Making the Phoenix Forums Work

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Firefox
asa
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Making the Phoenix Forums Work

Post by asa »

These new forums are pretty cool. They have some features that the old forums didn't have which will help us to have easier discussions. But with great power comes great responsibility ;-) and as moderator of the Phoenix forums I'm asking that you all try to keep these forums as usable as possible.

Things I'll be doing to help keep the forums usable:
1. moving posts to more topical forums where appropriate.
2. (yes) editing or removing posts by trolls.
3. providing occasional updates on the workings of these forums.
4. working with mozillaZine staff to see that we have what we need to facilitate great Phoenix discussions.

Things I'll be asking you all to do to keep the forums usable:
1. Keep your posts on topic. We have several Phoenix forums, please think about which one your post belongs in before making that post.
2. Don't troll and don't feed the trolls (along with my commitments for 2. we should be cool here).
3. Don't use images in your signatures. It makes the forum discussions a lot more difficult to read and it slows the whole thing down.
4. Avoid animated gifs for your avatars. It's just plain obnoxious.

We can all work together to keep this forum useful and fun. It's not my intention to be overly involved in the managing of these forums (I'd rather spend my time participating in discussions). Thanks for your help and feel free to comment in this thread.

--Asa
Ted Mielczarek
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Signatures

Post by Ted Mielczarek »

Is there any need for signatures at all? There's the profile feature, so you can put any information about yourself there, and there are all those contact options, so you can list your homepage, AIM screenname, etc. for people to find you. If you look at any other forum on the net, signatures just devolve into huge messes of animated gifs and other crap about the user's computer/car/penis size. I'd say turn them off outright.
asa
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Re: Signatures

Post by asa »

Ted Mielczarek wrote:Is there any need for signatures at all? There's the profile feature, so you can put any information about yourself there, and there are all those contact options, so you can list your homepage, AIM screenname, etc. for people to find you. If you look at any other forum on the net, signatures just devolve into huge messes of animated gifs and other crap about the user's computer/car/penis size. I'd say turn them off outright.


I almost agree. On the other hand, if no one abuses them then there's no reason to remove them. I think that if someone like david tenser wanted to put a link to the Phoenix FAQ in his signature that it would make some sense (be useful to lots of people reading the forums) and so I don't see a reson to make that impossible if folks use it responsibly.
But I do agree that looking at other forums out there on the net and seeing how they degenerate into about 95% signature and about 5% content has me a little concerned. Maybe we're better than the rest of the net though ;-)

--Asa
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chrisMage
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Post by chrisMage »

signatures are nice, as long as nobody uses images or annoying ascii art. If users fail to comply, you can always warn them, temporarily ban them, etc.
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Post by mfk »

Er, what kind of trolls don't you like? Trolls liven up the conversation!

Are you referring to a troll like this:

MAC - which stands for Media Access Control - is a unique identifiable number burned into every network card ever made. Developed by the 4C Entity in cooperation with major media companies, a MAC address is part of the TCPA/Palladium initiative, seeking to control access to the media you download


Or like this:

PHOENIX SUX IE ROOLZ
tve
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Post by tve »

mfk wrote:
PHOENIX SUX IE ROOLZ

hey, he's got a good point there :D

isnt there a feature to turn signature images off in the Admin CP?
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Stefan
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Post by Stefan »

two legged freak wrote:
mfk wrote:
PHOENIX SUX IE ROOLZ

hey, he's got a good point there :D

isnt there a feature to turn signature images off in the Admin CP?


I think you can shut down only HTML and BB code in sigs.
Of cource that still leaves ASCII art as well as nukes links (though you can put links in plaintext).
asa
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again

Post by asa »

The point is that I think there are legitimate uses for most of the features that this new forum offers and I'd rather we all use them responsibly than to see the mozillaZine admins turn them off. So far it looks like everyone's doing a pretty good job. Let's hope it stays like that.

--Asa
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GNU/Ben
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Post by GNU/Ben »

About the signature problem, maybe we there should be a limit on how big the sig can be.
Like if it is over xKB the sig will not be displayed. Thus people won't be able to put large images in their sigs, stupid ascii art (unless it is small), etc.
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Post by asa »

Benman wrote:About the signature problem, maybe we there should be a limit on how big the sig can be.
Like if it is over xKB the sig will not be displayed. Thus people won't be able to put large images in their sigs, stupid ascii art (unless it is small), etc.


Signatures do have a character length limit but they support html so people can link to images in their signatures. Avatars support using remote images too so people can use images of their making (even annoying animated gifs).

--Asa
Disreali
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New forum is great, except....

Post by Disreali »

I really liked that we did not need to register on the old phorum. I reallize there are mant good reasons to require registration, but it was just convenient that we did not.

Other than that, phpBB is one of the best forum systems out there. good choice.

Also, where do we report problems with the forum itself?
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Re: New forum is great, except....

Post by seb »

Disreali wrote:Also, where do we report problems with the forum itself?

Just go there http://www.mozillazine.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=11
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Re: New forum is great, except....

Post by djst »

Disreali wrote:Also, where do we report problems with the forum itself?


http://www.mozillazine.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=11
herman
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Making forums useful

Post by herman »

I fully agree with your statements for making the forums usable.

But I´m missing the threads of the old bug and builds forums.
Some cries for help are very unclear formulated, so to help you must ask for build and OS, for an URL showing that behaviour, and so on.
You get an answer, rethink the possibilities, ask another one, and after two or three rounds of asking/replying the bug and it´s cure are clear,
there is a solution, or a bug filed.
This is impossible with the new forum.
Besides, it would be nice, if Phoenix forums and mozilla forums would use different colours, so phoenix problems wouldn´t get posted in mozilla forums, and vice versa.

Keep on the good work,
I´m waiting for phoenix 0.5, and the current windows nightly


P.S.
I wanted to post this as a direct reply to Asa´s posting at the beginnig of this thread. So the only thing to show this would be to quote Asa.
But why should I quote a lot of stuff simply for writing "me too" after quoting? Thats also a point speaking for threaded view.
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genpic
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Re: Making the Phoenix Forums Work

Post by genpic »

asa wrote:
Don't troll and don't feed the trolls (along with my commitments for 2. we should be cool here).

Avoid animated gifs for your avatars. It's just plain obnoxious.

--Asa


Hey, it just so happens that I use an animated gif for an avatar.

It seems to me that simply dismissing all instances of the format as "just plain obnoxious" is on the one hand, a sweeping generalization, and on the other hand, bordering upon harsh and judgmental.

Aren't those two characteristics common among trolls?

Why should we have to put up with this nonsense?
you get the general picture(tm)
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