I joined the Pirate party because I saw a group of people who were passionate about social change. When I saw this open political forum I fell in love.
I wondered though whether we should think about changing our name and used the search feature to look up old posts. That was all fine and good until I started scrolling through thousands and thousands of words of discussion, some going off on tangents, and had to stifle the urge to write a reply without reading the rest of the 150 odd replies in the chain, knowing that they probably evolved a lot over time.
So could I suggest a new UI? I have enough coding knowledge to know that this is feasible but not enough time (HSC )to do it myself. Here’s how it works: (bear with me it’ll only be short)
Anyone ever played Papers, Please? (Glory to Artotska! Not.) I’m basically recommending their savegame system. If you get this part then you can probably stop reading and start commenting!
In more detail:
OP creates a thread, as a “bubble”.
Subsequent users reply to thread. Each reply is linked to the most immediately precursor “bubble” by its chain.
There may be many replies to each bubble engaging in the bubble in different aspects. E.g. for marriage equality there may be a bubble for religious freedoms, a bubble for gender rights, etc etc (I vote yes and understand if you vote no but still vote yes anyway)
The bubble and chain is visible instead / alongside the current scrollbar. For you programmers, it’s literally a visualisation of a DFS.
I’ll come back after paper 1 and 2 and put up an image of what I’m envisioning this looks like. For now, adeiu!
The thread fell halfway down the front page, but this forum uses the Discourse (uh, platform is the wrong word, but you know what I mean now) - you might want to have a look over there too, to see if there’s anything similar already happening.
@acenturyandabit perhaps you can take a clip/screensht of the type of system your referring to, so we can have an idea without installing this game. or maybe thres a video of the functionalty on youtube?
i watched the first couple minutes here but dont know waht your talking about still.
See how on the first row after day 25 the stream splits into two: one with 25C and one with 35C. Gameplay continues from your last “savepoint” on day 25, and there are two versions of day 26 both saved.
In the context of conversations, each “day” is like a point of mutual agreement. the two versions of day 26 could represent two subtopics e.g. for marriage equality: religious freedoms and gender equality. The user can navigate by clicking any of the white boxes to continue from that day.
This has been a highly contentious topic, which ultimately saw the resignation of the instigator (who had been a long time member and served various roles throughout the party’s operations and management), as well as a couple of others because the argument got quite heated at times and they felt they were attacked by the instigator, so they felt compelled to leave. The topic is now otherwise considered a “dead horse” for us, because no clear consensus could be established, and no reasonable agreeable alternative surfaced. The thread exists here in read-only form.
I own a copy, but am still yet to play it. It’s been collecting dust in my Steam library like a lot my Steam games.
This has been a highly contentious topic, which ultimately saw the resignation of the instigator (who had been a long time member and served various roles throughout the party’s operations and management), as well as a couple of others because the argument got quite heated at times and they felt they were attacked by the instigator, so they felt compelled to leave. The topic is now otherwise considered a “dead horse” for us, because no clear consensus could be established, and no reasonable agreeable alternative surfaced. The thread exists here in read-only form.
What your suggesting is like an ancestor tree structure.
Im not sure if there are any projects that have done that with message boards,
But this discourse software is open source so you could fork and hack it if you wanted.
in terms of message boards this discourse one is kind of new and shiny and coded by some legends.
however im not exactly sure what goal you’d be trying to achieve with that structure.
It would have drawbacks too like discovering which branch you should be looking at.
often its easier to have the flatter simpler structure even though it can seem less sorted.
I think there could be some benefits though too.
I will take a look around maybe tomorrow.
The search feature on this board is quite good too actually.
Yes, I notice this too, and although it’s a limitation of the Discourse software (as brilliant as it is otherwise) to not have a Threaded mode (which is what you are describing) it is more of a moderation issue on not splitting off topics when they go off topic.
It’s something I think about on my todo list to have clear community policy/procedure and dedicated moderators to fill this task but I have not fully thought it through yet.
I’m going to re organise strategy topics as a test.
Thanks for your considerations guys. I shall advocate again for the ancestor tree / threaded view by using the simple point that CAPT_Irrelevant has not addressed the main body of my post. (No hate man lol the name seems to say it all )
As for Simon may I suggest you put little moderator tasks for every individual e.g. in the notifs area have a
"Hey! Could you offer a moment and sort this bunch of stuff out?" And normal user sorts will become ‘suggestions’ and they can either a) be performed automatically when e.g. 5 users have recommended the same thing or b) rise to the top of your todo list and you can address and resolve them quickly.
I’ll look into forking this shit later (2 cents) though. Would moving platforms be an issue though? or is there like a mass export button here somewhere?
I know that the Discourse software supports essentially making regulars mods automatically of they contribute enough but without clear procedure on what’s expected on how we even should be moderating this forum, it’s not going to work.
This discussion forum is a relatively new thing for the party (last couple years) and even though this software blows away any other forum software Ive seen, my predecessors just hadn’t put it to full use yet, seeing it as an ‘informal’ area to chat.
I would like to expand on this forum and work out how to use it more effectively but right now we have bigger priorities like the AEC audit which threaten our very existence,.member.engagement, and completely reworking our strategy.and.processes. Once that’s clear we’ll be able to fit discourse improvements into our new process for improving the party rather than adhoc, which we keep failing on
I understood the thread as addressing both topics, but in any case what I gave was a TL;DR of it Sorry about the confusion if any.
I otherwise have no opinion on the forum’s design. I can only recall it was intended for its features to have high interaction fluidity and some seamless integration. Organisation came into it afterwards.
)to do it myself. Here’s how it works: (bear with me it’ll only be short)
)