*praises Jecht*

Seriously. I remember trying to jog things along in this thread so many times, get people to post, get feedback on both the frontpage and the forum change, and it was like watching paint dry. It was excruciatingly painful. Announcements were eventually made, test stuff were organised, but it was only a handful of people helping out. Back into development hell it went. It's so depressing and I'm so over it now. Gaining a clear consensus on anything is difficult in itself - especially when people are not even engaging.

As much as I'm for the hippy-commune aspect, there also comes a time when Staff have to - you know - do their jobs and put their foot down and actually do stuff. If this thread proves anything, it's that not every single little thing can, or should, be done by consensus.

To a degree I agree, as I stated above but this has rumbled on for two years and Discord was decided upon very quickly.....and then nothing happened.
Also people have been engaging, Shad didn't like XF or Discord:
https://thelifestream.net/forums/sho...&postcount=187

I didn't like Discord and the bottom of this post illustrates what I was driving at: https://thelifestream.net/forums/sho...&postcount=202
I mean I'd have been happy to expand on that point there and then and negate all this but no-one bothered asking because a handful of people were wanking over XF already.

Lex wrote:

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.

All of this discussion happened a long time ago though, that's the thing. It was pretty much universally agreed that XF was the best option a long time ago in terms of being like what we have now, but it was decided against because it cost money. Which is why I was so gung-ho about paying for the license now, my thinking being 1. I owe something to TLS and 2. If I removed the monetary concern, what would stop us from getting the best option? So I did. For the record if I had bought the license and XF was trash we wouldn't be moving to it.

No, there wasn't really much discussion, I've re-read the whole fucking thread to verify this and Yop clearly says on the first page that he was going to chuck up a couple of different test servers and we got Discourse and fuck all else. https://thelifestream.net/forums/sho...&postcount=102
Not having a go at Yop but just making clear that that's what happened. Also this: https://thelifestream.net/forums/sho...8&postcount=34

So we can't rush but fanny about for two years with a test server that was by all accounts excruciatingly painful to use, then get one up and running in three weeks. Oh-kay.

Lex wrote:

Also would like to point out that it's because community feedback was actually listened to that this decision was made. Yop was about to pull the trigger on the Discourse move and if people (like Gabe) hadn't vocalised their concerns about it, we wouldn't have put the brakes on that. I don't think there's a single person who preferred the look of Discourse over XF, it's just that it was free.

Btw trying to get a big amount of community participation on the technical side of things is difficult, I put out an announcement about the XF beta and there still hasn't been a LOT of participation.

I appreciate that, but this thread has had a lot of going round and around and TBH it's off-putting.

Flare wrote:

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

Highlighted Flare's words for emphasis. This saga is literally so TL;DR now that people are losing track/zoning out/giving no fucks.

Lex wrote:

What Gabe said is true but another factor is that Flint leaving motivated me to do more work. I had difficulties working with Discourse and found the XF backend much easier to work with, then spent one weekend and every night after work for 3-4 days learning XF and creating the default theme.

It's not that "suddenly this is all happening" it's that this discussion/ argument has been ongoing forever and as has been said for a long time we need to get off vB3 with far more urgency than we've been exhibiting here. I think it was Tres who said something like "I might really like the ship, but if the ship is sinking, we take the lifeboat" way back when this all began.

https://thelifestream.net/forums/sho...&postcount=179
Nah, it's sudden, you don't from two years of conjecture to four weeks from chunter to beta and not call it sudden.

Lex wrote:

I don't want anyone to think community feedback isn't taken on board, I also understand there are jitters about moving to new forum software. This place has looked like this for nearly 10 years and it's been home for almost 10 years to a lot of us. It's a big change. I myself am nervous about it. But the truth is we have to move, and it was determined a long time ago that XF is the best option for maintaining as close as possible the look and feel of TLS while adding modern options, a good built in mobile browsing experience and actual security.

And possible obsoletion: https://thelifestream.net/forums/sho...&postcount=183

Lex wrote:

The move to XF is going to be a challenge just based on the fact we're transferring a decade worth of posts and custom permissions. It's not going to be 100% perfect right away, but an ongoing project. Community input is key and there'll never be a time you hear me say otherwise.

Honestly the short answer to "why is this all happening so suddenly" is that I got to work on XF as soon as Yop installed it and didn't stop until it was finished. We've all talked this to death and it's time we take action. We could have moved last weekend but I wanted more community input and we still need to set an actual date anyway. But it's also pointless to beta it for another year when it's sitting there basically ready to go. A lot of issues we aren't going to actually know about or resolve until it's being fully utilised by the members as TLS normally is. I put out an announcement about the beta and Yop has also been pushing on Discord to get people involved but we haven't discovered any problem we didn't know about before (board permissions and the user ladder permissions being the biggest so far, but those can't really be fixed prior to the move, which is why I suggested flattening the user titles prior to the move to make it easier).

Lex wrote:

I concocted that post at like 5am this morning so I missed a few things I wanted to say. One of them was that community feedback is the very reason we're no longer moving to Discourse. The feedback about XF has been pretty positive so far. Have you tried it yet Mage?

Yes I have and I'll expand on it a bit more, though to be fair I did a fairly thorough assessment of Discourse and only Yop commented on it.

I don't have a problem with XF per se, I'm taking issue with the whole process of choosing new software and the ensuing discussion. I honestly thought this would have been broached already, especially since IIRC I've seen Gabe say that forum software options are limited and Lucis suggested phpBB when we discussed (collective 'we' there because serious lack of input) abandoning Discourse: https://thelifestream.net/forums/sho...&postcount=201

There was a bit of waffle around XF pros and cons and X posted this:
https://thelifestream.net/forums/sho...&postcount=193
Which pretty much turned it into a two-horse race after Lex dismissed vB5 and identified XF as VB3's spiritual successor if you will.

I've had a play with XF and not managed to bork anything yet, I like how it looks and it's got lots of neat customisable options. So we can set that aside now because it's not XF that's the problem.

So, the last post I made outlined how I'd imagined the upgrade to pan out in line with using the consensus of the active member base. Right back at the start of the thread the options were identified as:

-Discourse
-XF
-phpBB
-Flarum
-Simple Machines
-Vanilla.

Only Discourse ever made it to the test stage. Not really sure how we're going to make a fair assessment of options when only one is presented TBH. Asides from that, there were six options given not counting vB but it overlooked:

-MyBB
-bbPress
-Invision
-FluxBB
-PunBB
-Phorum
-EsoTalk
-GNU
-WoltLab
-YaBB
-Discuz
-Zendesk
Fuck it, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar...forum_software

Okay I accept that a lot of those are going to look/operate in similar styles or that we've already used them in previous forum incarnations but it would've been nice if they'd been mooted to start with. There's a fair bit more than six options (gonna accept now that some of those listed may not have existed in 2016 but they sure as hell did when we decided to abandon Discourse).
To compare it, I was looking at donor platforms that we might be able to utilise. I looked at over twenty different sites and narrowed it down to two and a WordPress plugin. It took me an evening and I passed my findings on to Yop. I wouldn't have minded at all taking time out to do something like this but I've offered my time on no less than three occasions where this has been concerned and no-one's come back to me.

I actually didn't bother posting in here for some time because I didn't have any technical knowledge but it rumbled on for a whole fucking year and nothing happened. There was even talk about getting the Discourse forum up and running in case anything Remake-related dropped at E3 (lol) but still nothing happened. Flint said back in April that he'd done as much as he was going to do so unless there was discussion away from this thread, I'm not sure what the delay was insofar with styling Discourse.

So in summary, I'm fine with XF and that's how we're going to move forward now AFAICT so whether I liked it or not that's that.
What I'm annoyed about is that we decided to abandon Discourse and didn't even bother doing the analysis that should've been done the first time around and wasn't. I even mentioned restarting the process and doing it differently to before. That same post was even thanked by some of the people who've been vocal about my last post.
https://thelifestream.net/forums/sho...&postcount=202
So it feels like XF was chosen by a few people rather than having a fair look at all of the available options. I'm not grousing because it's been quick (honestly after two years that was kinda nice), or that I was expecting someone to ask me personally if I was fine with it, but simply because what I expected from the opening posts of this thread was never delivered to start with.

Now jesus fuck if that isn't clear enough then I should take a vow of silence or something. Lolno.
Now if you'll excuse me it's taken me two hours to compile this reply which is far more of my evening than I wanted to commit (it's 1.50am here), I'm going to do my rounds and bugger off to bed.

[Literally Who?]

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/sho...&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.

[Addy Carver]

Literally Who? wrote:

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.

Gabe wrote:

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/sho...&postcount=287

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

Gabe wrote:

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.

Gabe wrote:

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.

Gabe wrote:

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.

Gabe wrote:

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.

Gabe wrote:

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.

Gabe wrote:

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.

Gabe wrote:

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]

Addy Carver wrote:

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

[Literally Who?]

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.