XenForo Update

A dislike button would be nice.

Unfortunate about the post icons but I think Statlers suggestion is great.
 
statler said:
^^ If you hover over the 'Like' button you can see a group of emojis to choose from. While there is no 👎 emoji you can use :( or :mad: in a pinch.
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Good to know, though I would suspect using this approach positively contributes to (rather than detracts from) a user's reaction score.

I'm curious to know if a legit "dislike" feature would help temper certain over-zealous/hyperbole-prone posters. And I'm concerned that expressing a dislike through the "like" feature will only fuel them further. I don't know the answers, but feel we should consider these questions.
 
Two things:

1. I really do not like the "reaction score". I'm not here to use this site like facebook, and it's a real detractor.

2. When viewing the list of threads within a specific forum, to the left of each thread name you now are obliged to see a mess of different colors, icons and images due to the fact that the avatar of whomever originally started the thread is shown in that space. This creates a visual mess that makes it much more distracting when scanning down the list of threads. It was much easier to do this when each subsection just had a list of threads without different colors and doodads. Simplicity is superior.
 
FK4 said:
2. When viewing the list of threads within a specific forum, to the left of each thread name you now are obliged to see a mess of different colors, icons and images due to the fact that the avatar of whomever originally started the thread is shown in that space. This creates a visual mess that makes it much more distracting when scanning down the list of threads. It was much easier to do this when each subsection just had a list of threads without different colors and doodads. Simplicity is superior.
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Or if this could be set to a render of the project, or another image relating to the thread
 
FK4 said:
Two things:

1. I really do not like the "reaction score". I'm not here to use this site like facebook, and it's a real detractor.

2. When viewing the list of threads within a specific forum, to the left of each thread name you now are obliged to see a mess of different colors, icons and images due to the fact that the avatar of whomever originally started the thread is shown in that space. This creates a visual mess that makes it much more distracting when scanning down the list of threads. It was much easier to do this when each subsection just had a list of threads without different colors and doodads. Simplicity is superior.
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I asked about #2 in the GoogleDoc and was told it wasn't possible, but maybe it's possible to just remove the pictures entirely. I had asked about having project-specific avatars.

I too hate "reaction score". Message boards have enough perverse incentives to be provocative without an explicit reward for it.
 
I like the ability to react, but also am not a fan of seeing the actual tallies. I've been on other boards where that feature is turned off and it helps keep back the clutter.
 
I don't mind the reaction scores as long as they're used to note worthy contributions or trolling posts. Having a reaction score at least gives some context and justification should a ban be handed out, as opposed to the arguably arbitrary way it's been used in the past. This does necessitate a downvote option. Only upvotes create a weird echochamber with no discussion, which is the entire point of a discussion board.
 
I don't think that justification has been required for the (one) ban(s) that have been handed out in the past decade. Folks already knew. I wouldn't want it known that you can "build a paper trail" to get someone banned, since it seems to me like that would lead people to ping mods (or worse start threads) to actively discuss the reputations of posters they don't like.
 
Thanks for the great progress here! The tweak I'm proposing is based on an observation that in 99% of cases the creator of an individual thread is completely irrelevant to the content of the thread itself. And yet, as you look down a list of threads, this template right now gives a whole lot of visual space to crediting the creator both with an avatar pic and their name, which is distracting and often extremely arbitrary anyway. Can we just simply disable that so the threads are simply a list of text? (And I've seen above the proposed workarounds of using emojis for construction status - great idea)
 
datadyne007 said:
I just realized by the 1000 Boylston thread, if the first thing in the first post in a thread is an image, you can see it on hover in the thread listing. We might consider putting a render in each thread that way (we've wanted to do this anyway). That could be a way we could see a preview of a project (desktop only ofc).
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That would be great. Only problem would(might) be updating pic/render every time project changed. By the way
really like the new changes! Site on mobile devices is WAY better, nice job!
 
I just tried to post a photo thread and received the following message, “Please enter a message with no more than 20 images.”

This is severely restrictive!! I was trying to post 76 images, although, I’d like to post more.
 
Sorry guys, I've been away in NYC. Suggestions above like removing reaction scores and disabling the thread creator photo have been noted. I agree with both.

EdMc said:
I just tried to post a photo thread and received the following message, “Please enter a message with no more than 20 images.”

This is severely restrictive!! I was trying to post 76 images, although, I’d like to post more.
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For now, please just separate them into separate posts of 20. We'll have to assess image count on the backend and its implications for server performance.
 
I feel like if you have that many images just create a photo album on a third party site and link to it. There is no way that you'd need to post that many.
 
I never encountered a photo limitation on the previous vBulletin software, think of the number photos uploaded since the launch of that software for ArchBoston. Did that software even keep a count? There doesn’t seem to be a problem with adding more construction photos to existing threads for individual development projects under the XenForo software. The Hub on Causeway development project thread currently has 211 pages. The 211th page currently has 35 photos. I don’t understand why I can’t create a thread with more than 20 photos using the Post Thread button. Interestingly, the XenForo software is developed by former vBulletin developers.
 
Are you adding the photos as attachments, or are they hosted on another server? We never had the attachment option under the old board, but I would assume you could embed image links as many times as you'd like, as that places no burden on the forum's database or server.
 
Equilibria said:
I asked about #2 in the GoogleDoc and was told it wasn't possible, but maybe it's possible to just remove the pictures entirely. I had asked about having project-specific avatars.

I too hate "reaction score". Message boards have enough perverse incentives to be provocative without an explicit reward for it.
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DrFreewind said:
Or if this could be set to a render of the project, or another image relating to the thread
Click to expand...

I would favor whatever it takes to make any list look precisely like that: a list, with text only. If I see a list of uniform font text without the doodads and icons, I can scan it and process it quickly. The visual mind is always going to lose efficiency if there are extraneous colors or images that distract the mind's focus on text as it scans. A more egregious example would be testing your reading speed of a single page and comparing a page composed all in one font, size and color and another where the text color shifts and the font changes intermittently.
 
datadyne007 said:
Sorry guys, I've been away in NYC. Suggestions above like removing reaction scores and disabling the thread creator photo have been noted. I agree with both.


For now, please just separate them into separate posts of 20. We'll have to assess image count on the backend and its implications for server performance.
Click to expand...

Great. Thanks data.
 
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