XF 2.3 ?
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TPerry
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Oh, some of us are happy.. in fact, I'm REALLY happy right now as not a cloud in the sky (after over 3 weeks of bad sky) and all 3 telescopes are set up. Two for DSO captures and going to play with a new Orange Pi 3 LTS on the planetary capture one and gathering more data for my site articles.
So, I'll be sitting outside multi-tasking with all the scopes, participating on about 3 forums and updating remotely a NexCloud server for a medical clinic.
The Dark Wizard
Well-known member
@Tracy Perry has some of the most creative sites I've seen, judging him on size alone is disrespectful, if that was the case, most of you shouldn't even be complaining, and should instead be working on your sites.
New forum features are not going to make your sites more desirable to visitors, social media is not murdering your sites, etc. Forums are not social media, sites need to focus on something in particular and have long term, searchable content, which is where no social media can compete.
New forum features are not going to make your sites more desirable to visitors, social media is not murdering your sites, etc. Forums are not social media, sites need to focus on something in particular and have long term, searchable content, which is where no social media can compete.
sbj
Well-known member
Why are these exclusive, like one or the other?
So if this is true:
why can't new forum features enable that?
My laughed at example of Wiki feature (feel free to insert your own working example) would give me long term and searchable content which can't be found on social media. So, yes, new features can make our sites more desirable.
Most people are focused on administrative or managing or visual features, yet nobody seems to care that content makes us valuable and what we need are content focused features.
So if this is true:
why can't new forum features enable that?
My laughed at example of Wiki feature (feel free to insert your own working example) would give me long term and searchable content which can't be found on social media. So, yes, new features can make our sites more desirable.
Most people are focused on administrative or managing or visual features, yet nobody seems to care that content makes us valuable and what we need are content focused features.
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Frode789
Well-known member
I'm totally aware. I was strictly replying based on the cost perspective.
Forsaken
Well-known member
Google+ begged to differ
. The only social media platform that had valuable longform content... but a terrible implementation and vision.If you are talking about me, I said it is unrealistic to expect a first party wiki from XenForo. I also said that not all sites would gain success from having a wiki. I am actually a big advocate of having a wiki or a searchable database, to the extent that I have asked Bob to give me a price to make it happen.
If your site is currently based around discussions, a wiki is going to harm your site because it is going to pull people away from the discussions that currently give you activity. So, you will see growth in traffic, but a drop-off in post activity.
Getting contributors for wikis is exceedingly difficult, and most activity falls off quickly, especially within a small community. You generally need someone who takes initiative to organize the wiki (and hope that people do not argue over how it is organized), you need people to create examples or templates (which depending on implementation can be a nightmare depending on if it has variables or not), you need people to make the pages, and you need people to monitor and curate the wiki as a whole. You can have a small number of people doing that, but without encouragement it is very rare to find someone to take that on for free.
As far as why a first party wiki is a bad idea... Resource manager. I would rather a third-party dev take on making a wiki or searchable database add-on so that they can be incentivized by feature funding. That said, the scale of that add-on is a full-time job for a small team at the very least
.They're not comparable honestly, but okay.
The Dark Wizard
Well-known member
Google+ was something that had a chance to be great, ruined by google.
Forsaken
Well-known member
as always.
TPerry
Well-known member
That's why I would lean more towards articles than a true wiki.
There are wiki solutions out there, and creating a user bridge between them and XF should not be to difficult.
sbj
Well-known member
I was not talking about you. Wiki is just an example, I am not here to make a campaign about it. People were asking for examples, like you, and I presented a good example I would like to see. That is it.
It is not about whether or not a Wiki gets implemented. My problem is why it is unrealistic to expect it. Why?
Look, I am telling straight up that I don't need or want any more administrative features or managing features. I don't need the spam cleaner to become better than it is or I don't need the cookie consent thingy perfectly done to please EU regulations. Those bring 0, like absolute 0 gain to my site. They won't bring me more users, won't bring my board more quality in terms of content or somehow make my site be more popular.
I want features which improve content. That will make a difference to me, be it small or not. It doesn't need to be a Wiki, be my guest and think about another content related improvement. To me, a Wiki is essential, but I am happy not to have it if we get something else good like that. No problem. So, why should I not expect it? There is nothing else for me. This is all I care about. We got Giphy implemented, cool for sure, but did it make a difference? No. Nobody comes to a site so they can use Giphy. I don't care about these stuff which have no impact whatsoever. I want tangible stuff which improves the daily struggles I have.
And those are clearly 2 things: user engagement and content creation.
Now, I have thought about user engagement a lot but I can't come up with ideas how to increase and improve it. You seem to have cracked it but you don't share your knowledge with us sadly. And as I said, I have no real features in mind I can give examples of. But what I can come up with are improvements for content related stuff. Now, I am not saying I have the ultimate wisdom but I do believe I know what I want or need. So, I am expecting content related improvements.
Now I didn't want to get into the Wiki debate, since my base argument is not related to it, it is just an example, but this is the 2nd time you address it and this time I will respond back.
I don't understand this. I think we have different concepts in our minds.
My question to you, do the RM discussions here on XF harm XF in any way? Does it give it less activity? I don't understand, like each RM item has a discussion attached to it which just increases discussions because you have an item to talk about. You can see it here daily people talking in addon threads, just like that people would talk about wiki items.
Now, the problem is that the RM is not well integrated, or let's say outdated in how it is presented. It is its own instance outside of the thread system, which makes it bad to use because people are lazy and don't want to go outside of the thread system. Same thing for MG. It must be integrated to threads otherwise those are just dead places nobody will use. This is a good attempt of doing it how I think it should work.
I agree about finding contributors part. True. Very hard to find people.
But user engagement is an all around problem and it is a general problem related to every content. Forget a Wiki, it is already hard finding people creating their own good content in normal threads, people don't do that anymore. Most people come with a question or with a one-liner, that is it. So, this problem needs to be tackled in general, this is not special to a Wiki. But I agree that it is hard to make it going.
But I, as the owner, I want to be a contributor. As I said many many times already (repeating myself here), 99% of people are leeching, especially on the mobile phones. Nobody is contributing to anything. That is why I need to be the content creator. I need to make it happen. I am not expecting other people to do it for me, no I need to do it. Just like the YT content creator does it for his own audience, just like any influencer does it, just like the gamer on Twitch does it, etc. etc.
So, I need the tools to make it happen. And the current system is tedious, or is just not there or has some other major problems.
We don't need a templating system, we already have bbcodes. What we need are stuff like a TOC (table of contents), keyword linking, sources section and the image gallery attached to it. Everything else is just a plain thread with bbcodes. Obviously we also need extra permissions "like can edit his own item, can edit all items" etc.
I know it is not an easy task but we need every help we can get for content. Our content is text based. And the world's most used top 10 website on earth for 20 years is Wikipedia. Looking up stuff is essential. This is what we can offer what other platforms can't offer. Nobody cares that in my node 73 in pagination 26 the thread xyz is there. Nobody. By default the thread system is doomed because after a thread leaves page 1, it rarely comes back ever. It vanishes, it gets buried. Now, a Wiki page will always find an audience thanks to Google. And if the system is right, it is ever present.
I mean it is a double edged sword. I get what you say and I agree. Seeing how abandoned the RM is, having a Wiki makes no sense. We are going strong to our 3rd year so by that logic I should not have any expectations. But I mean I still have a hope left that we can get some good features, so one can always dream.As far as why a first party wiki is a bad idea... Resource manager. I would rather a third-party dev take on making a wiki or searchable database add-on so that they can be incentivized by feature funding. That said, the scale of that add-on is a full-time job for a small team at the very least
The other problem is that leaving such things to third-party devs never worked out so far (almost). Look at what kind of mess the calendar addons do/did. Look at the mess about the classifieds situation. With such things sooner or later the dev always leaves or doesn't care anymore and then you sit in a 3rd party system you can't get out easily anymore. I don't want that. I want that the base thing is official and when needed it is further advanced by 3rd party devs. If you leave it completely to 3rd party devs, you will be disappointed almost always.
Not the style makes the forum beautiful, but the community and the content. I’ve seen better creatives forums in showcase sections, sadly most of them closed down. And I don’t disrespect anyone here. We are all free to talk. However, I don’t respect people who are thinking are better than me.
We talked about this. Obviously no, won’t make better, but someone already mentioned, while we wait years for XF to bring something new, the competitors are pushing new features and adapting to todays worlds needs.
JamesBrown
Well-known member
What new features? What world needs?
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