HAHA!

the 413x bug in plain text comments is still present. here is my fix: [413x misbehaviour!](http://lussumo.com/community/comments.php?DiscussionID=789&page=1)

and here is the url again:
[META - a new kind of forum](http://www.blursoft.com/meta/)

I like the functionality, but it doesn't look that nice.

A good style sheet would fix that though.

the 'click quoting' is very nice and i think something like that would be so good for vanilla.

I agree, but then again, anykind of quoting would be good.

It's okay, but the visual side is extremely disappointing. It looks "tacky" at the moment. Hopefully someone will come along and help the folk out.

It certainly has a lot of interesting features. The quoting and edit-in-place stuff is cool but has been discussed here previously with possible implementation in mind. I quite like how it gives the first post of the discussion as a mouseover but that'd get a little pointless once you'd seen the thread once.
I'd certainly prefer to use that than the likes of phpBB from a 1minute glancepoint. Give it chance.

especially mouseover popups

Second that WITH A VENGEANCE!

Shrug WITH A VENGEANCE!

Yeah, it has some good ideas, but a lot of it is just silly. The community reminds me of Vanilla, though, somewhat.

and please stop using the phrase "web 2.0", it just sounds so idiotic.

I like the Web 2.0 technology thing that's actually just a mish-mash of already existing stuff.

This is the wrong way to start a "new" technology. That's a whole different thread/discussion though.

I'm sold on Web 5.0.

funny i was only thinking how irritating the phrase web 2.0 was this morning!

another thing getting on my nerves is how nearly everything is released with beta slapped all over it like it's some kind branding.

Which is exactly what google do. Most of their products seem to be in permanent beta.

To me, coming from SMF or PunBB or Invision, where categories mean two clicks to view any thread, something like Vanilla or "Meta" is a breath of fresh air. I was already planning stuff similar to this last year, with PunBB, but never got far enough in my modifications before I gave up - too much to change.

Vanilla has promise, but it won't take off until people can convert to it in one click, and have quoting, and a page explaining whispers to people who have an email/PM background.

And there are way too many options - and too few. As an administrator, it seems you can't configure the default options for all accounts without editing php code. And stuff like "format comments as ..." or "whisper your comments to" seems a little redundant. (Whisper should come after the comment box, because even if you want to whisper it to someone, you should already know what you want to say and type it out before you enter the name of the person to whisper to)

The tabs at the top are useless too. Make a "Change My Account" link on the top, near Signed in as ... Signout, put a search box on every page, and move the categories to the sidebar. There, no more need for tabs. That's what I plan on doing for my installation of Vanilla, at least. Seems much more intuitive. Other small changes like that and this forum could be perfect. I wonder if I can make some or all of these changes in a theme, or if I'd need to modify more of the PHP ...

The tabs make important links really stand out. And I think they give Vanilla something unique.

Thanks, SirNot. I'd have done it myself, but I'm actually travelling still - posted my first comments in Montreal (Canada), and now I'm talking from a hotel in Kingston (Ontario, Canada). I was under the impression that it would only be possible - or maybe just be easier - to do with the newer development version of Vanilla, but wasn't sure where to get it (svn/cvs/whatever).

As for why I don't like tabs, well, I do like them :) But only when they're necessary. And here, they aren't necessary. There's so much space in the sidebar (excuse me, "Control Panel" - what a stupid name for a sidebar) that category names could easily fit, with descriptions inline or on hover (using titles, or perhaps nicetitles js), and search should obviously be front and center - it's so good with this board (and think Google - search comes first) - while the account tab is damned hard to find, yet important.

In fact, I'm thinking I'll show each user's information at the top next to a search bar, and have buttons to sign out, or "change info", something like that. Seems again, much more intuitive. Still, this is a good start. Can't wait to make some mods for this.

Maybe I can ask Mark about the ETA for the next version of Vanilla, so I don't code too much for this version if I have to re-write most of my extensions in half a month. (He's got to finish a beta of *something*, at least), unless someone knows more about this than I?

Oh and one last thing about the tabs, or my other comments, it's all about how I like to design things - I try to look at this as someone who hates "stuff", asking myself "why did I put this there?" and if I can't come up with a good answer, I remove it or rework it. It's not fussiness, because it really does make pages better, if you've the time for it.

For example, there are way too many lines on the current theme, the "1 to 31 of 31" thing doesn't need a line below it, and the Add your comments heading should be inside the lightly coloured box, with whisper as an option near the bottom - when I want to whisper something, I expect a whisper button, not an "add your comments" button. The two should be different, and you shouldn't have to wonder, "what's a whisper" before you type your comment.

And why are the block user/block comment links up on the top right of every post? That's distracting, and doesn't align with the username / post info line. Block user could become an X inside a circle next to the user's name (and a hover/title of "Block User") while block comment could be a similar X ... somewhere. Bottom right, maybe? This would take testing to figure out, I guess. It just doesn't seem right, to me.

And why is the sidebar only useful near the top of the page? There should be "next actions" at the bottom of the page too, since once people are done, they will want to do something. Adding comments is a useful action, and so is going back, or to the top of the page, but how about new posts in places you've recently posted in, or what if there's a new post while you're still reading an older version of the discussion in your browser? Or want to search?

Of course, this would probably only be useful with longer discussions like this one, and with your profile settings set so you can view 50 comments per page, but even google gives you a search box along with other navigation at the bottom *and top* of the page. Google is usually very good at understanding people, and using minimal design that "just works" for pretty much everybody. I try to take inspiration from that, in some ways.

*head spins manically
You certainly have some interesting ideas, i'd like to see your louisified vanilla, even if it does seem a little too jakob nielson-ish.

Thanks everybody, for reading (skimming?) that 3 am rant of mine.

And as I've said elsewhere, I'd be happy to make modifications to it, like I have for other forums. I love what's been done so far. I want to help him make it better, as others do, I'm sure.

And minisweeper, louisified vanilla is not *Jakob Nielsen-ish*! :P

Actually, it's more in line with Google, or the guy who did Wired.com a few years back, Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign (http://www.stopdesign.com/). And like Nielsen's partner, Donald Norman, I care about how people use technology, not just how simple it is, or the metrics behind a design. To me, design can have graphics, it can have lines - they just must have a reason.

That's different from what Nielsen does, because the reasons I use come from myself and my limited tests with others, while Nielsen much prefers using statistics and other more technical tests and number crunching to prove that one way is better than another. I'm not one to say flash is bad, but like him, I agree that *most* flash is bad. Personally, I prefer flash in limited animation uses on websites, or perhaps for image-replacements - but not as a replacement for good clean XHTML and CSS.

But we won't go there now, I suppose, since we're both chatting about people we've probably never met and won't meet. ;)

Actually there are people on this board who've met Jakob, i believe. But yeah - i've never had a designing mind so when it gets down to the nitty gritty of what should be improved i wouldnt really notice - if something looks nice i'll like it, whether or not there is an extra line there i may prefer if it was gone but i wouldnt notice eitherway. I suspect if i had the ability to muck around with stuff as easily as other people might find it then i'd have a play and get it 100% how i wanted it - but as kosmo says, waiting for the next rev would definately be a good idea.

Hey guys, I'm the lead developer for Meta and found this thread, its pretty interesting. It's nice to get feedback, and i'd like to address a few of the issues raised in this thread.

First off, yeah it is a beta and we know it -- there are tons of things on it that either don't work at all, or don't work the way we've envisioned them yet. TONS of things. Its hard when you have like, 2 people working on it who aren't getting paid and have to go to their normal jobs everyday.

Whoever said they don't like popups for the thread preview is an idiot. I can't stand reading forums that don't have that very basic feature now because I can't tell if a thread is worth going into or not. Those thread previews make reading and keeping up with an active forum so much better. Hell we're planning even more features that let you monitor a thread just from the thread listing.

The one thing where it listed one person's moderations like 50 times was a bug, that wasn't supposed to happen. It's been fixed. Though at this point it would show all the moderations if 50 different people moderated a single post, but I'm planning to make it so that it only shows the top 3 moderations and then just has a link that says "Show all" or something.

In regards to a "spammer with 2000 posts" being able to come on and wreak havoc, well that just wouldn't happen. The exact POINT of the NRi system is to protect against that -- a spammer with 2000 posts would have an abyssmally low NRi. The NRi is based on several different measures, of which post count plays a tiny role. The level to which other people moderate your posts is much more influential in the calculation, so a spammer would be instantly negatively moderated into oblivion.

The liveThreads animation, in the future, will be toggleable. However you guys have no idea how nice it is to just be able to leave the page open in a tab, and periodically throughout the day just tab to it and see new posts without having to refresh.

Same goes for when you're reading a thread... new posts just appear as they are posted from other people, no refreshing required their either. It's *almost* like a marriage between a forum and a chatroom because of the way things appear live.

The actual styling of the forum is irrelevant. I'm the first to admit that I'm not a very good graphic designer, but I had to make something just to get going. The whole system is entirely "themable" though, just like our blog software (its built on the same framework). So yes, anyone with some decent CSS knowledge can come along and completely dictate what the forum looks like (and hopefully someone will before its released, haha).

I hope this clears a few things up, and honestly its really great reading criticism like this -- especially negative criticism, because we definitely need that more than anything so we can fix things that people don't like about it. I think we're all sick of all the vBulletins and phpBB's of the world, so its nice to see things like Vanilla and others coming around.

nice of you to come over here and give us some feedback too, briantech. Be sure to give us a heads up when meta makes some big steps cause i'd love to follow its progress. I do like the mouseovers as i said, but if you could put a tiny delay on for people who swoop around with the mouse i really do think it'd be a good idea.
I do love the live stuff as well (i'm one of the people who sits with the page open and refreshes) - along with the quoting/etc; stuff like this has been discussed for vanilla and will hopefully one day be implemented through extensions.

NRi is still something i havent and dont understand, i guess it can be useful but it doesnt bother me to learn about it untill i have to use it (read: lazy).

Good luck with the continuing development (and design!) though.

If I understood you right, I could still abuse the system with my moderation power to moderate someones posts constantly, the NRi system seeing him as a "bad poster who needs constant moderation" to keep him on a tight leash and raise my moderation status by being a "good guy who keeps the spammer in check" is that possible?

It depends. The strength of the system comes from the fact that its based on the behaviors of many people, not just a single person. Very few individuals have any kind of really decisive moderating power, and thats the point. It protects against tyranny of the few, and instead reflects more on the general consensus on a large subset of the general population's feelings. The few people that do have somewhat more moderating power are not awarded that power trivially. They have to do a lot of things correctly over a good amount of time to get "elected" if you will, into a position of any palpable power.

I just don't trust that kind of automated feature, I like my communities being ran by people who have some kind of attachment to the actual community, a long time memebers recognized by the forum admins or people who have sponsored the community and continue to contribute in a meaningful way.

And I guess I've been involved in too many communities in which an egotistical power tripping admin or moderator felt it their god given right to go around silencing anyone who didn't kiss up to them.

community based, user driven feedback is quickly becoming the best way to run social sites like these. Take www.digg.com for example, or slashdot. Neither of those sites have dedicated "moderators" and they are doing just fine.

I fully admit that its quite a break away from the current modality of thinking in forums, and some admins probably wont like it. Thats fine, it's not for them then. Meta is definitely being built from the ground up from the user's perspective, not the admin's. Because ultimately it is the users in a community that generate value back into the community, not the admins. Admins and moderators only need to be there to keep trolls out, there's no reason you can't delegate that responsibility to the community itself, its a fairly trivial job.

Minisweeper hides briantechs posts out of egotistical spite.
Fair comment though. And no, there is no way to quote posts yet. There have been a lot of discussions of extensions to do so but none have materialsed to my knowledge. Actually there might be one. Hmmm...

Its hard when you have like, 2 people working on it who aren't getting paid and have to go to their normal jobs everyday.

Tell me about it, man. I hear you 100%. Thanks for stopping by and thank you even more for being civil. I've had people from "competing" projects come by here and flame - which is just ridiculous in my opinion. It's nice to see another developer with his head on straight. Best of luck with Meta :)

And it's not like that the egotistical maniac couldn't get power in Meta, even the egotistical maniacs are regular members for some part of their forum lifetime. Look at mini for example, he might have been a normal person sometime, but now he is just ... skeletor?

Again, the best person to take care of anything, is someone with somekind of attachment to it.

I guess in a way then, its the same in both cases. Someone in Meta is not going to have a high nri without being a highly active, strongly contributing, highly respected member of the forum... same goes for moderators who are appointed to the position as you say. They both have attachments to the community.

I guess the difference is that in meta, if a bunch of people don't like the way a single person is behaving, they can do something about it. In traditional forums, whatever the mod does is like the word of god, and most forums I go to do not even allow open discussion of moderator's actions. That shit just reeks of authoritarian top-down suppression.