Suggestion for the Discord Linked Topics and some other site stuff

[2 quid is good 2,209]

I wanted to add this to the discussion thread but I saw it was locked, hopefully this is the best way to do this. I've been using the forums for almost four years now and I just want to say that overall the new update is great. It also adds stuff that I thought was a pipe dream (liking statuses for example). I just want to put forward a few suggestions however, my number one being the Discord linked threads specifically the General thread. That channel is essentially the reincarnated KH13 chatroom, (which had a few dedicated users).

I really don't think that the post count for users should be increased for posting things that would break the rules of the forum if they were posted here. I think the linking thing is great, it really increases some more cohesion between the site and the chat but I do feel that some quality control should happen too. Like for example, I have faaar too many posts but how many of them are idiotic one liners that are more suited to Random than the Lounge? Basically all of them. If the post count could be turned off there that would be great.

My other sorta nitpick is something that I know the admins and mods don't really like, but it's a feature that a lot of the users really miss; status updates. I know they're still there, but lets compare what someone who knows about the site has to do to get a similar status updates feature now compared to pre-update;

- Go to the social tab (which is FILLED with discord posts)

- Filter out the content by status updates

- Save it as a new stream

- Rinse and repeat every time you want to see statuses

It doesn't seem like a lot, and honestly having to go through all this to access just status updates wouldn't bother me so much if we still had a few on the sidebar. They encourage a lot of user interaction, and honestly almost all of my friendships were made over the statuses. I know the mods are worried about statuses replacing discussion, but if the discord hasn't done that yet then what harm can statuses do?

The truth is statuses were really mostly used between friends or acquaintances to meme about and have a bit of fun. Now that they're so invisible we see no interaction and that's a little sad, it was such a cool feature of KH13. I know of one user who even managed to collab with a youtuber because of the status feature. It's essentially a mini version of twitter on the site and it was fun to talk to people who you otherwise wouldn't because they posted something visible.

If you look at the most recent statuses now, there is NO interaction and that's not because of lower activity, it's because they've been hidden. I've made my case against what I feel is the one reason why statuses have been downplayed, and I hope it's one that's good enough. If we really can't have them on the front page again, then honestly a separate tab JUST for statuses would be super nice too.

 

Also Please bring back Square Avatars!

Edited April 25, 2019 by 2 quid is good

[teh lazy prince Xylek 1,559]

Preach it sista!

[Joker 1,560]

They definitely were cool pretty much how I met a lot of people here as well or had a lot of discussions since they were still out in the open to be seen and used

[Kittenz 4,281]

Big agree. I miss them a lot, and I partially owe my relationship to status and chat tab, which I feel says something about how it brought people together

Also, maybe we could toggle between square and circle? Like, whatever you choose is how you see people's avatars 

Edited April 25, 2019 by Kittenz

[2 quid is good 2,209]

6 minutes ago, teh lazy prince Xylek said:

Preach it sista!

 

4 minutes ago, Joker said:

They definitely were cool pretty much how I met a lot of people here as well or had a lot of discussions since they were still out in the open to be seen and used

I actually talked to both of you through statuses in the first place XD.

And also, one status chain I vividly remember was where me, Trece, Weed, Felix and a few others just spammed emotes like: =D. X.X, >:[ etc. I really don't see the harm in having a bit of fun along with the discussion in a less serious place. These kinds of silliness are more spontaneous and difficult to do in random too. I think I've said my piece enough now ?

[WakelessDream 2,278]

Simply put, personally I agree with many of your points. I don't think post count should count towards discord topics, while it's nice for people who care about that sort of stuff, I agree with you that if it's a random forum-esque post, it should be treated like one and not be put towards someone's overall content count. 

As for the social tab and statuses I pretty much agree with you there too, in fact I feel like the social tab being drowned with posts from discord extends beyond statuses too though, regular forum topics and posts get easily pushed down because of it too. 

Now here's where I disagree:

8 hours ago, 2 quid is good said:

My other sorta nitpick is something that I know the admins and mods don't really like, but it's a feature that a lot of the users really miss; status updates. I know they're still there, but lets compare what someone who knows about the site has to do to get a similar status updates feature now compared to pre-update;

 I know the mods are worried about statuses replacing discussion, but if the discord hasn't done that yet then what harm can statuses do?

I don't think any of us were ever worried about statuses replacing actual discussion, so it was never something admins or mods disliked, in fact I think it was a great way to prompt larger discussions from taking place, so again I'm for tweaking them in such a way that they're given the focus they had pre-update. 

As for square vs circle I feel like that really comes down to personal preference. While I prefer square myself, I can also live with circle, and for me it's not a deal breaker lmao. 

All in all, I would just say we're always open to feedback and it's great that you guys are voicing it. Trust that we've brought some of these things up in the past ourselves, but also understand with the discord and forum bridge there are still a lot of kinks we're working out.

 

[2 quid is good 2,209]

11 hours ago, WakelessDream said:

Simply put, personally I agree with many of your points. I don't think post count should count towards discord topics, while it's nice for people who care about that sort of stuff, I agree with you that if it's a random forum-esque post, it should be treated like one and not be put towards someone's overall content count. 

As for the social tab and statuses I pretty much agree with you there too, in fact I feel like the social tab being drowned with posts from discord extends beyond statuses too though, regular forum topics and posts get easily pushed down because of it too. 

Now here's where I disagree:

I don't think any of us were ever worried about statuses replacing actual discussion, so it was never something admins or mods disliked, in fact I think it was a great way to prompt larger discussions from taking place, so again I'm for tweaking them in such a way that they're given the focus they had pre-update. 

As for square vs circle I feel like that really comes down to personal preference. While I prefer square myself, I can also live with circle, and for me it's not a deal breaker lmao. 

All in all, I would just say we're always open to feedback and it's great that you guys are voicing it. Trust that we've brought some of these things up in the past ourselves, but also understand with the discord and forum bridge there are still a lot of kinks we're working out.

 

Thank you so much for replying! It's great to see that you share some of my issues and just for the record, I can live with circle avis, but I thought I may as well put it out there

Also, it seems that I got the wrong idea about the mods' views on statuses, I'm not entirely sure when I heard it but I was told by someone, but I should have double checked so I apologise for that.

Also I'm really happy that the feed back is being taken on board, honestly despite it all I do still prefer KH13 over other sites, and the statuses really made it stand apart. While I'm here, is it okay if I could get an answer on the lack of awards? It is it down for maintenance?

[HarLea Quinn 26,501]

13 hours ago, WakelessDream said:

Simply put, personally I agree with many of your points. I don't think post count should count towards discord topics, while it's nice for people who care about that sort of stuff, I agree with you that if it's a random forum-esque post, it should be treated like one and not be put towards someone's overall content count. 

As for the social tab and statuses I pretty much agree with you there too, in fact I feel like the social tab being drowned with posts from discord extends beyond statuses too though, regular forum topics and posts get easily pushed down because of it too. 

Now here's where I disagree:

I don't think any of us were ever worried about statuses replacing actual discussion, so it was never something admins or mods disliked, in fact I think it was a great way to prompt larger discussions from taking place, so again I'm for tweaking them in such a way that they're given the focus they had pre-update. 

As for square vs circle I feel like that really comes down to personal preference. While I prefer square myself, I can also live with circle, and for me it's not a deal breaker lmao. 

All in all, I would just say we're always open to feedback and it's great that you guys are voicing it. Trust that we've brought some of these things up in the past ourselves, but also understand with the discord and forum bridge there are still a lot of kinks we're working out.

 

One hundred percent where I stand on this ^^^^

1 hour ago, 2 quid is good said:

Thank you so much for replying! It's great to see that you share some of my issues and just for the record, I can live with circle avis, but I thought I may as well put it out there

Also, it seems that I got the wrong idea about the mods' views on statuses, I'm not entirely sure when I heard it but I was told by someone, but I should have double checked so I apologise for that.

Also I'm really happy that the feed back is being taken on board, honestly despite it all I do still prefer KH13 over other sites, and the statuses really made it stand apart. While I'm here, is it okay if I could get an answer on the lack of awards? It is it down for maintenance?

Remember, staff are also members too and we also like and dislike things too lol Avi's are just not a huge deal either way, but I am also not sure with this new site if it's something he can change or not. As for status's I would love for them to be apart but once again like Wakeless said we are working on the discord/forum bridge so hopefullly this can be possible but can't make promises until or if we figure it out.  It's ultimately up to Daniel as he's the Webmaster. I am glad you liked the awards - they were my idea and he has never said why they were down @DChiuch

[2 quid is good 2,209]

22 hours ago, HarLea Quinn said:

Remember, staff are also members too and we also like and dislike things too lol Avi's are just not a huge deal either way, but I am also not sure with this new site if it's something he can change or not. As for status's I would love for them to be apart but once again like Wakeless said we are working on the discord/forum bridge so hopefullly this can be possible but can't make promises until or if we figure it out.  It's ultimately up to Daniel as he's the Webmaster. I am glad you liked the awards - they were my idea and he has never said why they were down @DChiuch

Ooof sorry, I guess I felt like you knew more about these changes than me XD

And the awards were super nice! Infact the idea of awards for KH13 competitions really excited me too (also I'd like to be able to hold a lot of Pokemon tournaments like Shana did <.< would be nice to have awards for that) Uhh ignore the self-promotion

[HarLea Quinn 26,501]

56 minutes ago, 2 quid is good said:

Ooof sorry, I guess I felt like you knew more about these changes than me XD

And the awards were super nice! Infact the idea of awards for KH13 competitions really excited me too (also I'd like to be able to hold a lot of Pokemon tournaments like Shana did <.< would be nice to have awards for that) Uhh ignore the self-promotion

Well we do know more naturally, it's just more of, sometimes theres nothing we can do about it. If it's the webmaster department, it's up to Daniel to fix any issues. Some things came with the site update and aren't easily altered or cannot be. Some can. Then we have the discord linking together and that causes unique issues apart from the site update which we are still working on. But we always appreciate people letting us know about any kinks or issues bc we want the site to be the best it can for all of you.

As for the awards yeah I thought they were a good idea too, not just to reward competitions but also to recognize all the hard working staff across all the teams. Hopefully if enough people share the sentiment it would illustrate to @DChiuch why we should still have them and flesh them out properly. There were suppose to be more than even what you saw.

[DChiuch 5,773]

Awards:

They were taken down because the latest forum software update broke a lot of awards functionality (due to this being a 3rd party plugin). It should be able to be reenabled soon / eventually, but also I think it would be a good idea to solidly outline which awards we should have before we do this.

Status updates:

I stopped these from being front and center, because with forum activity slowing down, I thought it was a bad idea to have the discussion on-site splintered between so many different areas. For example, when big new KH news would come out, I'd often see people making status updates about it rather than participating in the forum discussions. It's better if people engage with KH discussion by posting on forum discussions, since these keep all of the discussion in one place, it creates comments that people can keep engaging with over the following weeks and it doesn't so much "disappear" after an hour or so. That was my thinking with hiding the status updates a bit and keeping them more as profile comments. That way it stays limited to more personal stuff.

I could put a status update feed somewhere, that's definitely technically possible, but yeah it more comes down to the concern above.

Of course some will say "why have the Discord if you're concerned about splintering discussion", but the difference is that this is for the people visiting the – I would like to encourage them to make forum posts rather than status updates.

Post count:

Post count: Unfortunately I can only disable or enable post count on a per-forum basis, not a per-topic basis. So unfortunately the Discord topics have to have their posts count if we have them in their appropriate forums. I think it's better anyway to have 1 post = 1 post rather than having certain forums not count (I've enabled it in Random and Roleplaying too), it's clearer, and we have the reputation count instead for a better measure of quality contributions (still not a perfect measure, but it's better than post count).

Avatars:

It's possible to change the avatars to square, but I like the round avatars, I think it helps to make the website a bit less boxy. Happy for someone to make a poll and convince me I'm wrong.

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Feel free to debate any of this (maybe break anything needing discussion into a new topic, so we can get some more clear opinions), and let me know if I missed anything.