AuthorTopic: Community updates  (Read 18269 times)

Offline pistachio

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Re: Community updates

Reply #30 on: August 18, 2018, 12:11:25 pm
Some consensus so far seems to be 1) more activity (constructive, not unrestrained growth, this arguably killed the Discord) and 2) more outreach (those feed into each other) and 3) making the future format more visual, without unneeded sacrifices.

On this note, Polycount's a more visual forum. Yes, I'll continue to bring it up, because it does a lot of things right and it's a direct blow to "forums are dead". Actually, dissect whatever you can from those guys or any team that gets it right, as far as that's relevant to this place and what we do.
It'd be great to see even more concrete examples raised, specifically what features a layout has, how it applies here, if it wasn't mentioned already. Learning from the best and keeping the discussion open where possible. That's Pixelation in a nutshell no?

Personally of the software mentioned I'm looking at Xenforo for being light and heavily customizable, things which I think are key to sharpening Pixelation's goals potentially (but it's what I stand up for in software in general.) Another point against Mastodon from me. But up to you.

Lastly I'll second helping out with anything specific.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2018, 12:18:33 pm by pistachio »

Offline Crow

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Re: Community updates

Reply #31 on: August 18, 2018, 12:56:34 pm
killed the Discord

It's alive and kicking :P
Discord: Ennea#9999

Offline Indigo

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Re: Community updates

Reply #32 on: August 20, 2018, 07:49:34 pm
I've been reading all the feedback and really appreciate the detailed thought everyone has put into this.

Re: new format...
After reading the thread and talking internally a bit, it's clear to me that although Mastodon might very well be a great platform for an art community, it isn't really what Pixelation is unless we radically redefine it.  To that end, I think we should set aside that format in favor of investigating other formats moving forward.  It's important to me that we only change the format in ways that embrace what is in line with what Pixelation is.

I've been looking into more modern forum software to see if there's a good fit. https://flarum.org/ looks really appealing to me and is moddable.  I like its clean presentation, mobile-friendly interface, and it's use of tags as forum sections.  But at the end of the day, it doesn't *really* provide much that we don't already have with the existing forum software without heavy modification which can also technically be done on SMF.  There's not much immediate value to switching.

Vinik mentioned Imageboards, and I've been looking into it.  At first glance, it definitely has a lot going for it that would be great:

- Images are first class citizens
- Content is presented immediately rather than obscured behind text links
- retains a forum-like thread structure

it also has some downsides:
- Very much stuck in the 90's.
- Focus on anonymous features of "chans" rather than members/membergroups/etc
- lack of moderation tools

After all my searching, I am amazed that there has been no modernized take on the format.

This really leads me back to the idea that if we really want a format that works well for Pixelation, I might need to write it from scratch. That is no small feat and would likely take many months before we can try a public beta.

I'll continue searching and thinking about this, but in the meanwhile, like Atnas said, we need to work with what we have now and start making proactive changes here that we can then leverage into whatever technical future pixelation might have moving forward.
« Last Edit: August 20, 2018, 09:16:54 pm by Indigo »

Offline eishiya

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Re: Community updates

Reply #33 on: August 20, 2018, 08:52:48 pm
In case my opinion's worth anything: I dislike tags-as-sections, I prefer tags and sections, the way Pixelation currently has it. Just feels more organized and intuitive to me, even if similar results can be achieved with both.

I personally rather like the forum format for critique, and don't want to scroll through a page full of posts or verbose threads a la image boards or Mastodon. I think the only thing that's really missing is the ability to quickly preview the art in the thread, to see what sort of art it is and whether there have been updated by the OP. A small (for compactness and easy scrolling) thumbnail that can be hovered-over or tapped (touchscreens) to see a (slightly) larger version of either the first or latest image posted by the OP (or better yet, both!) next to the thread in the thread list would be a great addition to the current format.

Offline Ai

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Re: Community updates

Reply #34 on: August 21, 2018, 02:36:04 pm
Haven't heard of Flarum, but it seems similar to Discourse; I'm fairly happy with how Discourse deals with "embedded" images - making it show any image embedded in the first post, within the index, would be the main change needed AFAICS.
Examples of Discourse use in a graphics context are MyPaint forums and pixls.us graphics processing forums
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline pistachio

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Re: Community updates

Reply #35 on: August 27, 2018, 09:44:12 am
In case nobody knows, Dan (Indigo) posted this 2 days ago:
Pixelation 2.0 via Twitter

No time to riff right now. But worth discussing.

Offline Indigo

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Re: Community updates

Reply #36 on: August 27, 2018, 05:22:25 pm
I'll post a dedicated thread for this

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: Community updates

Reply #37 on: August 31, 2018, 03:09:02 am
In case nobody knows, Dan (Indigo) posted this 2 days ago:
Pixelation 2.0 via Twitter

No time to riff right now. But worth discussing.

why in the fuck are you turning the forum into twitter

hard no
PSA: use imgur
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19838.0 also go suggest on my quest, cmon
MAJOR BORK TALLY: |

Offline Indigo

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Re: Community updates

Reply #38 on: September 01, 2018, 02:05:58 am
because I'm not.  It's very much a forum like you're used to.

Offline Zizka

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Re: Community updates

Reply #39 on: September 01, 2018, 02:08:07 pm
You could share your opinion less aggressively, MysteryMeat. As far as I can tell Indigo is doing this on his own time as a favor for the whole community.