Spiral Knights - New Forum Suggestions

New Forum Suggestions

5 replies [Last post]

Fri, 12/24/2010 - 16:00

Chronus

I know the Devs have stated before that once things get rolling (and more populated) they wouldn't mind implementing a new Forum system. Ideas such as phpBB have been suggested, for example, but who knows what they'll use. Perhaps they will implement a common system with all the useful features we need, but perhaps they will make their own.

The following is a list of possible functions users have suggested:

Thread Watching
View New Posts (Defunc7)
Post Count
User Groups
Rep System (d0gr0ck)
Private Messaging (Defunc7)
Language Censor
Report Function (d0gr0ck)
Signatures/Avatars
More Formatting Tags
Custom Fields

Please feel free to make suggestions, critiques, or anything of that sort. I have put this up for us (the users) to make a sturdy list of what we'd like in a forum system, as this is an important part of the SK community.

Fri, 12/24/2010 - 16:27

Dogrock

The above post has merit

Thread Watching: Very yes, It's easy to lose things these days and the post count volume will probably jump up again after people come back from the holidays.
Language Censor: Unfortunately yes, a measure to add that I feel should be unnecessar,y but recent events have changed my stance on a censor. On top of this I would like to add a report function.

I would also like to add a Rep System, similar to the one you see in the Steam forums where you can only hand out +1 and there is no down rep-ing. The abuse on this system seems to be relatively low. This could also be used to identify Three Rings employees by giving them over 9000 rep.

Sat, 12/25/2010 - 21:52

Chronus

Good ideas, Dogrock.

Oh yeah, definitely a report function. Rep would be nice, and if there were a -1 it would definitely be abused with all the children running around. I like the idea of having only +1. Good ideas, Dogrock.

The 9000 rep brings up the "Group" idea (Admin, Moderator, Member, etc).

Edit:

My original ideas:

Thread Watching: Being able to check threads you've posted in with this level of simplicity, instead of looking for them or bookmarking them, would be great.

Post Count: This is a good incentive to make people post more, however, this is not always a good thing. You often end up with more useful posts, at the same time you end up with more useless ones.

User Groups: These will help to identify TRD Admins/Devs from normal users. Users would not be able to make their own groups, as this would bring up another issue of administrative impersonation. The only other groups needed, aside from "Admin", would really just be "Member" and perhaps "Banned". Admins would take over the role of "Moderators", though this separate group would most likely need to be addressed once the SK population grows immense.

Language Censor: This might cut down on moderation for the Devs. It might also actually help block out certain language, except for those offenders who end up sticking in symbols or extra letters anyways.

Report Function: Yes, a Report Function is definitely needed. With this, we wont need to spam the SK suggestions email with a list of offenses.

Signatures/Avatars: These are probably even less necessary than fancy tags (they can get cluttered, annoying, and often offensive), but are fun and add personality. Signatures aren't bad if they're a few lines of text, or a small banner-like and completely innocent image. Avatars aren't bad either in this case. However some (most) people tend to go overboard with these...

More Formatting Tags: Colour tags, font tags, smileys - they are not necessary but they definitely make things more fun (and actually do have some practical uses in certain cases).

Custom Fields: For example: many of us are always listing off (or changing) our character names via our actual post (which cannot be modified from one single location). It would be nice to have a definite and easy-to-change list somewhere. Other fields such as "Guild" might be fun. (By the way these fields are chosen by the Admins, I meant custom as in genre-specific.)

Sat, 12/25/2010 - 12:13

Tomhobb

some thoughts + 2

Just to go through some of theses, and to add a few suggestions of my own...

I think post-counts are usually pretty unproductive, since it's really just hitting a number, rather than contributing. A rep system seems a better way to encourage people to post meaningful discussion. For Mods/Devs, it might be a good idea to essentially put them "beyond" the rep system, neither high no low, just NaN.

Signatures limited to a few words is probably the best way to allow people to customise their "pesonality" without giant image signatures (you know the ones, that take up more of the forum than the actual post-text). "Official" avatars can probably bypass moderation of avatars, though it needs a good selection. More elaborate systems could display a player's character as their avatar, or at least allow them to partially customise the colours of the base avatar/show various alleigances/etc).

Text colour, smileys, img tags (limited to X amount of images per post) help format guides/visualise concepts, and break up walls-of-text that longer posts tend towards. I think bolding can handle most "section titles", so size tags probably aren't that needed (which can help avoid Giant-screaming-walls-of-text).

Moderators, along with Admin, Members, and Banned, really need to be marked, so it's a bit more transparent about who is just a player stating an opinion or idea, who is "Official Word of Law", or "person is charge of making things happen" (and for "banned", that they're simply no longer there to respond). If moderators are voluntary, then they definitely need to be a distinct group from Admins or Devs.

Also, with regards to moderation, a certain amount of transparency is needed. Both to show that the forum rules are being enforced ("making an example" of someone I guess), and to allow members to query why they have been moderated (because if they don't know what they've done wrong, they may continue to repeat it). For posts or threads that are simply removed, it's helpful to leave behind some "trail" which indicates why, and who removed it. For posts that are simply editted (a rude word taken out, etc) it becomes slightly harder, because you have to display both the current state, and that it has been "moderated". Even with clear forum rules, people can often become confused due to different interpretations.

For reporting, it might be useful to see if a post has been reported (just "reported", but not how many times, etc), and from a mod's PoV, it might be useful if all reports are placed in a central system, so only one Mod has to act, and declare it "dealt with" rather than for each Mod to check if the report has been dealt with or not.

New suggestions

New Posts - I find it useful to know what posts have been made since I last visited the forum, since it's a good stepping-off point to see any new/updated discussions. Partial overlap with Thread Watching, and can run on the forum Search functionality (if that supports date-searching etc).

Messaging - Simple private messaging, 10 or so messages in capacity, though it might be possible to tie it into the actual game's messaging function if "pushed"

Sat, 12/25/2010 - 21:58

Chronus

Thanks for the input.

The "View New Posts" feature you suggested is definitely something I'd love to see myself, as I'm always going through each category and checking the new ones manually.

The same goes for Private Messaging: it would be quite useful. As of now, you either need to seek out a player in-game at some compatible time or ask them for their email to contact them privately. It would be nice to have a simple way of getting across to each other (perhaps for recruitment to parties or guilds, for example).

Edit:

About the Original Post: I'm not sure why I decided to post opinions there. I'll have a summary list of ideas in the OP, but not a list of opinions from now on. People can simply read through the posts.

Mon, 12/27/2010 - 08:50

Kaybol

Legacy Username

RSS

I'd like an RSS feed... to know when someone responds to my threads/posts, or generally to keep better track of what's read/unread.

edit: scratch that, it already exists.
edit2: except it's broken, must have something to do with this being a preview and no forum contents allowed to leak into the public.