Topic: How will "new" forums work?

Sol, I thought I would post this as a separate thread so it doesn't get buried in the many conversations going on in different groups.

I was wondering if you can elaborate yet as to whether/how/when the old-style forums will work on the new site.
To other TNBW members, please add to this thread with any additions or corrections to what I'm posting.

From discussions with others here, they'd like access to all forums on one page (or as few pages as possible), with a single click to see all of the discussions in each forum, preferably with the newest at the top. If there is a way to sort the list of forums, so much the better, especially sorting by name or by most recent activity.

The trickier part probably has to do with posting. Currently, you have to be a member of a group in order to post to its forum. I understand the reason for that limitation, but I assume it means we'll need to join the group related to each forum in which we want to post. Hopefully, there will be a way to apply to join a group right from within the forum page itself. In that way, those groups that are public to all members will require at most a single click on a "join group" button before being allowed to post. That would mean two clicks max to post.

Naturally, if the group's creator has placed a restriction on who can join, then the workflow will presumably require an interaction with the group's creator before being allowed to post. That requirement will probably discourage some people from posting in the restricted group's forum, which is something the creator of the group will have to live with and/or think about when creating the group. Most of the groups I've seen so far are immediately open for joining.

Please let ue know more about this, as we're chomping at the bit to read/post on the new site. Things are amazingly silent at present, at least in the groups I'm part of.

Quote Post 1

Re: How will "new" forums work?

Hi,

There will be a link to a page that looks like this that will contain all of the forums from the old site:

http://old.thenextbigwriter.com/forum/index.php

But this is just for the forums from the old site. We can't do this for all of the forums on the new site from each of the groups. It's technically impossible  since we will have hundreds if not thousands of groups in the future, some of which have selected to be private or even invisible.

Please let ue know more about this, as we're chomping at the bit to read/post on the new site. Things are amazingly silent at present, at least in the groups I'm part of.

I'm a bit confused over what is stopping people. The site is here to post, the forums are open and you can start a conversation at any time. I think the quiet you are experiencing is more because of the holiday season than anything that has to do with forum design. In fact on the old site, it would often go for long periods of time without much forum posting.

In fact, I'd love to turn the conversation to more writing related matters and will post a starter topic now.

Sol


Sol

Quote Post 2

Re: How will "new" forums work?

From the looks of the web page/link, that will duplicate functionality that already exists in the new system. There would be two places to put Writing Tips & Advice conversations, for example. Ditto for other groups/forums.

Although I understand that it's not possible to give everyone a view of all that is private/invisible, presumably you could do a query based on what's public and what isn't? It would have to include all public groups + all groups a member is already part of. If that list is too large, split it over several pages, and add search/filters to allow members to find those groups/forums their most interested in. Ideally, the most recently active groups would be at the top by default.

Otherwise, how are you going to combine the proposed view's front end with the corresponding groups/forums in the back end? Will the new front end link to the new groups with the same purpose, like Writing Tips & Advice or Additional Feedback, or will these be two separate repositories of similar information? I hope it's not going to duplicate functionality. That'll make the new site even more complicated, especially for those unfamiliar with the old site. They'll see two nearly identical places to post and not know which to use.

There must be something about the implementation complexity that I'm missing if you're planning on simply duplicating the old functionality side-by-side with the new group forums that already do most of what people are asking for. They just need a filtered view of all forums available to them, minus the big graphic icons that eat up valuable screen space.

And, when we're in a specific forum that we're not already part of and want to post to, an Apply button would be needed that duplicates the current Apply button function in the group view. If the group settings allow a user to immediately join the group, a single click on Apply would be all that is needed before a user could post, all without leaving the forum. If Apply requires permission, then user has to follow those steps and return later to post to the group forum once they're a member.

It seems like that would give you one back end with just two different front ends.

Thanks.
Dirk

Quote Post 3

Re: How will "new" forums work?

As long as I'm busy telling Sol what to do, I'll add this. :-)

On the forums screen that I hope you implement, you could have a filter called Classic, which would show just the old TNBW forums, leaving out the rest of the groups from that particular filter. It would require adding a field to each group's database record to flag if it is a classic forum or not. You could populate that field automatically once, indicating which groups/forums are part of the classic list of groups. There then should be no need to provide an interface to all users to flag a group as classic. We already know which groups are classic. It would require creating groups for all of the old TNBW forums. so tha the classic filtered list showed all of the group forums we want from the old site. If you won't want to mess with the database records to add a Classic flag, there are other ways to implement the classic list (e.g., a manual hard-coded query for all groups that correspond to the old forums).

I really hope you don't create separate forums when the new forums are so close to what's needed for backward compatibility and a simpler implementation.

Hope that makes sense.

Dirk

Quote Post 4

Re: How will "new" forums work?

On Scribophile there's a time waster/soapbox/blather/babble column and next to it is the writing/confident writer column.

Hey, some coke-head out there! go through all the forums possible and suggest one...
http://www.forummatrix.org/

Quote Post 5