ideas for our Forum's future

[justdrew]

yeah, I think the down-sides to "likes" outweigh the relatively minor benefit.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Not a fan of "likes" - that's the meaningless transactional conditioning that gives Internets the crazy-making edge. Not a fan.

Big fan of a hard coded limit on the number of nested quotes possible in a single post. Is that do-able?

[Project Willow]

Maybe instead of likes or star rankings, it's more of a categorical system, say tag a post as "General info", "Speculation", "Coincidence List" "Timeline" "Sourced fact" etc.?

These are off the top of my head, but perhaps we could come up with a range of categories that fit well. I think they would have an impact on what we write however.

[Perelandra]

Another vote for no facebookification.

It does appear that my previous post highlights ongoing structural/maintenance issues rather than shiny new bells, but they impact my experience with the boards, and presumably Jeff's bottom line. I'm guessing that moderators can't do that much about such things, but I know very little about it.

[Luther Blissett]

I respectfully disagree that "likes" are a good fit for the culture here. I know that most of you are able to sift what you want to read and sort the quality posts from the fights or the inane, but I also think that this place is used more often for original research and for think tank-like discourse. Reddit, while I use it, is not the same and encourages a hive-mind structure of privileged voices drowning out many quality views. I can't tell how many times I've seen the top-voted comment on a very serious subject be a throw-away junk comment strictly because it's funny, or, to paraphrase wombaticus, "uses logic not to reveal a hidden truth, but to conceal a lie." Finding quality original research on any forum that uses that (patented) algorithm is a challenge.

We also have what I find to be a very robust search functionality. There are times that I don't know exactly what I'm looking for, but there are others when it's one of the most handy tools I know of on the web. For instance, I have some friends who were toying with the idea of checking out Landmark Education. Lo and behold, there are pages of scholarship on the subject here.

It does pain me to give up on threads like the Boston bombing simply because I lost track of them, but I still the the search function provides a useful tool if querying set of specific parameters about that subject.

My ideas:
More younger people. I have come to find a lot of trust in powerful young philosophers who are wrapped up in theory, discourse, and race politics.

More voices and opinions of people of color. These are some of the most significant fights going on right now and I'm embroiled in a very serious local one right now. Rigorous intuition is receptive to the ideas but I don't feel like I'm reading those voices here. The benefit would be mutual - we could be a safe space and we would really gain a lot from having, say, a militant black, Desi, or Latino presence on our threads.

A space for direct action. This speaks to the closed subforum idea, but that's still not totally secure. I'm thinking more of a liaison, link or exchange with IRC, but one that's directly linked to some of our threads, ideas, projects here.

[Belligerent Savant]

.
F#CK "likes".

Concur with the following:

W.Rex: Not a fan of "likes" - that's the meaningless transactional conditioning that gives Internets the crazy-making edge. Not a fan.

[Elvis]

.
F#CK "likes".

Concur with the following:

W.Rex: Not a fan of "likes" - that's the meaningless transactional conditioning that gives Internets the crazy-making edge. Not a fan.

Weighing the comments about "Like/Dislike" buttons, I agree they're not suited to this forum. For one thing, many of the posts here are just not reducible to simple "Like" or "Dislike."

We'd need more buttons, maybe a "WTF?" button or a "OMFG" button.

[justdrew]

ok, "likes" aren't very popular... Let me try another cunning suggestion...

how about an overlay of several little blinking things that block the text and make beeping noises and utter rude personal comments that can be dismissed by clicking on them, but they actively move to avoid the mouse?

[stickdog99]

Not a fan of "likes" - that's the meaningless transactional conditioning that gives Internets the crazy-making edge. Not a fan.

Big fan of a hard coded limit on the number of nested quotes possible in a single post. Is that do-able?

+1

[Canadian_watcher]

Not a fan of "likes" - that's the meaningless transactional conditioning that gives Internets the crazy-making edge. Not a fan.

Big fan of a hard coded limit on the number of nested quotes possible in a single post. Is that do-able?

+1

can I plus 2 things? if so, +2

[justdrew]

Not a fan of "likes" - that's the meaningless transactional conditioning that gives Internets the crazy-making edge. Not a fan.

Big fan of a hard coded limit on the number of nested quotes possible in a single post. Is that do-able?

+1

there is a limit actually, but it's large. Not sure it's easily modifiable.

Might be nice if the 'quote' function just quoted the first say 150 characters and included a link to the quoted post.

[Belligerent Savant]

^^^^

Good suggestion by justdrew there...

[Project Willow]

^ I like to quote portions of what someone has said, so this would make it more difficult if what I want to quote isn't contained in the first 150 characters. Is extensive quoting really that much of an annoyance here? It doesn't bother me personally.

[justdrew]

you're right Willow, best thing would be to have two buttons "full quote" and "short quote"

it's on the possibility list

[DrEvil]

One more: An option to not load pictures and videos, with pics and vids replaced by a small button you can click to load that particular pic/vid.