Thought for the future and for restoring a bit of the lost past(images mainly):Images should either be hosted by pixelation via an attachment mechanism upon posting or from within the posting mechanism they should be uploaded and link-rewritten to a unified and reliable external image hoster. Old posts (primarily in threads marked as valuable/highly readworthy) should be parsed for broken image links and the parsing should automatically check
https://archive.org/web/ for existance of cached copies (under wayofthepixel.net as the URL to look for) of those lost images which are then to be re-hosted by a reliable external image hoster or pixelation itself and retroactively link-rewritten to repair the missing image links in the good-to-read-threads of the past.
The
repair-old-threads task could also happen as time allows after archival of the boards content and after moving on to whatever new platform. The task to repair old threads could be done manually and spread over the shoulders of the community in a process much like the collabs were handled: Mod would give out a list of threads that need repairing. Community members claim a thread-to-repair and then wander off to find the missing images (on their own computer if they happen to have a saved copy of the thread or on archive.org/web skimming wayofthepixel.net snapshots on there) and report and deliver any found images back to the mod who can then re-host the images and re-link them in the thread-to-repair. If someone does not deliver anything after a few days of claiming, thread goes back up for grabs by someone else.
Thoughts on the future system to be used:I think a forum still is the best way to exchange thoughts and ideas for a more long-term usability/readability. Chats are fleeting and chaotic, topics in chats are often interleaved with several different conversations going on in parallel in the same timeline so to speak, whereas a thread in a forum usually stays on the one topic it was opened with and can still be read well years later whereas a chat-log contains way too much noise and is harder to search/skim for any specific topic or thoughts exchange.
One thing that might be useful for art feedback in particular (and
only in addition to a forum for discussing other topics not revolving around a specific piece of art) would be a real-time-checkout system where users could click "write a critique, make an edit, reply" next to an image and then others would see in real-time who's currently critiquing or editing(just as information though, it should not block them from also doing the same in parallel) or just replying. Then when they're done writing or editing, they would submit and the system would build up a tree-view where the critiques and edits are direct child nodes of the original image. This way different paths spawned from any given image are always clearly visualized and each critique-item and edit-item always has exactly one clearly identifiable source. When a users later posts an improved version of their images, it would be useful if they could, in addition to writing something along it, mark the critique-and-edit-items they found useful and which they tried to follow in their new version and the system would link those up in the tree-view as well (or just mark them in the old version), so that one can always see what items spawned the new version.
Perhaps it does not even need to be presented as a tree view but rather in collumns, perhaps like this:
So, it would basically, like in a forum, show "posts" but each post is a definite version of a piece along with author and words from author and then all the crits and edits and other comments for that specific version right next to it. When author makes a new version (and it should be visible in real-time for others that author is working on one, provided author was thoughtful enough to click some button to signal just that), it goes up stacked on top of the previous "post" and in the previous post, all crits and edits which were useful get marked by author (or maybe there could even be an additional open-for-all give-love button to indicate that anyone liked a particular crit or edit (the authors markings should alwaysbe uniquely identifiable though)). Upon new version from author, previous versions get locked (with the exception of still allowing marking of items as helpful but no new crits/edits/comments should be allowed anymore on old versions).
The crits, edits, and comments should probably better be collumns (was too lazy to erase and redo in the sketch above) next to the piece version and also marking something should be available anytime as clickables under the invidual items and not just appear for the author upon posting a new version.
