Ugh, we can’t turn off avatars! Gross.
With avatars off QT3 on vBulletin was basically pure text and looked like something respectable and innocuous to have on your screen at work or in public.
With Avatars on casual observers start to wonder why my screen is filled with giraffes, Cthullu, Boss Hog, and Armando’s luscious lion’s mane.
-Todd
Please, please, please – randomly assign guest posters one of John Hodgman’s 700 Hobo Names.
“Dude, Todd, why’s Hurley from Lost posting on your weird gaming forum?”
Gotta say, though, that like AA here, I’m disappointed that avatars won’t be toggle-able user-side, for similar reasons (work use). I’ll pay someone more proficient with CSS than me $5 to write a Stylish script that auto-replaces avatar bubbles with usernames, though! :-)
My work has a filter that automatically blocks Qt3, so y’all are just lucky you’ve been able to browse Qt3 there to begin with. (That’s the only reason I ever use the mobile version of Qt3.)
On the temp forum, how many posts do you need before you are no longer considered new and can have more than two links in a post?
I actually don’t know for sure whether we’ll be able to turn avatars off, but if there’s a way to make it an option, it will be an option.
-Tom
Same here. That’s why I use Tapatalk during daytime and will now happily move to the mobile friendly Discourse site.
I’m going to repeat this. Make sure! I was positive that my email was correct. But I checked it just for the hell of it. It was an ancient email that no longer exists. Fixed.
So even if you’re sure, make sure sure.
How do you know about Armando’s luscious lion’s mane if you have Avatar’s off? :)
Ha, my registered email was on an address I had back in like 2011. There was a mild panic when I changed to a current email and then I was locked out, but the Verify mail got marked as SPAM. In case others find themselves locked out after changing/updating email.
@Tom:
Speaking of the front page and the rest of the forum.
Theory of what you can do is to allow easy account signup (with the social ho-ha) and set them to “level 1” accounts, and put the front page “forum” as postable for those accounts (with limits if you want to discourage spammers and whatnot).
Then set the rest of the forum to “level 2” or w.e. I believe they did some testing with various posting levels on the test-site to great success.
Then when you “vet” an account, you basically put them at level 2.
Or, I dunno. I’m sure you guys will figure it out. Didn’t see the admin console so dont know how its done in Discourse.
On the Avatars on Discourse QT3. They didn’t take up much space and weren’t that bad. Basically, much smaller than I see avatars on other forums.
What you can do on your work computer is to install uMatrix in your chrome/firefox/that new opera browser… and disable Images :)
I’m glad that people wouldn’t have to register an account in order to comment on front page articles, but I still feel like Disqus is a better platform for comments on a blog article.
Disqus comments are hierarchically arranged, meaning that a reply to a post will appear underneath that post. A forum like Qt3’s is linearly arranged, meaning that replies appear in strict chronological order.
Having viewed the comments sections for many of your reviews, I notice there is a pattern whereby people will leave a comment addressing your review, and then others (including yourself) will respond to that person’s comment. So it isn’t so much a group discussion like you would have here on a forum, but rather a group of independent correspondences happening simultaneously.
Let’s say you decide to integrate the forums with the front page. You write a scathing review and retire for the evening and wake up to find 100 replies. Will you create a giant unholy megapost responding to each person? Will you dig through the thread to see who then responded to your megapost?
Check out the test forum. Discourse is literally the best of both worlds. :)
-Tom
I thought people in this thread wanted to remove the “replies” menu on each post.
Thanks, will try that. Sounds really useful.
–Todd
Also, even if the “replies” menu on each post isn’t removed, it’s only one step towards a hierarchical arrangement. You can see the replies to your post, but you can’t see the replies to those replies.
My fear is that any design philosophy which claims to be “the best of both worlds” will end up being inferior to an experience designed solely for either world. Sort of like Metro.
Can I just say, I love this attitude, Tom.
This sounds like it has great potential to achieve that goal.
Hah, yep, happened to me too. Luckily habibi replied to my very adult and serious topic on the test forum and reminded me of the existence of spam folders.
So, my email has a dot for example, [email protected]. I hope that’s no issue. I would imagine someone else might have some underscore or some funny character. Discourse will have no problem matching those right?