I know this is probably not the best time to be suggesting features for the forum, what with all the bugs and whatnot going down.

But, I'll suggest this anyway.

The following screenshot comes from a forum I was very active in for most of last year. You can find the full forum at www.elementsforum.co.cc, and it is related to the online card game at www.elementsthegame.com. Now, I am not advertising their game at all - but for those interested it, it is similar to Magic the Gathering except has very seemless gameplay, with very little stop & start mechanics. I do not play there any more, but was extremely active. The game creator did not have the foresight to take my suggestions seriously, and as I see it, the game is now suffering.

All of that aside, here is the screenshot and the feature I REALLY want implemented on here:



The main thing, is the second link beneath your name. "Show new replies to your posts".

If I posted in a topic, or created a thread, the forum will remember this (obviously), but whenever someone replies to that thread or adds to that topic, the link to that thread will be stored in this page. This makes it really nice for continuing debates and generating discussions, as all the posts you are active in can be easily viewed at a glance and will show up on this page if there are new developments within them...

Within this page, you have the option of 'unwatching' a thread. So basically, if you were to reply to a Thread in which a newbie is asking 'how do I create a custom unit', and you do not particularly care for the rest of the discussion once you have answered - you can uncheck this Thread. And if new posts are made in it, after yours, the thread will not display any more.

I hope this is making sense... Alternatives would be a 'Subscribe' to a certain thread, and a page which shows all your Subscribed threads. Another way of doing this would be to 'Watch' a certain thread, and new topics which are made in this thread will then display on a seperate page.

I don't know if this is possible in SEN, or if something like this already exists and I am just ignorant.

Your thoughts?

EDIT: Can't get the image to work, so here's a direct link: http://imageplay.net/img/m7Gbd101762/elementsforum.jpg

Yeah, this has been suggested before.

It sure would be nice.

We already had a subscribe feature, but I'm not sure what happened to it. I guess it caused some performance issues.

It would also sure be laggy, at least that's the past excuses for these things.

I wouldn't mind a little bit of lag if I could have the opportunity to see all current topics that I am involved in at a glance. I think its a pretty fundamental feature to have in any forum - specifically one as broad ranging as SEN... melee, melee strategy, starcraft 1 mapping, starcraft 2 wiki, data editor, trigger editor and countless other sections spring to mind.

As a temporary work-around, it would be nice if on the main page, the box that currently lists "Last Posts in our Forums" - could show more than 5 entries. And perhaps give users the choice to ignore certain threads entirely?

I mean, myself personally, have very little interest in forum games and while I appreciate that a lot of people love them - it would be nice to hide certain threads being bombared with posts from being advertised to me

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 5 2010, 9:29 pm by Cardinal.

I believe it was disabled while Devourer searched for what was causing the mySQL errors. Turns out it wasn't that so I daresay someone will re-enable it soon.

Also, just on an aside. When you view someones profile, and see their Activity. A little '?' link is there which explains how this activity number is generated.

Under the Karma thing - it says this:

"Karma is a system that works off ratings of individual posts. You may have noticed icons like + and - at the bottom of posts"

Have these also been disabled? Just that, I have no memory of there ever being + or - icons, or a karma system here at SEN.

Yeah that was disabled too, someone just didn't clean up properly after themselves.

So really, all this thread is discussing is features which we had in the past, which worked perfectly fine, but were the target of indiscriminate MYSQL error trouble-shooting, and as such are no longer active?

If that's the case, feel free to lock and close this thread Nudie.

Fixed the Karma FAQ to explain that it was been removed.

I think my judicious error-hunting deserves 100 mineralz.

Quick Edit: How do I become a 'Regular' or even a 'Member' ?

Well sort of. You went a step further with the automatic topic watching.
And the Karma system wasn't perfect so people abused it hence it got ripped out. (Not because of the MySQL problems.)

I'll leave this topic open for the sake of discussing if automatic topic watching is useful / feasible within SEN.
Personally I don't care for that feature, I check most of SEN anyway, so I never even used the subscription feature.

EDIT:
Your current Rank is member. You are a member once you activate your account.
When you're active over a large enough time span you'll get promoted to regular at staffs discretion.

I try to check as much of SEN as I can. But sometimes I find myself thinking 'where were we discussing this topic', and I end up going through the (rather length) procedure of going to my user page, finding my topics and then ctrl+f to find keywords that I think were used in the topic I am looking for.

I really, honestly, hands-down beleive that a feature like this is a major improvement for the forum.

The one problem with the forum where I stole this 'idea' from - is that if you do not actively 'unsubscribe' to topics you posted it, your page listing 'recent replies to your topics' can become a little bit cluttered.

quick edit: But, I just rememberd, as soon as you have read the new posts in that topic - it is removed from your 'recent replies' page. So, it is easily uncluttered, but there is another solution:

I think this can be solved with a little checkbox as you write a reply to thread, it should default to ticked. And read like this:

"Watch this thread" [x]

That way, if you are very active but just posting simple solutions to peoples data-editor problems and you don't really want to know if the person says thanks or if it worked or whatever - you can just untick the box when writing such a reply.

Whereas, if you are in the Null section debating whether or not God exists, you might very well want to leave it ticked - since you want to see peoples responses to your views and hear their criticisms etc..

I might invent a (by far less lag) system which allows a member to subscribe up to a total of 5 topics, receiving a sort of PM notification on the top of your screen if new posts are made.

@Devourer - I guess that will be a nice solution. But can we not make it 10? And will the notification be in your inbox, or just displayed?

Maybe 10, requires testings.
It will be displayed like a pm, just that it says like
"New posts in subscribed topic: X". It directly links you to that topic and the notification gets removed.

Sounds perfect. Look forward to using it some day

Quote from name:Cardinal

I think my judicious error-hunting deserves 100 mineralz.

You've reported problems that have been reported several times, most notably the karma issue which was reported within the past 2 days by myself.

Regardless, I'd like an option in your settings to not receive those notifications. They sound stupid and like they will clutter the header, imo.

You could also just not subscribe to a thread and you wont see them.

The way they were describing it, it sounded like the top 5 or 10 or whatever threads that are posted in after your post are reported, not a subscription service. I'd like to know two things: 1) How is this less laggy than the previous subscription system, or the portal page "5 recent posts", and 2) If it is a subscription, and we find out how to make it as unlaggy (lolwtf) as possible, then will replies auto-subscribe?

Maybe having the settings in user's CP can either subscribe by default or not, rather than only one or the other. In fact, the default subscription status thing sounds better to me than strictly yes/no subscription.