Forum 2.0 ideas

[Legend]

This list is mostly for me, but maybe you might care. That's why I'm posting it publicly instead of in forum 2.0 Alpha.

Generic:

Anonymous posting-users buy an item from the shop. This item can be used to make an anonymous post. No one except the mods know who the user is. I envision that this will be kinda cool in a lot of specific situations. A second item in the shop will allow anonymous threads, where every post in the thread is anonymous. I think we can do some fun games with both of these as well.

Live View 2.0-BBC running on posts, ability to select and copy text from live area, and improvements to resource usage on your end.


Data:

Surveys-The current poll system should be overhauled into a survey system allowing both simple polls and complex questionnaires to be made with ease. Polls will also aggregate data from posts if desired. This will help me so much with the monthly metacritic thread.

Game Database-This will be all function and no form, but integrated with the rest of the site it can bring a lot of cool features.

Graphs-I'd like to add a better way to visualize all the data going on here. The sales discussion thread would be able to use this to keep up to date numbers and infographics in the op. Combined with the other two, it hopefully would be automatic.


The past few days I've noticed these were lacking and I just wanted to write them down before forgetting.

[Xevross]

Ooh these sound like great ideas!

[Legend]

The machine is fun. Bots are cool.


I think every single member should have their own personal bot/assistant. The bot could do countless things for you, especially since it's online 24/7. Say you only have time to visit the forum every few weeks. The bot can send you a tailor made list of all things it thinks you're interested in that happened since your last visit. Or you're mentioned in a thread but your bot assumes you're asleep and won't wake up for another few hours. Then the bot can determine the urgency of the mention and potentially post when you're expected to return. When you wake up, the mention would be listed as urgent so it's the first thing you look at. Or you have the bot automatically spice up and format your post. Missing images, poor hotlinking, summaries of articles, and etc. can all be corrected/added.

The difference between these personal bots and standard forum features is that they'd make mistakes. They're not perfect! All of these actions require predictions by the system. Predicting what you're interested in, predicting the urgency of mentions, predicting when you'll wake up, etc. By putting a face/name behind them, these mistakes personify as human error. It makes us naturally more inclined to understand and be forgiving when things go wrong. That's why these features should be part of a robot and not just general elements of the site.


If you couldn't tell, the theme is to put the server to use. I have a significantly powerful server that could easily run the forum with thousands of simultaneous posters. Since that isn't happening anytime soon, let's just bump up the power allocated to each user. Also the personal bot would take a lot of work to get right. No way would it be released any time soon. I need to finish VizionEck gosh darnit!

[Xbro]

The machine is fun. Bots are cool.


I think every single member should have their own personal bot/assistant. The bot could do countless things for you, especially since it's online 24/7. Say you only have time to visit the forum every few weeks. The bot can send you a tailor made list of all things it thinks you're interested in that happened since your last visit. Or you're mentioned in a thread but your bot assumes you're asleep and won't wake up for another few hours. Then the bot can determine the urgency of the mention and potentially post when you're expected to return. When you wake up, the mention would be listed as urgent so it's the first thing you look at. Or you have the bot automatically spice up and format your post. Missing images, poor hotlinking, summaries of articles, and etc. can all be corrected/added.

The difference between these personal bots and standard forum features is that they'd make mistakes. They're not perfect! All of these actions require predictions by the system. Predicting what you're interested in, predicting the urgency of mentions, predicting when you'll wake up, etc. By putting a face/name behind them, these mistakes personify as human error. It makes us naturally more inclined to understand and be forgiving when things go wrong. That's why these features should be part of a robot and not just general elements of the site.


If you couldn't tell, the theme is to put the server to use. I have a significantly powerful server that could easily run the forum with thousands of simultaneous posters. Since that isn't happening anytime soon, let's just bump up the power allocated to each user. Also the personal bot would take a lot of work to get right. No way would it be released any time soon. I need to finish VizionEck gosh darnit!

All of these ideas are amazing.

[Legend]

Smilies should work in posts containing tweets.

[the-pi-guy]

Smilies should work in posts containing tweets.

I came here to say this exact thing. 

[Legend]

Better quote options, such as quoting across threads.

[the-pi-guy]

Better quote options, such as quoting across threads.

lol
I'm not sure how necessary that'd be.  I think it'd mostly be a rare thing, and as is isn't too bad to do.

[Legend]

User bots should see links to posts on other forums, and automatically format them correctly as anonymous quotes.

[Dr. Pezus]

User bots should see links to posts on other forums, and automatically format them correctly as anonymous quotes.

nice

[Xbro]

User bots should see links to posts on other forums, and automatically format them correctly as anonymous quotes.

You're very ambitious.

[Dr. Pezus]

You're very ambitious.

Time for results!

[Legend]

You're very ambitious.

Haha some of these will take a lot of work, but that one's pretty easy.

[Xbro]

Haha some of these will take a lot of work, but that one's pretty easy.

Glad to hear you're willing to put in the effort for all of this.

[Legend]

Glad to hear you're willing to put in the effort for all of this.

Yeah I love it. Only thing stopping me from getting forum stuff done is the need for game work. Once VizionEck releases, I'll be pumping out 2.0.