archBOSTON Update: A New Dawn

I agree they need the license. You retain copyright which is what you want.
 
ulrichomega said:
On the licensing issue: I want to once again point out that such a clause is what allows this site to host your content. If you didn't grant them a license to show your work to others, they wouldn't legally be able to do so. Having this license be permanent means that they aren't forced to delete posts after a certain period of time. The only potential issue is the irrevocable one, but that is bypassed by simply deleting your posts. I agree that changes to the policy at least should require notice, though.
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TallIsGood said:
I agree they need the license. You retain copyright which is what you want.
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We've been over this, but I'll try to simply explain this again.

First, consent to show the content on the forum where a user submits the content is implied when the user posts the content. We can leave this aside for a moment and accept that Edward wants to cover his ass. Understandable.

The problem however is that Edward has commercial intentions (see: his other sites). Now anything someone posts on here is available to be used at no cost and with no further consent, by Edward and his company, in perpetuity, for whatever use he/they see fit so long as it is in connection with "the service" (an obviously ambiguous term). The content creator has no recourse whatsoever. Deleting the post as you've suggested does nothing to remove the granted license. (This is compounded by Edward's push to have people use the site's attachment feature rather than a 3rd party photo hosting service, which reduces the difficulty of photo archiving.)

It seems apparent that Edward has absolutely no intention of addressing these concerns. He is not an active member of archBoston. He's a business owner. Still, I believe the fix is a fairly simple one. Something to the effect of:

You are granting us with a non-exclusive, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content for non-commercial purposes in connection with the archBoston.com forums. You retain copyright over the Content.

These terms may be changed at any time. Notice of any change will be given under the Board Issues and Announcements subforum on archBoston.com. You may opt out of any changes by deleting your account.
 
Justin7 said:
It seems apparent that Edward has absolutely no intention of addressing these concerns. He is not an active member of archBoston. He's a business owner. Still, I believe the fix is a fairly simple one. Something to the effect of:

You are granting us with a non-exclusive, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content for non-commercial purposes in connection with the archBoston.com forums. You retain copyright over the Content.

These terms may be changed at any time. Notice of any change will be given under the Board Issues and Announcements subforum on archBoston.com. You may opt out of any changes by deleting your account.
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In light of this site having been monetized and it functioning as a business, like his other site(s), what could possibly constitute a non-commercial purpose in his use of members' content?
 
I agree that since the site is ad supported its not non-commercial. I don’t disagree that it’s use could be limited to use on this site (not other sites) and notice prior to changes of terms of service.
 
I had a thought for a way that we may be able to keep the project info & most recent renderings of a project easy to find. Create a separate sub forum just for renderings that is locked/restricted so that only moderators can make posts (if that's possible). Then whenever a new render is released and posted on the main project page, the moderators can take the updated rendering/project filing and post it in the renderings sub forum. The threads in the rendering sub forum wouldn't be for any kind of discussion, and used solely for renderings/project info. This may also necessitate a few additional mods to keep up with the main forum.

Additionally, the first post in each project thread could be just the project info/facts (developer/architect/height/schedule/etc.), that way it can be edited & updated as information changes. With this set up, the very first post in the project thread would be the up to date project info, and the very last page would be the most up to date renders, with a timeline of the updates as you go from first to last. With 20 posts per page, I imagine these threads wouldn't get more than a few pages.
 
I've said that I'd have two things I'd like to work on as a moderator:

1) Letting cool digressions "happen" but moving them after the fact to places where they might be (more) relevant

2) In particular, a thread where we might discuss (and move digressions on) "Names behind the Places" like
- Perspectives on Tom Yawkey, Isaac Royall, Louis Agaziz and other complex characters where there's a tension between honoring them vs forgetting them vs risking that we think they "never happened"
- Plain old "who was Bowdoin?" and "Who was Hynes"
- Street Name Etymology (a thread I started)
- Embarrassing Plaque Buildup (a thread I'd propose for oddball memorials)
 
I am going to again assert that there is serious aesthetic/visual problem with the way the threads are now displayed: instead of a neat column of information, we have these dumb little bubbles showing the avatar the thread's founding username, and even worse, for some reason also the dates that said user joined aB — completely useless information and yet it's a data point screaming in your face as you try to scan down the lists. I don't know if this is actually being looked into or not, but from a visual design perspective, it's awful and makes using the site onerous. I honestly am having a very hard time with this to the point that I'm spending a very significantly reduced amount of time on here since the change.
 
While I don't have anything close to the visceral reaction to them that you're having, I agree they'd be better off gone.
 
FK4 said:
...we have these dumb little bubbles showing the avatar the thread's founding username, and even worse, for some reason also the dates that said user joined aB...
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Small correction. It shows the username and the date the thread was created, not when they joined aB. I think it's worthwhile showing when a thread was started.
 
bobthebuilder said:
Small correction. It shows the username and the date the thread was created, not when they joined aB. I think it's worthwhile showing when a thread was started.
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Thanks for the correction. I agree with your point. But, thinking back to the old format, there we’re large fonts for the title of the thread and smaller fonts below for the dates... I think.

And yeah, my reaction may be more extreme than some but this does strike at the heart of what is good versus bad displays of information. More detail = more distraction = less efficient cognitive processing.
 
Arlington said:
1) Letting cool digressions "happen" but moving them after the fact to places where they might be (more) relevant
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I'd just like to put myself down as not a huge fan of this, though I'm sure others will be. With the loss of the original thread title that a given post was made to, it seems like this will make it far harder to follow conversations that have been moved. Not to mention that breaking up threads like that will often leave gaps in the conversation. I'm generally against moving posts at all, though.
 
It will be useful to have a conversation about whether we prefer the mod team to:
  1. let digressions happen in place and later move them
  2. redirect digressions to the appropriate thread, but leave existing off-topic posts in place
  3. do nothing and allow digressions to continue unmoderated
 
FK4 said:
Thanks for the correction. I agree with your point. But, thinking back to the old format, there we’re large fonts for the title of the thread and smaller fonts below for the dates... I think.
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Could that be an issue with your browser? The thread titles are definitely a larger font than that creator/created date. It may not be a big contrast, but they do appear to be different sizes.
 
This is how I see forums in Chrome
Screen Shot 2019-10-09 at 11.35.27 AM.png


The only part of this view that I have a problem with is the avatar of the thread founder. It's unnecessary. The name underneath is much less of a problem for me and I think there's enormous contrast between the blue thread title and the grey username alongside the black date.
 
George_Apley said:
This is how I see forums in Chrome
View attachment 517

The only part of this view that I have a problem with is the avatar of the thread founder. It's unnecessary. The name underneath is much less of a problem for me and I think there's enormous contrast between the blue thread title and the grey username alongside the black date.
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I could tolerate the name. The avatar is a disaster. Again, the brain seeks patterns, I don’t want it dredge up an entire Edward Tufte thesis here (tho I bet there’s plenty of fans on this site), but look at what you’re seeing here: the avatars make this information heterogenous and un-uniform, yet this is a list, and should look as uniform as possible.

bobthebuilder said:
Could that be an issue with your browser? The thread titles are definitely a larger font than that creator/created date. It may not be a big contrast, but they do appear to be different sizes.
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I’m not on my computer at the moment, but George’s photo above is what I see on my phone, I think it’s roughly the same as the computeri’m not on my computer at the moment, but George’s photo above is what I see on my phone, I think it’s roughly the same as the computer. I’m going to step back since I’ve already posted four times now about this… But if this is not a site where we cannot take the nuances of visual display seriously, I don’t know what it is…
 
George_Apley said:
It will be useful to have a conversation about whether we prefer the mod team to:
  1. let digressions happen in place and later move them
  2. redirect digressions to the appropriate thread, but leave existing off-topic posts in place
  3. do nothing and allow digressions to continue unmoderated
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I'd suggest (2) unless the digression has become so large that it has effectively become a thread-within-a-thread. I'll also ask (since this is the case on another board where I am a mod) do you have a way to flag a post as an "official mod note"? On that other site the mod flips a switch and the post gets a differently-colored background. Might be a suggestion for here if Xenforo can do it.
 
markhb said:
I'd suggest (2) unless the digression has become so large that it has effectively become a thread-within-a-thread.
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Fair enough. I've noticed that sometimes the problem with the mod "please continue this discussion in [x thread]" announcement is that it tends to kill the conversation that's happening, rather than the folks discussing moving it over.

I'll also ask (since this is the case on another board where I am a mod) do you have a way to flag a post as an "official mod note"? On that other site the mod flips a switch and the post gets a differently-colored background. Might be a suggestion for here if Xenforo can do it.
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Not that I can tell. That would be useful feature if Xenforo has the capabilities.
 
George_Apley said:
Fair enough. I've noticed that sometimes the problem with the mod "please continue this discussion in [x thread]" announcement is that it tends to kill the conversation that's happening, rather than the folks discussing moving it over.
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Plus it gets used as a passive-aggression weapon by mods on certain forums to stifle discussion/topics they don't personally like. Example: making sure the "[x thread]" redirect goes to somewhere low-trafficked, so ancient it's moldy, or barely any more relevant to the sidebar in question so it gets buried and becomes too much trouble to bring up again in a hot thread regardless of relevance. Thread-drift isn't without problems, especially if a board starts falling into a trap of people not doing it in good faith (aB has certainly gone through phases where that's been true). But a good discussion can be coaxed back to the point through gentle encouragement more easily than being settled by an on-staff librarian, which more frequently just kills it. Unfortunately this is a big gateway drug to overmoderation, so you have to choose best practices very carefully and practice self-awareness when curating.
 
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