Social interactivity or a forum product

James

Well-known member
This is confusing me really. People are going around XF forums preaching about social interactivity and social networking being a major part of the internet these days, but then when social features are requested, they are shot down as being unnecessary.

If people want social interactivity and social networking to be part of a forum product, they need to be open to having social features built into the product so that they can be utilised to create a much more social forum platform.

Just my $0.02 on the matter.
 
James ...

Kier and Mike and doing an excellent job so far of incorporating the best elements irregardless of where they come from...

I trust their direction and that user experience (both end-users and forum operators) is high on their

list of priorities.
 
I want the forum to have as many features as possible too. But I want to choose which ones I install (plugins) and not have the platform overly bloated with absolutely everything.

Maybe Kier and Mike can kick off a handful of plugins to show everyone the power the system has, and in no time hopefully more quality plugins will follow from all the other eagerly waiting coders.
 
I'm not in any way directing this at Kier and Mike. I love and appreciate all of the time and effort that they have put into this product and I am much happier with this Alpha than I am with any other forum product. I will feel no regrets parting with my money for something as wonderful as this - without a doubt.

My post was just to outline that people cannot expect social networking integration and social interactivity and still expect to have a "just forum" product. Yes, a barebones forum can be created but you're going to need to install a bunch of plugins - wouldn't you rather they perform more efficiently as an integrated feature?

I trust Kier and Mike to install what will help make XenForo tomorrow's software and make it extremely user-friendly and I have nothing bad to say about this product, genuinely.
 
My view is that a good system which is not bloated with the ability to customize as much as you like with plugins is always going to be much better and perform better then a system that has everything and is bloated. Take wordpress for example.
 
My view is that a good system which is not bloated with the ability to customize as much as you like with plugins is always going to be much better and perform better then a system that has everything and is bloated. Take wordpress for example.
Couldn't agree more. But there are certain social networking features that would perform better integrated.

Kier and Mike have stated they're implementing what will benefit the majority.
 
Indeed. Efficiency can still be kept with some features integrated.

If Kier and Mike didn't integrate the Facebook Like feature early, a lot of people would've protested against it. This is probably the same for a few things.

I think a lot of people think "if this doesn't suit MY forum, it's bloat". I won't use all few of XenForo's features but that doesn't make them bloat.
 
I'm not against everything that I won't use. I'm against something that I don't think should ever be implemented into a forum. I will most definitely implement some sort of bridge to WP and Gallery, I even have both products installed on my site, waiting for XenForo so I can finish working on it then open it up. But if you read my replies in threads asking for integrated CMS and galleries, I'm strongly against it.

If they do decide to implement all of these large suggestions, then I pray that they don't lose focus of the fact that this is a forum software. Just because a majority of people clamor for something, doesn't mean it should automatically become part of the core software. Everyone wanted CMS, blogging, and gallery software, and (regardless of IB's management) that stretched the developers thin, essentially making a bunch of ****ting products that don't work well at all.

Yeah, Kier and Mike are great developers and could probably make really good add-ons, but in the end, I'd rather see them focus on just the forum and let the third-party developers work on the other popular requests.
 
The Facebook Like feature can be used to market your site, as can a Twitter feature; not all sites would use it though, but many people use both of those networks, making them useful in the core software.
 
An example of a feature I would never use, and has no real point: Google Membermap; it really servers no real usage to the community, its just there for fun. Definitely something to be kept as a mod.
 
@David Thomas, you think like myself. I made this thread to get opinions.

@Forsaken, the Google Membermap (assuming you mean the hyperlink on the location field) is just a hyperlink, it's not much bloat at all! :)
 
@David Thomas, you think like myself. I made this thread to get opinions.
 
@Forsaken, the Google Membermap (assuming you mean the hyperlink on the location field) is just a hyperlink, it's not much bloat at all! :)
No, someone suggested they include a membermap feature, where it would include all members.
 
I think this is about the backend.
From admin point of view I think it's best to have a crude top level of categories that admin enables/ disables ... user profiles, social networking, blog, gallery, wordpress, CMS etc
I'd imagine that if these chunks of stuff are disabled at top level admin it should be possible for them to NOT create bloat because their scripts just sit there inactive. Plus the Disable option runs through other connected scripts removing stuff to archive it.

But that's a user- admin view. It may look very different from the backend. Some features will be much easier to separate out as standalone options than others. Some will need to be deeply integrated to work well. That second lot would have to be enable/ disable in the core rather than external plugins. So only the developers can see this.

I'm not usually one to fiold my hands and trust the gods ;) much more of a control freak. But on this I'm happy to trust the XF team to get the balance right.
 
Although David is right in many ways, I do get annoyed when people cry "bloat" when people ask for features. For example saying IPB3 is bloatware is difficult to understand when you can switch off or uninstall (or choose not to buy/install) many of the add-ons and extra features. It's not as if anyone is making you use them and IPB3 is actually very good indeed - they certainly aren't ruining the product by stretching themselves as we've seen with VB4. I think the only time that is an issue is if developers rush things to market as they did with VB4.

Saying that something is bloat that someone else requires is a little selfish isn't it? Especially when you can choose whether to use it or not. If it isn't there in the first place the choice isn't there at all. For example IP.Nexus is being developed. I have no requirement for it at all, but I won't cry foul about them choosing to develop something that a lot of people are clamoring for.

And I'll say it again, in my opinion bridges and suchlike rarely work and when they do they aren't perfect.
 
Although David is right in many ways, I do get annoyed when people cry "bloat" when people ask for features. For example saying IPB3 is bloatware is difficult to understand when you can switch off or uninstall (or choose not to buy/install) many of the add-ons and extra features. It's not as if anyone is making you use them and IPB3 is actually very good indeed - they certainly aren't ruining the product by stretching themselves as we've seen with VB4. I think the only time that is an issue is if developers rush things to market as they did with VB4.

Saying that something is bloat that someone else requires is a little selfish isn't it? Especially when you can choose whether to use it or not. If it isn't there in the first place the choice isn't there at all. For example IP.Nexus is being developed. I have no requirement for it at all, but I won't cry foul about them choosing to develop something that a lot of people are clamoring for.

And I'll say it again, in my opinion bridges and suchlike rarely work and when they do they aren't perfect.
Agreed, we need a criteria to determine if a feature should be installed or not other.

Including the number of requests for it, is it logical, efficient, fits well into the principles of design and isn't going to cause any inconsistencies could be the basis but ill leave the others up to the devs if they choose to implement such a system instead of just eye balling the thread.
 
I too think people overreact with the term "bloat" when voting against features being added.

If someone asked for permissions per-threadid, I would say, ok, that's "bloat". Very few people need that level of control. And it's a feature that could potentially clog up both control panels and templates with a lot of extra stuff that 99% of forum users would never touch.

I always felt that Access Masks in vBulletin were "bloat". I've seen them used by admins who didn't realize it could be handled with Additional Usergroups. I always thought Access Masks should be an add-on.


The "bloat" that vBulletin 3 might be accused of is simply because of how the features were layered on. The engine was never designed for the amount of stuff which had been added on over the years. Think about it, vBulletin 3 is basically an 8 year old engine and it's held up surprisingly well all things considered. But it was time to move on.

XenForo could add every single feature of vBulletin 3, and still use half the queries, and have a much more high-performance experience on the same hardware, because of how the engine is built.

I trust Kier and Mike to tell us "the feature you're asking for will require a lot of exceptions or performance-robbing queries".
 
I trust Kier and Mike to tell us "the feature you're asking for will require a lot of exceptions or performance-robbing queries.

Actually, that's the main thing I care about regarding additional features - are they going to slow things down. And I don't have the coding knowledge to look at something and know this for myself, but they designed this forum to be really fast; obviously that's important to them, so I agree - I'll trust them to leave off anything that's going to turn it into a slug.
 
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