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cormyn
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cormyn
2,892 posts
Nomad

In a nutshell, we don't know.

That should clear up everyone's questions, right? Good ...

As a development team and as a company, we know that the forums are extremely important to some of you, and we know that some of you have put a lot (!!!!) of effort into building up the community here, especially those who have written the more creative poetic stuff. C'mon, how many of you have > 5,000 posts, raise your hands. That amount of effort is *staggering*. Seriously, I think the highest post count I've seen was ~8400? Over 2.5 years, that'd be like 10 posts EVERY DAY since AG2 launched.

The effort of migrating that much data from AG2 to AG3 is almost as staggering, since the guy who wrote the AG2 forum software didn't make it terribly efficient, and the way we're linking accounts, etc., between the two systems might cause problems. Trying to migrate it to AG3 will be a pretty big job, and it will probably fall in my lap since I'm sorta the database guru around here, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's up to me whether I want to do it or not. If Dan says do it, I do it.

Whether we start over, and wipe everything, and build a new forum engine, or implement someone else's forum software, remains to be discussed internally because it's not a critical feature for us yet. That doesn't mean it's not important to us, it just means we have to get core features working like, y'know, logging in.

Will we migrate old posts into the new forum software? It depends whether we can find an easy way to make the old forum data compatible. Nothing's *impossible* but it's also not practical for us to spend development time (read: dollars) for us to spend a big amount of effort trying to sort stuff out so it's all perfect and pristine.

If we start over with forum posts, will we archive the old forums? Again, nothing's impossible, but I can't answer that right now.

What will happen to your armor points for forum posts? Well, since armor points are also up in the air regarding the same sort of "wipe vs migrate" discussions, I can't answer that question right now either.

Please direct people asking about the future of AG2 forums to this thread if they start asking questions in other forums/threads. I'll post updates to this thread as I have more information.

  • 438 Replies
cormyn
offline
cormyn
2,892 posts
Nomad

I am unaware of what (UTF-8) is. Is it what you are currently using on AG2?


No, our currently database uses a much simpler Latin-based character set which is why some symbols, etc., don't show up properly or why users can't write multi-byte characters like Chinese/Japanese.

do you guys talk about adding new moderators a lot in your secret forum? Or does it hardly ever come up...


Yes, we discuss members in the admin/mod forum quite frequently, and talk about users who get nominated, why they should/shouldn't be promoted to moderator status.
parrot657
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parrot657
896 posts
Nomad

I don't know if this has been discussed, but I feel like it's worth mentioning. Will the censor function work the same in AG3 as it does in here? Because I really hate it when you try to type a perfectly innocent word/title/whatever and have it completely effed up because of the censor. Example given: Someone mentions the book Moby ****.

valkery
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valkery
1,255 posts
Nomad

Could we implement something like you have a group of things that you can use to display your emotions about a post?

Say, someone is talking about killing kittens and you can look at the post and choose from a group of emoticons to display your feelings about the post.

I don't know if I am being terribly clear...

Here is a link. If you go to the bottom right of the posts, you can choose an emoticon on how you feel about the post. Could we do something like that on AG?

Patrick2011
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Patrick2011
12,321 posts
Treasurer

Could we implement something like you have a group of things that you can use to display your emotions about a post?

Say, someone is talking about killing kittens and you can look at the post and choose from a group of emoticons to display your feelings about the post.


I don't think they would do that. Instead, there would be a vote up/down for Reputation.
Ernie15
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Ernie15
13,351 posts
Bard

I think, instead of just deleting spam threads to get rid of them, we should have some kind of "spam bin" where moderators could move locked threads without them being completely gone.

Something along those lines. I don't like it when my posts just get deleted along with who knows what thread and I don't even know what happened to them.

GhostOfMatrix
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GhostOfMatrix
15,620 posts
Herald

I think, instead of just deleting spam threads to get rid of them, we should have some kind of "spam bin" where moderators could move locked threads without them being completely gone.

That would be rather useless to have. I don't see why people would want to view spam threads, it's much better to simply delete those threads then let them be gone. And some spam threads are when people advertise, not all advertise threads get deleted so people would be able to view those then I'm sure some people would sign up for the certain site.
I don't like it when my posts just get deleted along with who knows what thread and I don't even know what happened to them.

I don't see what the big deal is. If it's a spam thread then it's fine to delete the thread then nobody is able to view it, if you want to avoid posts getting deleted then it'd be wise to not post in spam threads.
Ernie15
offline
Ernie15
13,351 posts
Bard

I don't see why people would want to view spam threads, it's much better to simply delete those threads then let them be gone.


In case a moderator needs to refer to one of those threads for some particular reason, they should be able to do that. Maybe the spam bin could only be viewed by moderators and staff members. Regular users may or may not have a need for it.

if you want to avoid posts getting deleted then it'd be wise to not post in spam threads.


I don't mind necessarily that my posts are getting deleted, I'd just like to know which ones are getting deleted so it doesn't just seem like they're vanishing into thin air.
GhostOfMatrix
offline
GhostOfMatrix
15,620 posts
Herald

In case a moderator needs to refer to one of those threads for some particular reason, they should be able to do that. Maybe the spam bin could only be viewed by moderators and staff members. Regular users may or may not have a need for it.

I don't see what reasons why they would have to look at those threads, they're deleted and not locked for a reason, because they don't even deserve to be on the site.
master565
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master565
4,107 posts
Nomad

I don't mind necessarily that my posts are getting deleted, I'd just like to know which ones are getting deleted so it doesn't just seem like they're vanishing into thin air.


I kind of like how Kong shows that this post has been deleted by a mod. If your post is deleted it should show something on that thread to only you to let you know that you had a post there (the AP will be deducted too). Though i could see this being a problem if a mod deletes a whole off topic conversation.
GhostOfMatrix
offline
GhostOfMatrix
15,620 posts
Herald

I kind of like how Kong shows that this post has been deleted by a mod. If your post is deleted it should show something on that thread to only you to let you know that you had a post there (the AP will be deducted too). Though i could see this being a problem if a mod deletes a whole off topic conversation.

On Kongregate when threads are 'deleted' they aren't off the site. The Forum Moderators just edit the title to [removed] then delete the posts that are within the thread. And if you get posts removed you can see it.
This post has been removed by a Moderator or Administrator
^That's what pops up.

And I do like how you can see ten pages of your most recent posts there and other people as well.
Ernie15
offline
Ernie15
13,351 posts
Bard

I don't see what reasons why they would have to look at those threads, they're deleted and not locked for a reason, because they don't even deserve to be on the site.


If a moderator needs to keep track of a spammer, for instance, they can refer to old threads made by that user so they can have a record of how many spam threads this user has made, and how long of a ban they deserve if they deserve a ban.

I kind of like how Kong shows that this post has been deleted by a mod. If your post is deleted it should show something on that thread to only you to let you know that you had a post there


That's a lot better than just having your post vanish into thin air and not knowing where it went.
GhostOfMatrix
offline
GhostOfMatrix
15,620 posts
Herald

If a moderator needs to keep track of a spammer, for instance, they can refer to old threads made by that user so they can have a record of how many spam threads this user has made, and how long of a ban they deserve if they deserve a ban.

I suppose they could use it like that. I think they have other means of remembering a spammer, though. The Moderators probably write down their username somewhere and how many times they've spammed, or something. There must be some way they keep track of people, either that or they have great memories.
That's a lot better than just having your post vanish into thin air and not knowing where it went.

I agree with that.
Ernie15
offline
Ernie15
13,351 posts
Bard

The Moderators probably write down their username somewhere and how many times they've spammed, or something. There must be some way they keep track of people, either that or they have great memories.


I'm sure they do that already, but adding this new section would make it so they wouldn't have to do that. Writing down the names of every forum spammer is much more tedious than just having it all right there in one section.
master565
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master565
4,107 posts
Nomad

I'm sure they do that already, but adding this new section would make it so they wouldn't have to do that. Writing down the names of every forum spammer is much more tedious than just having it all right there in one section.


I'm sure the system tracks people for them so they can check for multiple offenses.
cormyn
offline
cormyn
2,892 posts
Nomad

If a message is spam, it will be deleted, period.

As I mentioned in the other thread about moving locked threads elsewhere, we'll probably look for a forum engine that will allow us to merge threads of discussion into a single thread, perhaps notifying all participants of the thread being merged into a previous thread that their topic no longer exists as a separate thread and give them a link to the new thread.

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