I was in here a few months back and now the forum is completely changed and I had to register again. But the forum do look good.
Coding is completely different, but that's cool. These codes work on Myspace, so that helps a lot. Also, you can't edit a post that is more than 7 days old. Edit wasn't working at all for the last few months on the old site, so I guess that's an improvement.
A lot of sites limit the edit function. I believe that The Forge has it shut off completely (although there was talk of permitting a twenty-minute chance to fix obvious errors). Part of the thinking is that if you know you can't erase what you said, you'll be more careful about saying it in the first place. Part of the thinking is that there have been times on many sites when people will get into a heated argument, and then one of them will go back and edit all his own posts so that he doesn't look so bad as he was--which makes everyone else look worse.
A week is plenty of time to do any of the sort of editing most people really need to do--fix typos, correct obvious errors. After that, there are two things you can do:
- Post later in the thread to apologize for the error and give the correction;
- Contact a moderator to ask to have the post corrected. I, being a moderator, can edit any post on the board at any time. I warn you, though, that I am more sympathetic to the view that you need to write what you can live with and live with what you write than with most arguments for erasing what you wrote; I can, however, see exceptions, particularly if someone else would have trouble living with what you wrote.
Nephandi, there are links here and there back to the old forum, if you're looking for something that was posted here before. It's all in archive mode, and you cannot post to it, but you can read what is posted.
--M. J. Young
No I think I am good about the old forum. And I do like this one. I miss my little snake symbol though, that one was cute. I also notices that this one do not show how many posts you have, witch can be a good thing as pepole then do not post simply to get a higher score but post what they want to say, when they have something to say.
For what it's worth, the software running the forums is bbPress, which is in pretty active development. Tomorrow, both a significant update to Wordpress (which runs the rest of GO) and bbPress will be released. When that happens, I'll play around with them and see about upgrading our copies here, too. But the main reason I'm pointing it out is because there are a bunch of plugins available, and I'm happy to install any that you guys would like to see.
The only thing I would perhaps like to see is a bit more categories as the forum can be a bit untidy, but other than then I think the forum is fine. Often better to keep it simple.
The best way to keep things tidy right now is to make sure you tag any threads you start with a bunch of appropriate keywords, and to check pre-existing tags before you do so to make sure you aren't creating a very similar duplicate tag (if we already have "vampires," tagging a thread "vampire" is a mistake). If you check the "hot tags" sidebar on the main forum page, you'll notice that you can single out all the threads that include actual game play by clicking on the "play" tag, or visit all the game threads of a given player to date by clicking on the tag for his first name, or review all the threads on vampires in Multiverser (many more than you might think) by clicking on the "vampires" tag - and so on. You might find "lists" useful if you're the sort of referee who likes lists and charts and tables, or you might try "weapons" if you want an upcoming world to have game-relevant distinctions between various sorts of swords and you're looking for discussions on that.
It's a good system, as long as everyone remembers it exists and does his part to maintain it.
Exactly. That's the idea behind the tags and why I went with them instead of more categories. I wanted to give you guys the opportunity to organize the posts however you wanted and change or expand the system on the fly.
This forum software is still in pretty early release and I'll upgrade as new versions are released, so I imagine everything will become a little more robust and fully featured over time. Though the general simplicity of it will remain, as that's one of the core design philosophies of bbPress, and what I particularly like about it. Forums should be about facilitating conversations, and too many of them have too many features that get in the way of that simple goal.