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LowEndTalk v3 Discussion - Bye OSQA, Back to Forums Again
LowEndAdmin
Member
Whether OSQA is a suitable platform to build LowEndTalk has been frequently discussed before. I think as the community grows, it still finds more comfortable with a generic forum than a Question/Answer type system.
With "v3" I am settling for Vanilla 2 for now with some plugins for tagging, reporting, etc. One plugin that I am not sure whether I want to enable is the "Vote" plugin, which allows users to +1 or -1 each post/comment. It would give more OSQA feel, but need to discuss whether voting is a behavior that we want to continue.
Now, feel free to comment on whether this would suit the community better, and what else needs to be done.
Comments
Hey LEA, thanks for the email! I'd personally like to see voting plugins remain off as the whole points/karma thing caused a huge issue last time. I also like the layout of the forums (having all topics on the front page instead of 'categories' or 'sub-forums')
I agree, do not use a voting/karma system like OSQA had.
I second that too
What about a 'quote' button?
I just noticed that the profiles have no field for a URL. That would be nice.
Hey even I have to pay at least some attention to SEO.
I think a vote/thanks style plugin is useful.
At first glance I wasn't liking this that much but it's growing on me pretty quick.
Francisco
I'd agree with a 'thanks', but I like to post thanks rather than clicking a button
after a while posted thanks might get spammy though.
Ah, true.
How about disabling editing after ~15 mins (kinda like WHT) or keeping edit history?
Editing works for 1 day only at the moment.
It's a nice interface nonetheless. Very clean style
I'm already missing the +/-1 stuff
/karma whore
@vld: That's the one thing I don't want back :P
Interesting, how can we delineate signatures?
Do we need signatures?
I just saw vld's last line was grey, I was wondering how.
I recommend some sort of PM rate limit to stop PM spamming. On WHT they rate limit it to 30 - 60 seconds between each PM
A captcha is also an option, though the more annoying of the two.
Francisco
Syntax
It is Markdown, similar to what we had with OSQA. No BB code. Maybe HTML with sanitising.
Quotes
I was testing some quoting plugins yesterday. Yeah I'll install one.
Thanks
So we won't go back to the voting system (+1/-1) but maybe a "Thanks" button.
Signature
Signature feature was explicitly disabled for now. What @vld did was using a HTML tag to set the color of the text to grey.
Good riddance Dr. OSQA! :P
A tutorials section would be a good thing to add
i woke up today and got an email from LEA.
test test test post post post.. :P i like the new forum interface. more clean and simple.. 
Yomero is here!!!
And no LEA, your forum is working very fast
-1 on the tutorials. That's why we have the wiki.
This testing site would be moved to a new VPS with eNetSouth in Chicago today.
@drmike -- yes I think I probably agree with that. Tutorials are probably something people edit and make updates all the time. I am thinking of moving the wiki over here (LowEndTalk) + implementing single sign-on so wiki uses Vanilla's credential. Could also embed the discussion inside the wiki.
@LowEndAdmin - I like that idea
Added Quotes and Thanks. Going to tell the main LET site about v3 later.
and also, LEA can you put smiley here?
i have 1 vanilla forum too, i love the Yahoo! messenger emoticons. :P
Sure you can put smiley here. Here is an example
Oh do you mean those plugins that translate ASCII smiley into graphics emoticon? Hmm I was hoping no one would ask for that. If I have that implemented, sooner or later people will ask for dancing bananas and other animated GIFs!
On an unrelated note, I do plan to advertise v3 on the current OSQA site later today so existing members will know about this site and started posting here. Vanilla however, cannot do self-moderation at the moment, which means I'll need some volunteering "moderators" before the site is flooded with sign ups and new posts.
Post here or email me if you wish to help.
I wouldn't mind that actually but that's just a personal thing that I like. On our rollout packages, we have a collection of a couple hundred of those. Just something that goes over well.
While they are less than completely professional, it's not like we're 100% professional around here.
edit: On a personal vote, I have to admit that I would like to see a list of possible moderators vetted by the community. I have no interest in being a moderator and there are a few folks here who I would not like to see them being one either.