For the upcoming season.... What would you want in a Web Forum

We need more cowbell.

It would be nice to do something with the Twitter widget so you don't have to hand edit the X link.

badgervike wrote:
We need more cowbell.

It would be nice to do something with the Twitter widget so you don't have to hand edit the X link.

Hey badger, I am looking to completely rebuild the forum from the ground up. Not using a forum software suite, not using a compilation of plugins. But a complete build from scratch. I can't promise everything that people may want but I can try and implement as much as possible. Twitter embedding or other social media is already on the list front and center. With that said, I personally am just fried on using social media and the wasteland that it is. Don't get me wrong I like the idea of sharing the good stuff that it has to offer here on VF. And even having a feed that grabs stuff that is relevant to show here on the board. I just want to get back to good old fashioned forums talking to people about a subject we all love.

Hi Mike!

Hope you and family are all well? Be nice if we could meet-up at a game this year.

I think as long as we're taking a step back:

Keep this new place (very) football focused and so posters dont have to jump through hoops to find it or log in.

I had my access to Sensitive Topics removed once Metro Surge happened. Last straw for me. The world is a very different place now vs when the first generation of an online communities were envisioned.

The world is more fragmented, it's more bitter and fueled with social media hate. Forums as a whole are smaller than 10, 15 years ago - everywhere. But Ive seen first hand how people have left here over the years and how the bitterness in sensitive topics board ultimately poisons the football board. Separate boards dont separate bitterness between posters.

Lets not become another version of that "other site."

2). Sure social media easy plugs are cost of entry today
3). Strong Chat Capabilities
4). Works seamlessly across types of devices
5). Reliable, fast and easily maintained
6). Strong firewall/safety

I like the sports topic feed idea a bunch.

A lot of these are cost of entry, but would meet my needs perfectly.

Am intersted to hear if anyone else has ideas.

purplefaithful wrote:
Hi Mike!

Hope you and family are all well? Be nice if we could meet-up at a game this year.

I think as long as we're taking a step back:

Keep this new place (very) football focused and so posters dont have to jump through hoops to find it or log in.

I had my access to Sensitive Topics removed once Metro Surge happened. Last straw for me. The world is a very different place now vs when the first generation of an online communities were envisioned.

The world is more fragmented, it's more bitter and fueled with social media hate. Forums as a whole are smaller than 10, 15 years ago -  everywhere. But Ive seen first hand how people have left here over the years and how the bitterness in sensitive topics board ultimately poisons the football board. Separate boards dont separate bitterness between posters.

Lets not become another version of that "other site."

2). Sure social media easy plugs are cost of entry today
3). Strong Chat Capabilities
4). Works seamlessly across types of devices
5). Reliable, fast and easily maintained
6). Strong firewall/safety

I like the sports topic feed idea a bunch.

A lot of these are cost of entry, but would meet my needs perfectly.

Am intersted to hear if anyone else has ideas.

Heya faithful yeah you said a lot there. A lot that most of us should agree with. I am sure that my absence hasn't been a secret and some of that is partially why.

Mike Olson wrote:

Heya faithful yeah you said a lot there. A lot that most of us should agree with. I am sure that my absence hasn't been a secret and some of that is partially why.

well, I am glad you have the energy to bring this into it's newer and best version...

Looking forward to it! I aint a tech guy, but certainly reach out if you need anything.

THX!

purplefaithful wrote:

well, I am glad you have the energy to bring this into it's newer and best version...

Looking forward to it! I aint a tech guy, but certainly reach out if you need anything.

THX!

There is another thing in that I don't know how comfortable I am in being the sole person responsible for hosting political views that may or may not be deemed as propaganda. That might sound paranoid to some but honestly it is an issue that I might choose to just sidestep entirely.  I enjoy healthy and productive conversation though so I want to take my time with making that decision.

Mike Olson wrote:

There is another thing in that I don't know how comfortable I am in being the sole person responsible for hosting political views that may or may not be deemed as propaganda. That might sound paranoid to some but honestly it is an issue that I might choose to just sidestep entirely.  I enjoy healthy and productive conversation though so I want to take my time with making that decision.

Sure, that makes sense and I know you'll work through it.

Even with separate boards, my opinion is that a political forum ultimately seeps poison and bad will into the football space. Ive seen it first hand many, many times.

Posters dont leave bad feelings on one board when heading into another.

IMO, everything starts with what's the sole, singular purpose of this forum? 

Is this meant to be a football forum and especially for fans of the franchise? Or something else entirely?

I am here for a football forum and to escape the BS we face in the real world. BUT, I certainly dont speak for others here.

How this evolves will ultimately present a choice for any current member as to whether they stay or leave.

IT will for me and I look forward to seeing how this shakes out!

As far as the politics go, talking to people of differing opinions is the only chance we have to attempt to understand each other. There are way too many people that get 100% of their "news" from like minded ideological sources. That's why they visit those sites. We all are here because of our Vikings fandom but it's also a community board for a lot of us. I learn more about the people themselves on the other portion of the board. Here, I learn about their fandom. I'm really not sure why those that are unable to have civil sensitive topic type conversations choose to go to a closed portion of the board. PurpleFaithful has evidently decided to take a hiatus from the ST board. We all do that from time to time. I actually enjoy the interaction with him and value his perspective (even if I don't agree with him) so I hope he comes back when the time is right...otherwise, we'll continue to interact over here.

Jimmy does a pretty good job and keeping people in line if it does get out of hand. I appreciate all he does.

Is there some uncivility that crosses over to the main board? Probably. There is also incivility from the main board that crosses over as well. We all have our favorites and least favorite on the board...except for me...you're all my favorite...except for that one guy. You know who you are...lol.

badgervike wrote:
As far as the politics go, talking to people of differing opinions is the only chance we have to understand each other.  There are way too many people that get 100% of their "news" from like minded ideological sources.  That's why they visit those sites.  We all are here because of our Vikings fandom but it's also a community board for a lot of us.  I'm really not sure why those that are unable to have civil sensitive topic type conversations choose to go to a closed portion of the board. 

Jimmy does a pretty good job and keeping people in line if it does get out of hand. I appreciate all he does.

Is there some uncivility that crosses over to the main board?  Probably.  There is also incivility from the main board that crosses over as well.  We all have our favorites and least favorite on the board...except for me...you're all my favorite...except for that one guy.  You know who you are...lol.

Man, dont get me started on news echo chambers...

That is so spot on and the media is evil intentioned on all ends of the spectrum. 

We disagree on our takes for a future board and I suspect there are all kinds of takes on it. I hope other members decide to post on the topic. 

Onward we go...

If anyone wants to watch the building process and play around on the dev site you can check it out at:
http://dev.vikefans.com

If you register an account there it will be wiped on the day that we transition from here to there. So don't worry about anyone stealing your account.

Be aware it will be incredibly ugly for a while as I am trying to focus on functionality first and then styling.

Looks nice, Mike.

Canthony wrote:
Looks nice, Mike.

Well it will shape up. It is pretty plain jane now but I get tired of having to work with someone elses product and it is always a pain in the ass to update it

I am about to build the editors now. We will have chatroom with an audio chat feature as well

Here is what is going in next:

Install TipTap and dependencies

Install Intervention Image for compression

Set up image upload endpoint

Set up GIF search via Tenor API

Build the full editor component (TipTap with toolbar)

Build the simple editor component (textarea with emoji + GIF)

Editor toggle (inline + profile setting)

Quote insertion as editor feature

HTML sanitization on save (Laravel Purifier)

Update post/thread store controllers to handle HTML content

Update display to render HTML (not escaped text)

Mobile defaults to simple editor while new threads default to full

Ya know through the years we have had games and stuff that papa would do and other stuff that we can set up as an integral part of the site. Things like that would be awesome to flesh out for adding in

Don't really care much about chat or games or things like that, but whatever you can do to make it easier to post photos, videos, twitter, youtube, other social media links would be helpful. I also hope this doesn't take the board offline for a period of time, or anonymize archived posts. You can still look up posts from several years ago, but all the user names were lost when we transitioned last time. 

Thanks for all you do, Mike.

yeah MB that is one of the core things that I want to implement. And it is one of the things that bothers me about forum software that things just break. And then you have to go into their code to fix it and it is always a pain.

• At work, they block twitter stuff and other social media stuff, so when someone posts a tweet, I see an empty post. I don’t know what’s the best option to solve it, but if there could be a screenshot of the embedded content, hidden behind the preferred embedding, so if the embedding gets blocked, I still get the gist of what the conversation is, that would be great for my use case.
• Sometimes, I’ll reply to a post. Then type a new one in the same thread. They currently get lumped together. I guess I’d prefer that they be separate.

medaille wrote:
• At work, they block twitter stuff and other social media stuff, so when someone posts a tweet, I see an empty post.  I don’t know what’s the best option to solve it, but if there could be a screenshot of the embedded content, hidden behind the preferred embedding, so if the embedding gets blocked, I still get the gist of what the conversation is, that would be great for my use case. • Sometimes, I’ll reply to a post.  Then type a new one in the same thread.  They currently get lumped together.  I guess I’d prefer that they be separate.

Yes, forgot about this. Good point.

medaille wrote:
• At work, they block twitter stuff and other social media stuff, so when someone posts a tweet, I see an empty post.  I don’t know what’s the best option to solve it, but if there could be a screenshot of the embedded content, hidden behind the preferred embedding, so if the embedding gets blocked, I still get the gist of what the conversation is, that would be great for my use case. • Sometimes, I’ll reply to a post.  Then type a new one in the same thread.  They currently get lumped together.  I guess I’d prefer that they be separate.

Ok medaille I will definitely look into those items!