Updating SEDS Forums

[kittell]

Several of you have said, "I don't like the way that SEDS Forums looks." OK. We can change it, but you should tell me how you want it to look. And let's not reinvent the wheel to do it. Tell me:

What are your favorite forums?
What forums do you think are really bad?

Provide links, also, so we can have a look and talk about them and decide what designs to include here in SEDS Forums.

Bonus points if you:

Tell me why the forums you listed are bad or good
They have absolutely nothing to do with space (the principle of "you need to get out of the house once in a while")


A corollary to this project -- not something we will tackle in this thread, but just FYI -- is introducing a common style to the seds.org sites: wiki, forums, web site, etc. If you're interested, see: http://wiki.seds.org/index.php/SEDSWiki:Seds.org

[jenmichael2000]

Lets go!

Ok, but hold on a minute. It's great that it is possible, and that we are now soliciting suggestions for improvements to the forums. However, I think it would be interesting to see it go one step further.

My main point is that I think we should have one unified "feel" for and entire seds earth site, while individual chapters could have their own pages linked from the main one, with their own styles. Thus the "feel" of the forums should be in harmony with the "feel" of the home page, and all other pages...

Thus, My thinking is along the line of: We should figure out what message we want to transmit to the world, first and foremost, figure out how to do that through the medium of the home page, then adjust the style of the forums and other pages to harmonize with that...

With that said, I am completelly in favour of expanding our awareness of how things can be done by researching other forums elsewhere!

Thank's Kirk!

-Mike

[jenmichael2000]

... so you can see that this is pretty bizare... In the interest of keeping things simple we should have one communicative medium, but where? We are all used to e-mail, but the forums can be accessed by everybody...

So while we figure out how we should best solve the problem, I will post this twice, once to the mailing list, and once to the forums :(

-Mike

[starfish]

so here again.......
do we share a common ground on the kind of information we need to present to the world?
i mean what kind of organizational framework and inter-chapter communication are we looking forward to in the SEDS Earth domain?

[jneeskans]

Mike,
I think once people get used to the Forums, you won't have to double post it. It's great that people are re-discovering the forums.

Anmol,
right now, SEDS-Earth is just like a coffee house where people from different chapters meet, interact and usually some interesting projects like SEDSAT-2 come out of. If you can go over the previous posts, you can see we thought about a structure but it didn't work out.

all,
However, I think with everyone being new, you might want to try again. But, it's good to be aware of the previous attempts for the same.

[jenmichael2000]

this may seem anoying my doing this again, but when things are repeated, they gain in importance, even to the author...

"
The point of having the forums active again is that we don't have to worry about which of 6 different chat engines we should use. If you want to have a private discussion in the corner, go for it, but the rest of us, it seems more convenient to record everything important in the same place.

Again, I will post this in the appropriate forum to emphasize the conflict in communication between e-mail and forums.

-Mike

On Nov 26, 2007 12:52 AM, pradeep mohandas <pradeep.mohandas@gmail.com> wrote:
> Good to see the forums active again.
>
> Just a thought before I rush into the world of studies (have my exams
> beginning Dec 7).
>
> We used to have a lot of group chats earlier in SEDS-Earth. We used to have
> these sessions on Y! chat. Maybe, we could revive the practise. It'll be
> chaotic but it can help sometimes -- SEDSAT 2 came out of such chaotic
> sessions, for example -- and it's a lot better than no communication between
> chapters!!
>
> Tell me what you think on the Forums..
> Pradeep

[jenmichael2000]

A question for all of you: A few posts back I mentioned the idea of implementing a system where e-mails are automatically added to the forums. Therefore you don't need to worry about double posting. However, do we really want -all- our e-mails on the forums? this could easilly lead to flooding of the forums.

Could we find a way perhaps of selectively posting e-mails to the forums?

Here again, I will have to send this e-mail out to the seds earth mailing list...

Perhaps that is the way it should work, have forum posts e-mailed out, but not the other way around? ...

-Mike

[jneeskans]

hi,

You can use this page - http://wiki.seds.org/index.php/SEDSWiki:Seds.org/Forums - for working on the Forums!!

pradeep

[kittell]

We can work on them there, but I'd like to solicit your opinion here. It's a better place for the discussion than the wiki discussion page. When you get a few opinions here about forum styles -- still waiting ;) -- we can go to the wiki page.

Forums are good for a conversation; wikis are good for the concurrent development of a single article.


Anyway: anyone have an opinion on good or bad forums?

[jenmichael2000]

I will start surfing forums soon... sigh. ;)

how many other people complained? you claim I was not the only one...

-Mike

[jenmichael2000]

Ok kirk, seriously, how many people have said they didn't like the forums? Was it just me?

Anyway, I just did a bit of surfing, and it didn't take long for me to find something. check out: http://forum.runescape.com/lang/en/aff/runescape/forums.ws

I have noticed a lot of things about this forum that I like.

First, the graphics are awesome. I like it when the page is dark because you are not blinded by meaningless white screen like I am now ;)

Second, in the seds forums, there are a lot of boxes within boxes, and fancy textures that don't seem to have any artistic motivation. There is much less of this in the runescape forum, and what there is seems faithful to what it seems the theme of the game is.

what I like most about it is how they have managed to compress things. They have all their threads really well organized, and they don't waste any space, so you can see everything really easilly.

also, if you access the threads, the thread starter is highlighted where the subsequent entries are muted. -corection- there is a different status alocated to different people, and so different highlighting. also if you go to the emergencies thread (http://forum.runescape.com/lang/en/aff/runescape/forums.ws?14,15,997,53231692) you will notice that they have a green highlighting option for special messages...

also, the information on who is posting is contained at the left of the post allowing the thread to take even less space. it seems also that they have no subjects, which allows them to save space...

while we're at it, check out their home page, it's pretty awesome! http://runescape.com/

as for things I don't like about these forums, no comment as of yet :)

-mike

[jenmichael2000]

Something I don't like about either our or their forum is the anonymity of the users. It would be really nice to know who is doing the posting, a brief bio, a picture, would be nice...

[jenmichael2000]

Here is a terrible forum: http://www.dreamteammoney.com/

when you go to it the first thing you see is advertizing, and confusing at that. you have to scroll down to actually get to the forums, there is so much explaining of each one, that it is impossible to figure out which one is for you without spending an hour reading through all of them, and then there is nothing to distinguish them, so you will promptly forget which one it was you thought was good!

-note, the runescape forums had representatives pictures beside each one, identifying them.

-mike

[jenmichael2000]

Obviously, this forum is generated by the same program as our own: http://www.christianforumsite.com/

Comparing forums, I am more and more of the opinion that changing the style of this one will not be sufficient, it's structure is fundamentally wanting, in my opinion, unless it can be changed more radically than I think...

-Mike

[mars]

Ok here is our forums, suggestions welcome =D www.forums.rhhs-rasa.ca
We just got it up last month...not so wonderfull i know. Our great webmaster Frederick is working on it.

[jenmichael2000]

Here is another one: http://www.democracyforums.com/

there are headlines and stuf at the top which take up space, and each of the threads have explanations attached to them which take up space and make the thing long... they list the author of the threads in a bad place as well... and most of the top of the page is useless... other than that, a decent looking forum.

[Lavina]

Install an RSS feed option?

[jneeskans]

Mike,

What specifically do you not like about this forum and how would you change it?

Lavina,

I'd love RSS on anything!!

[pradeep]

[jenmichael2000]

Install an RSS feed option?

I am not yet quite clear on what an RRS feed is... could somebody explain, just one more time?

Pradeep, what my whole idea is, is that I don't see the point of creating forums for seds canada, when these exist already. However, if you compare the style of canada.seds.org with the style of these forums, it should become quite clear why (at least I personally) think that either the style of these forums and perhaps even the way they are built needs to change, or canada.seds.org needs to change. I really don't like the way that the seds.org home page is completelly different from the blogs page, from the forums page, from the wiki... it is admirable how the people who set up seds.org made use of all this existing technology to get the job done, but when the styles are so different, and the individual parts of the site don't even link to each other, it is really hard to get a sense of the unity of the thing, and if nothing else, seds should represent unity. If you don't see what I mean, I can explain in detail :)
-think of it this way: space exploration may be the only way to get people to see that we are all unified by at least one thing: we are all earthlings. Another way to see it is, we seds people are a small part of the population, a small number of highly motivated people trying to change the world. In the face of the apathy toward space exploration that many of us face, every ounce of unity we can display will be a bonus when it comes to convincing others to join us, and it will also provide us ourselves with the boost we need when it feels like nobody else cares but us.

-Mike :)

[jenmichael2000]

As for how i'd change it? For now I am just implementing Kirk's algorishm of checking out other forums and listing their pros and cons. It may turn out that my idea of the ideal forum is sufficiently simple, and sufficiently different from what we have here that it will be easier just to build a new one from the ground up... I don't know...

-Mike

[Lavina]

Wikipedia is god.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)

RSS (formally "RDF Site Summary", known colloquially as "Really Simple Syndication") is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel", contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually.

[Lavina]

Check this out: http://www.4chan.org/

I'm not a huge fan of the colors/font size etc, but I bring it up here because of the frame design. I like the idea of being able to navigate the forums without having to press the back button on my browser or clicking on the links at the top to bring me back home so I can move to some other thread.

[Lavina]

Check out the What's New "bar" at the top of this forum: http://www.gpforums.co.nz/

I'm guessing that changes at every page refresh, or if we want to get fancy, it works as a ticker, so that everytime there's a new post, it shows.

[Lavina]

You'll have to scroll down a bit on this one, but what I'm referring to are the tabs: http://au.ign.com/

If we don't want to use frames, maybe tabs would be good for each of the main categories?

[Lavina]

http://www.totse.com/

[Lavina]

http://www.fireflyfans.net/main.asp

In particular:
Taglog (more interaction between members on forums)
Poll (if questions are interesting, might get people coming more often)

These two features might be interesting for people browsing the forums.

[Styx]

vBulletin, the software this forum runs on, is used by many different companies and forum groups (like physicsforums.com). Robust and extensible, it's pretty good for its money (https://www.vbulletin.com/order/)!

But in the open-source community, phpBB is another great option that can potentially rival even that of vBulletin (and it's free!)

[kittell]

Hi guys -- just got the internet plugged in at my new apartment. I'll have a look at those sites... soonish.

I think Chris Lewicki -- Josh, have you met him yet? he's the server guy, former SEDS-USA and UASEDS chair, JPL Mars guy, etc. -- purchased the SEDS license for vBulletin several years ago so that the cost to you is effectively zero. If you'd like to switch to phpBB, I wouldn't stop you, but you might also consider the staff time costs involved in migrating both your users and archived posts. (I mean, I wouldn't do it... but it's your site. I'm here to help, not lead -- the common refrain.)

By the way, Josh, I see that you're listed as 'administrator' now -- is that just something you changed in your profile (i.e., to display under your username) or has someone bumped you up to admin? If you're not yet really set as admin, I can do that for you. And if you are, I'd like to show you the process flow that I use for banning email addresses (http://forums.seds.org/showthread.php?t=2355) and IP addresses (http://forums.seds.org/showthread.php?t=2354) that spam the forums. It would be quite nice to have some help on that front.

[jenmichael2000]

I am reading this discourse with great interest... :) -kirk, you know all kinds of interesting things! ;)

-Mike

[jenmichael2000]

I thought I would take a few minutes to browse some more forums and give my impressions of them...

http://www.theforumsite.com/forum.php?f=10

the "join the forum site" box takes up a lot of room and that is anoying, and the "sub forums" box breaks the symmetry of the page. Notice the links at the top of the page. Fancy graphics. puurty...

Here is a much more interesting forum:

http://www.rapworlds.com/forums/index.php

It has lots of statistics for the forum itself, and for all of the threads. it claims to be telling you how many people are actively viewing a given thread, so lets you know where the action is. I think this would be a good thing to implement. Also, the graphics are awesome :) However, you have to scroll down quite a way to find the actual threads. Also, in the upper right hand corner there is an "empty" space that could be used for some of the links that are further down, allowing for more efficient use of space. When you return to the seds forums from the rap worlds forums, you really notice how blue the seds forums are... shy and soft and blue... you get the impression that the rappers would slaughter us if we ever came into conflict with them! Perhaps we could be a little more assertive?

Another one:

http://www.sportsforums.net/

I would get rid of everything in all the white space surounding the actual forum, put it up in the orange and gray. I -do- like the fact (notice that the runescape forums were like this too) that the forum threads are as compressed as they are, it is really easy to figure out what discussion is where, without scrolling very far. If they really tried, they could fit the banner, and the forum, and the footer on to one page. That would make it really easy to use!

anyway, lets call that all for now!

-Mike :)

[Styx]

Hi kittell,

I actually made myself admin through the db. Feel free to send a pm some time!

As for the forum, I like vb =) since suggestions about software were being thrown in the air, I thought I'd throw one up as well. But I believe vb is a professional software that we could do a lot with.

For spam bots, we could also look into some more effective prevention things on the registration front. If it's with guest posts, maybe consider making registration a requirement to post.


Don't really like their layout of forums and subforums (theforumsite.com).

A lot of statistics usually make forums look cumbersome and messy (rapworlds.com). A separate statistics page would be good. If it isn't much more than what comes standard, it probably will look fine. Look around vb mods to see what's offered.

I too like the layout phpBB uses (sportsforums.net). It's clean and easy to see.

For more examples of forum software, see http://www.opensourcecms.com