Itching to use my second XF license

[Kier]

IMO it is XF's weakest point. Admins could end up in court because of breaching privacy.
(Needs only a moderator who reads a private conversation)

What on earth are you on about? Admins and moderators can no more read other users' conversations than they can with any other private message system built into forum software. Can you explain what you are trying to say?

 

[jmurrayhead]

Don't be surprised of that.
It's revolutionary with XF.
IMO it is XF's weakest point. Admins could end up in court because of breaching privacy.
(Needs only a moderator who reads a private conversation)

 

[MGSteve]

To be honest, an alternative default skin that looks like VB probably isn't a bad idea. Ok, it may not be ideal as far as XF goes, but changing versions of forums is hard enough with some userbases, but changing forum software completely can upset a lot of members. People at the end of the day don't like change and VB -> XF is quite a change.

Certainly when we go live with it, we'll have a custom skin developed and try and minimise the differences as much as feasible between XF and VB.

 

[Kier]

Doing a vBulletin skin would be a lot of hard work - I did some messing around with style properties for posts to see if it was feasible, as I designed the default XenForo skin to be capable of a more traditional appearance through the use of style properties, and it came out looking not too bad, but it's beyond the scope of what I have time to do to take it any further.

http://xenforo.com/community/posts/162886

 

[a legacy reborn]

Change...will be accepted

http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/comics/state_web_winter/facebook.jpg *after the 1 in 13 part*

 

[Digital Doctor]

Don't be surprised of that.
It's revolutionary with XF.
IMO it is XF's weakest point. Admins could end up in court because of breaching privacy.
(Needs only a moderator who reads a private conversation)

It is very easy for admins to have access to PMs in vB.

 

[a legacy reborn]

I would like to see any website in the world that knowingly prevents itself from peering through any privacy restrictions it sets in place. If someone is threatened there would be no other way to see that message if a message was say encrypted and even so encryption is easy to crack if you have access to the DB so all you are doing essentially is slowing down admins who want to read their users pms. I agree the act itself is not right but how would you go about stopping them?

 

[Onimua]

It is very easy for admins to have access to PMs in vB.

If anyone as access to the database, nothing is private. On the front-end however, I don't see how it's easy to access user's PCs without some sort of modification or actually logging into their account.

 

[MGSteve]

Doing a vBulletin skin would be a lot of hard work - I did some messing around with style properties for posts to see if it was feasible, as I designed the default XenForo skin to be capable of a more traditional appearance through the use of style properties, and it came out looking not too bad, but it's beyond the scope of what I have time to do to take it any further.

http://xenforo.com/community/posts/162886

I appreciate it would be a fair amount of work. Perhaps worth contracting one of the talented skin developers to do it and maintain it, that way competitive migrations are eased a bit for their members and given how some userbases don't like change, anything to ease the migration can only be a good thing! I'm sure one of the skin developers could be talked into doing the work in exchange for some promotion... Quid Pro Quo etc..

 

[whynot]

What on earth are you on about? Admins and moderators can no more read other users' conversations than they can with any other private message system built into forum software. Can you explain what you are trying to say?

As I remember earlier there was a post about permissions to the moderators to see the conversations.
With other forum system I did not see such permission to see PMs.
It is possible to read PMs through a hack or with database access only(phpmyadmin).

If I remember wrongly,no one can see the conversations: I apologise.

 

[Fufu]

Do you think Gmail, Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, etc. admins have their own ocde encrypted from their own eyes? I think not.

As I remember earlier there was a post about permissions to the moderators to see the conversations.
With other forum system I did not see such permission to see PMs.
It is possible to read PMs through a hack or with database access only(phpmyadmin).

If I remember wrongly,no one can see the conversations: I apologise.

vBulletin never allowed to read PMs, but vBulletin.org community has an add-on to do this.

 

[Paul B]

If I remember wrongly,no one can see the conversations: I apologise.

That's correct, no-one except the participants can see the contents of a conversation.

Other than accessing the database directly, which is the same for any forum software.

 

[CTXMedia]

It's revolutionary with XF.

Sorry, just a small point, but IPS had this out first in their IP.Board 3.x series.

It was one of the things that stopped a lot of people using PM's when I first converted from vB3 in July 2010 - they just didn't like the whole "conversation" thing. Too different from vB.

Now that everyone is used to it, they actually prefer it because they don't have to go hunting around for the various bits of conversation - it's all nicely linked together.

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[Wildcat Media]

My users dont like change, and unfortunately XF is change, so it will never be accepted

I just converted a forum that has users going back to 2002 with phpBB2 and, with some of my staff, all the way back to 1997 when we first ran the forum with the text-based WebBBS. A few members never liked change, but they really embraced XF when they first saw it in testing, and everyone has adapted really well over the course of the past week. Forum usage has gone up too.

To each his own, though! I actually had one of my old WebBBS users email me and complained about being "shut out of the forum" and unable to access it. You did not need user accounts to post on WebBBS, and apparently he didn't get it that you had to register and login to use the new one. I asked what he needed help with and never heard back...and that was nine years ago.

 

[Wildcat Media]

It was one of the things that stopped a lot of people using PM's when I first converted from vB3 in July 2010 - they just didn't like the whole "conversation" thing. Too different from vB.

Now that everyone is used to it, they actually prefer it because they don't have to go hunting around for the various bits of conversation - it's all nicely linked together.

That is actually why I switched to Gmail when it first came out, and/or have used Google Apps for my private domains. It really changed the usefulness of email to me.

FWIW, SMF2 also threaded individual messages into conversations once you clicked on the link to read them. The way they list the messages, though, is still a bit flawed. I do know that if an SMF to XF importer ever materializes, there will probably be an import of the SMF conversations as-is. Going through vB, it split those up into individual PMs, so that is something that gets lost in the conversion when you go through vB.

 

[Diana]

i thought that, but dont know which subject

You could do something local based in Nottingham. Your town is known for bicycles. That's a popular subject worldwide.

Robin Hood came from there didn't he?

I'm encouraging people to become part of a democracy network, with domain names "democracyfor(cityname).com." I don't know the politics of Nottingham, so I don't know if the idea would spark any interest there, but when you think of the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and that Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor, there might be something to work off with a populist theme. Maybe?

Ro

 

[ragtek]

I agree that many people don't like big changes.
That'S why i prepare converting to make it easier for the people

My todo list for non technical/ IT- forums is:

1. i check which mods are a "MUST HAVE". If i remove the gallery in an photographer/event forum, i'm sure that i'll lose 3/4 of my users, even i would bring some months later another gallery back...
2. check if importers are available for the "must have data". Back to the photographer forum: i'm sure most would hate me and stop supporting the page, if i would delete all the photos they uploaded in the last years.

3. I'm altering the style of the NEW FORUM to be similar to the old forum.
I think that most of "average joe" users don't want too many changes and because they need to learn how the new software is working, they shouldn't bother also about a completely changed design.

4.After the conversation I disable many features and activate and introduce them weekly.