Scratch

I could see that being helpful.

Or get rid of the forums altogether.   
Instead have something that's more tightly integrated with the rest of the site:
Make the comment section on projects better for discussions.  Get rid of the 500 character limit, and instead have a "show the rest of this comment." link for very long comments.

Official discussion tags would be like the official forum topics,
"Announcements", "FAQ" discussion tags could be added to projects belonging to the scratch team and would show up in those places. 

Browsing these "discussion"/"forum" tags could be much like the current forums.
any user could add a discussion project to "Advanced Topics", but moderators can take the tag off or change the tag, much like current discussions.

People may decide to have a scratch project as their "forum topic" or leave it blank.

Then forum topics would be just like projects and you would get notifications.

(this idea needs more work, but I think it could be useful.)

Last edited by AddZero (2010-05-11 00:42:33)

I'm suggesting we could have something better than this separate, tacked on, FluxBB forum system, that scratch has now.

Create something that's better integrated with the site, so we can easily do things like you suggested, like notifications for 'forum' messages.

Look at ScratchED.  No forum system!  gasp!      It looks much like our forums here, but is more tightly integrated with the rest of the site.  if you click someone's name then "contributions" you see resources they added (for us this could be scratch projects.) and Discussions. (like forum threads.)

On ScratchED they're using Drupal, which is a very flexible and powerful website system.  I hope the scratch website moves to that... (or something as good or better.) so we can more easily do things like you suggested and more.

Last edited by AddZero (2010-05-11 10:45:49)

AddZero wrote:

I could see that being helpful.

Or get rid of the forums altogether.   
Instead have something that's more tightly integrated with the rest of the site:
Make the comment section on projects better for discussions.  Get rid of the 500 character limit, and instead have a "show the rest of this comment." link for very long comments.

Official discussion tags would be like the official forum topics,
"Announcements", "FAQ" discussion tags could be added to projects belonging to the scratch team and would show up in those places. 

Browsing these "discussion"/"forum" tags could be much like the current forums.
any user could add a discussion project to "Advanced Topics", but moderators can take the tag off or change the tag, much like current discussions.

People may decide to have a scratch project as their "forum topic" or leave it blank.

Then forum topics would be just like projects and you would get notifications.

(this idea needs more work, but I think it could be useful.)

That's a great idea!    but I do think that some projects wouldn't be able to take place of the forums. Most, maybe. Actually, scratch that (heh heh, pun) I think that would work perfectly. People already kind of do that.... But I think it would be better officially. Then, also, you wouldn't have to switch between scratch and the forums.

Last edited by boogawk (2010-05-11 16:30:26)

coolstuff wrote:

Well, you can already get emails every time something happens on the forums.

I mean something happens that involves yourself, one of your posts or threads.

i am sick of going to the forums EVERY SINGLE TIME i want to see if my thread got a post... and nothings there.

coolstuff wrote:

And I seem to remember some sort of feature like this going way back to the dark ages of Scratch - when I first joined. You could subscribe to threads...

Yes!  That feature was available for a while and quite convenient.  But it was putting too much strain on the server so they turned it off.

boogawk wrote:

AddZero wrote:

I could see that being helpful.

Or get rid of the forums altogether.   
Instead have something that's more tightly integrated with the rest of the site:
Make the comment section on projects better for discussions.  Get rid of the 500 character limit, and instead have a "show the rest of this comment." link for very long comments.

Official discussion tags would be like the official forum topics,
"Announcements", "FAQ" discussion tags could be added to projects belonging to the scratch team and would show up in those places. 

Browsing these "discussion"/"forum" tags could be much like the current forums.
any user could add a discussion project to "Advanced Topics", but moderators can take the tag off or change the tag, much like current discussions.

People may decide to have a scratch project as their "forum topic" or leave it blank.

Then forum topics would be just like projects and you would get notifications.

(this idea needs more work, but I think it could be useful.)

That's a great idea!    but I do think that some projects wouldn't be able to take place of the forums. Most, maybe. Actually, scratch that (heh heh, pun) I think that would work perfectly. People already kind of do that.... But I think it would be better officially. Then, also, you wouldn't have to switch between scratch and the forums.

Yes, but don't destroy the forums. The forums are your heart!

Last edited by Agentpieface (2010-06-12 23:06:56)