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.
I've said this several times before, but it's worth repeating: if I have any say on it, the forum engine will only allow users to edit their post ONCE, must be changed within 5 minutes after submission, and a message will show what changed in the message.
While good enough for grammar and spelling errors, that does make clarification and OP editing (such as for writing and poetry threads, forum games, or as-it-happens political threads that are constantly receiving new updates) rather impossible. I wouldn't say I'd be comfortable with it, which does beg the question why exactly would there be such a limitation? Just wondering.
[quote]I've said this several times before, but it's worth repeating: if I have any say on it, the forum engine will only allow users to edit their post ONCE, must be changed within 5 minutes after submission, and a message will show what changed in the message.
While good enough for grammar and spelling errors, that does make clarification and OP editing (such as for writing and poetry threads, forum games, or as-it-happens political threads that are constantly receiving new updates) rather impossible. I wouldn't say I'd be comfortable with it, which does beg the question why exactly would there be such a limitation? Just wondering.[/quote]
Without the limitation, some people would abuse post editing.
While good enough for grammar and spelling errors, that does make clarification and OP editing (such as for writing and poetry threads, forum games, or as-it-happens political threads that are constantly receiving new updates) rather impossible.
Seems to work well as it is currently is, though. Changing the OP would probably confuse a lot of people, and make it fairly annoying to keep track of certain subjects, simply because it ruins the natural flow of a thread. However, no one is against simply making a new thread whenever, as long as the last thread is locked. That way the OP is always up to date, and it isn't ruining the flow of the thread.
I wouldn't say I'd be comfortable with it, which does beg the question why exactly would there be such a limitation? Just wondering.
I just explained why a page or two ago. It can be abused.
And we're looking for a forum engine that will probably force a preview mode before posting anyway so you can be sure you're posting what you expect. Beyond that, I see no need for an edit time frame longer than ~5 minutes.
As administrators of the site, we can manually edit any forum post we want to include HTML code, but we need to do so directly in the database. It's time consuming and very error-prone so we almost never use it.
By default, we have the same limited controls that all users do, the bold, italic, link, image and quote buttons and same BBcode options.
I remember reading that an edit post option will only be available for about five-ten minutes after you post, but I've been thinking that it'll be better if it's unlimited. I'm sure that if there is an edit option, administrators and moderators will be able to see all previous edits. I have an Exit Path Guide in the Game Walkthrough sub-forum, and I plan on creating an Exit Path 2 Guide, but if the edit option is only available for a few minutes after you post, I won't be able to update the guides. The only way that I would be able to update them is if I ask an administrator or moderator to do it for me, I assume they won't have a time limit for editing posts, or I'll have to create a new thread for the update. The former can be a nuisance for them, I don't want to have to bug them for every little thing I want to add to the guides, and the second one would be bad because I'd be over flooding the Game Walkthroughs sub-forum with Exit Path Guides. If there is an edit post option, and administrators and moderators will be able to see all previous edits, I don't see why there should be a time limit since they can see the previous edits. Or if you don't want to make the edit post option unlimited, then you should at least be able to grant certain people in certain threads to be able to edit their post if they ask. Such as, if I want to edit my Exit Path Guide, I could just ask Cormyn to let me edit the post. But I don't know how that'll work. It'd just be easier if there will be no time limit for editing posts.
TL;DR: If there is an edit post option, administrators and moderators should be able to see all previous edits, so it should be unlimited rather than being a time limit on edits.
The other forums I've been on that had an edit feature, had a little tag that told you it was edited.
For example, GhostOfMatrix's above post was submitted at "Jul 29, '11 at 6:05am". So if it were to be edited, just have another tab below that that said 'Last Edited: blah blah blah'.
While Unlimited Time on an Edit would be nice, it should differ per sub-forum. For example, all post in the AMW should be editable, but the WEPR shouldn't have that same feature for obvious reasons.
I don't know if that'll pass, Maverick. It's restricting people from editing their post. It's like when someone suggested there be no reputation for the WEPR. I'm sure people would like to edit their post in the WEPR just to make sure they have everything they wanted to put down on there, and to fix mistakes and such. I think I know where you're going with it, like people will edit their post just to win an argument or something, but that can apply to many of the sub-forums. Such as The Tavern, Popular Media, Video Games, Flash Games, and some others that bring in discussion. There's nothing stopping people from editing their posts in them so they can win a discussion or negate from a discussion. It's bound to happen, so the WEPR should have the edit feature as well. Moderators will just have to keep an eye on them, and if users see it happening, I think they'll report it so a moderators can check it out.
As I've said, editing will likely be restricted to a short time length, and a preview mode will be one of our most sought-after features so users can see what their post will look like before submitting it. I can't imagine how you'd need more than a 5-minute window after seeing your post in preview mode before posting.
I agree with Matrix that the OP should reserve the right to edit the first post especially for cases in the WEPR where the OP forgets to link the issue, or fails to establish a proper argument.
I suggest this be excluded from the five minute time limit only because there are times when forum activity drops and a mistake may not be caught before a second post. In addition the OP could use it to link to a more recent thread on the same topic, such as what happens in the Flash Games section on occasion.
