Forum update coming, what do you want?

[Xavier X]

Id love to see who is the creator of the thread when browsing threads not just who wrote most recent reply.

View attachment 48878

In addition to this, I preferred the former format.
If I remember correctly, that format showed the thread creator, as well as the last person to comment.
Also, clicking on the last person to comment or time of last comment took you to that comment, instead of the current profile pop-up.

 

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[Paul David]

When I open a thread using my phone browser it takes me randomly to the bottom of the thread instead of starting from top.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

browser it takes me randomly

It's not random, it's the newest post in the thread that supposedly you haven't read. I assumes you read the prior posts on every open.

 

[heavy_industry]

@MJ DeMarco

Here are some suggestions:


1. On desktop, there are 5 blocks that cover like 60% of the height of the website:

• Statistics
• Latest activity
• Recent top post
• Quick content filters
• Ongoing chats

Some of those panels are useful, but I think it would be nice to have them in a more compact format, or add some of them as sidebars (e.g. the top post).

This would prevent having to scroll all the way down just to be able to see the actual forum categories.

---

2. Bundling all notifications for a single post into a single one.

So you would get 1 notification "20 users liked your post", instead of 20 different notifications.



I don't have any objections, I love waking up to this thing.

But it would be easier to navigate the notifications if there were bundled together as described above.

---

3. User categories boxes

It would be nice to make them more easily distinguishable, by color-coding them, and adding icons.

@MJ DeMarco Please let me know if you want me to make some high quality ones. This is just a draft:








(I'm sorry @Andy Black please don't ban me)

 

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[eliquid]

There is no way to "ignore" someone who has the "This member limits who may view their full profile."

Can you add that to their profile, so we can ignore them.

 

[perchboy]

Need a guide one how to navigate the forum.

I've been here for almost a year now and still have no clue what following people does.

 

[James90]

Hey MJ, thanks for taking suggestions.

Requesting...

Have an option to view an entire thread on one page.


On long flights, I can catch up on threads i've booked marked without having a million tabs open on my browser.

---
When my brother was incarcerated, I used to send him reading material from the forum. I remember it was such a pain in the a$$ having to print the threads that were 20+ pages lol.

 

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[BizyDad]

There is no way to "ignore" someone who has the "This member limits who may view their full profile."

Can you add that to their profile, so we can ignore them.

Click on their picture and the option appears.

 

[KiwiEC]

Thank you for taking care of the forum!

One simple feature would be to have the option to hide/collapse the sticky threads list on the top of each forum section.

I like the fact we have so many gold threads which deserve to be highlighted and I have read most of them. But sometimes I just want to get to the most recent stuff posted and so you have to scroll a lot (+ the border between sticky threads and new threads is hard to spot).

It's just a minor feature which could improve the browsing experience. I may be blind but I did not see such an option like that (eg. a simple arrow to collapse/expand the sticky threads list on the top bar of the list section).

 

[Robdavis]

Don't get me wrong, I love the response emoji's that we have. I also loved the last update where we gained more.

But,

there are a couple of things about the emoji's that bother me.

1) The wow emoji is ambiguous. Like you don't know if someone means "Wow, that's terrible" or "Wow, that's good", particularly if the situation is a marginal case where whether something is good or bad is subjective.

This could be solved by having say, the wow emoji become the "Wow, that's terrible / OMG" emoji and a new emoji called something say like "Awesome" for the good things.

2) There isn't a "I'm confused" emoji. At the moment we have to use the "interesting" emoji, but "I'm confused" doesn't mean the same thing as "Let me think about that some more / I enjoyed thinking about that", which I take to be the meaning of the current interesting emoji.


On a separate note, we currently seem to have "notable" and "Gold" awards for thread of high quality. I think that it might be good to add a higher level say "platinum / ruby / sapphire / diamond" for the most exceptional threads. This is because of the number of "Gold" threads that are now on the forum.


EDIT: Now that "this is the real truth" is a thing, we could do with a "this is the real truth" reaction emoji, so that we can use that as a response to truthful posts.

EDIT2: Can we make location mandatory? Because I find it really annoying not knowing in what country people are. For example, if someone writes something, you don't necessarily know the context of what they are writing, because you don't know where in the world that they are. It wouldn't need to be very specific, like an address, just ask people to put their country in as a minimum.

 

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[LightHouse]

+100 on a dark mode. I have browser extensions, but they apply a global version to every site which isn't optimized.

I love twitters options, both blackout and "dim" which is dark blue. Both have been properly set up so that being dark doesnt mess anything up.

Other than that, threading. I have suggested it before, not sure it's even possible. It seems like every major site uses threading now. That way, when there is a great reply, it's follow-up's stay with it, rather than getting scattered throughout a multipage thread. I think it makes reading and interaction far more efficient and enjoyable.

 

[Robdavis]

Comment removed.

 

[Andy Black]

threading. I have suggested it before, not sure it's even possible. It seems like every major site uses threading now. That way, when there is a great reply, it's follow-up's stay with it, rather than getting scattered throughout a multipage thread. I think it makes reading and interaction far more efficient and enjoyable.

Ha. That old chestnut.

I'm not a fan of threading. I don't know where the conversation is going, if things are being repeated, what's chronologically first, and if I've read everything (or responded to everything if it's my own thread).

 

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[BizyDad]

Ha. That old chestnut.

I'm not a fan of threading. I don't know where the conversation is going, if things are being repeated, what's chronologically first, and if I've read everything (or responded to everything if it's my own thread).

I agree. I always miss stuff with threading.

 

[GuestUser4aMPs1]

Bring back Rep$$

(Pre 2018 members: IYKYK)

 

[JordanK]

@MJ DeMarco

I had a quick look at Xenforo. They are UK based and only seem to have 3 employees (possibly including the two directors).

Here are documents related to the company and its accounts.

XENFORO LIMITED filing history - Find and update company information - GOV.UK

XENFORO LIMITED - Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activity

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk

Would you be in a position 'ala' Elon Musk to buyout this company and appoint your own developers/team to oversee further development. Seeing as the forum is so reliant on its software to function. This would give you a certain element of control (CENTS), it would probably add value to the forum too as you'd now be a tech company lol.

Just thought I would suggest it.

 

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[GuestUser4aMPs1]

@MJ DeMarco

I had a quick look at Xenforo. They are UK based and only seem to have 3 employees (possibly including the two directors).

Here are documents related to the company and its accounts.

XENFORO LIMITED filing history - Find and update company information - GOV.UK

XENFORO LIMITED - Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activity

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk

Would you be in a position 'ala' Elon Musk to buyout this company and appoint your own developers/team to oversee further development. Seeing as the forum is so reliant on its software to function. This would give you a certain element of control (CENTS), it would probably add value to the forum too as you'd now be a tech company lol.

Just thought I would suggest it.

MJ buying out the very software that this forum runs on because of how badly he hates it so much would be the greatest ironic twists of fate in fastlane history.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

MJ buying out the very software that this forum runs on because of how badly he hates it so much would be the greatest ironic twists of fate in fastlane history.

If I ever spent a few mil on a company, it certainly wouldn't be on antiquated software in a dying industry. The only asset would be the customer list. In a build or buy decision, I'm pretty sure 'BUILD' would win.

 

[adnanazmi]

To be able to use more Emojis?

 

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[alexkuzmov]

The forum software is due to be updated and as I embark on this project (it can take some time) I'd like to hear if there are any features you'd like to see. Unfortunately, I won't be moving platforms so I do have some limitations on what can be done, and not done.

I also have access to developer who might be able to implement non-custom features.

Some things I've identified:

1) The search function sucks balls. This needs upgrading.
2) Content discovery is poor. There needs to be better categorization for content discovery, for example, if you want to find posts on YouTube or eCom.
3) Custom notifications on what you want notices on.
4) More options to ignore certain content.
5) Keyword notices: Get notified when keywords appear in posts.

Obviously I can listen to suggestions, but they are often dependent on the platform which the software uses, which as many of you know, I do not like.

Awesome news!

Here is a feature that I would really like and I think would elevate the forum to a new level of interaction.

Text to speach on a post/thread!

There are a lot of great posts, and having been on the forum for 3 years now, I still havent covered all of the gold threads I would like to.
Just too many posts, and some of them are so long I can only read them while I`m doing something like riding a stationary bike or some other brainless activity.

I propose something like this:

1. Integrate some text to speach API like this one: Using the Text-to-Speech API with Python | Google Codelabs or a better one where the voices are more natural.

2. Add a button to the post/thread here:


or here:


3. When you click the button you get a nice autogenerated player overlayed on the thread which is playing an audio file of the text.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Lots of great suggestions and ideas, keep 'em coming!

 

[Akaushra]

on mobile, when scrolling thru threads it looks really weird

 

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[Consolation]

1) The search function sucks balls. This needs upgrading.

YES!!

 

[heavy_industry]

Lots of great suggestions and ideas, keep 'em coming!

Ban @heavy_industry

This update will improve the quality of the forum and reduce spam.

 

[MitchC]

What's with the Reddit mentality from a lot of users around here?

For the love of God, if I read another post about how everything boils down to luck, I'm gonna puke.




Wow, what a big FAIL.

I just had an idea, somewhat because of this post, but also because it might just be nice.

Add a first name section to peoples profile that shows on your post, whether optional or not.

I think it would be a lot nicer to call someone by their name rather than their forum name, it also might make people a little more thoughtful with what they post.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

This update will improve the quality of the forum and reduce spam.

LOL.

For the first time in 15 years I'm thinking about making the forum private, and invite only. I have no idea how that would look or operate, so let's just say, it is more fantasy than reality.

 

[heavy_industry]

LOL.

For the first time in 15 years I'm thinking about making the forum private, and invite only. I have no idea how that would look or operate, so let's just say, it is more fantasy than reality.

How about having a beginner section which is open to the public, and then those that prove they deserve to be part of the community get promoted to "Fastlaners" user group - or something like that.

Basically having 3 tiers of users:

• Beginners (public)
• Fastlaners (private)
• INSIDERS (private and paywall $)

 

[starttoday123]

Safer space for women but I can’t say I have any ideas for how. I think a lot of women on here are pretending to be men, not posting at all and compromising our values in having to read about men’s porn habits etc. to be able to learn

 

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[xShepherdx]

How about having a beginner section which is open to the public, and then those that prove they deserve to be part of the community get promoted to "Fastlaners" user group - or something like that.

Basically having 3 tiers of users:

• Beginners (public)
• Fastlaners (private)
• INSIDERS (private and paywall $)

+1 for something like this.

It seems like more and more good threads are getting polluted by idiots. The recent math thread is a prime example.

 

[heavy_industry]

It seems like more and more good threads are getting polluted by idiots. The recent math thread is a prime example.

The idiots and the victims play a very important role in serving as a warning to others.

For this reason I haven't added anyone to the ignore list, because we can learn from other's failures, and we can spot our own psychological biases and faults.

This is how I've fine-tuned my mindset over the last 6 months. Work still in progress.