I've recently come back to Warlight after not playing for over a year. One of the first things that has struck me upon my return is that the state of the forum reflects poorly on the website as a whole. Thread after thread concern the same few people, and those who insist on feeding them. These same few continually hijack other threads, and on and on it goes.

Fizzer has gone to great lengths (as well as exercised great restraint) to allow freedom to prevail in his ongoing project. Freedom of speech, freedom of creativity, and freedom to contribute and influence so many aspects of the site.

I agree with Fizzer that being overly social, outspoken, or downright annoying are not crimes and are, in fact, quite subjective. I don't see the need to police the forum or let a few chose an acceptable morality for all. I do, however, think it would be appropriate to allow individuals some level of control over their own conversations.

Therefore I propose this:

http://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/4096265-allow-forum-thread-creator-to-collapse-posts

I think that this change would help improve both the functionality and image of the forums. It would make it easier to locate or receive answers, as well as allow constructive conversation to remain focused where desired.

+1

no, this would give the troll too much power.

I support this uservoice, my Nietzche discussion thread was completely derailed by Objectivists. It was utterly horrid.


Warlight forums: serious business.

Pulsey: Could you give your reasoning for that?

Also, it wouldn't be useful only for trolls. Many map-makers post updated links during map development, this would allow them to hide old or dead links. Users that organize events could use this to show which players have already been included, or which games have already been added to a ranking system, thereby making it easier throughout long threads. Images (maps, screenshots, random memes) could be hidden, reducing load times and bandwidth. The list goes on...

Nice idea. But maybe we could have separate (not the same as notable post admins) that can delete posts that are clearly hijacking or demoralising threads.

Causation,

I'm not sure I agree with all of your additional use cases.

If posts are collapsed by default they are almost deleted; I expect very few people will expand collapsed posts again. This makes it hard to find posts (except for trolling) which can be hidden: many people do not use one post per subject, but you have to hide the entire post or nothing at all. Think about a sign-up thread for a tournament. Let's say the tournament (and thread) creator wants to collapse posts to show the sign-up has been processed. Then what about a post "I'd like to join too! Oh btw, [some important remark about the tournament which is relevant for everybody]", do you hide it or not?

In general I'm afraid that when posts start "disappearing" from the middle of a discussion the forum will become very hard and confusing to read. Think about the following:
- Useful post
- Troll post (hidden)
- "Stop spamming already!"
- Somebody who overlooked the hidden post "Huh, he wasn't spamming, that's a great idea!"

For fairness' sake, I'm not the world greatest web programmer, but from my understanding of how browsers work, your idea would not reduce load: even collapsed (hidden) posts will be fully loaded. To work around that, you'd need to start mucking about with Ajax (or maybe HTML5 would work as well??). That would be a significant change from how the forum currently works (read: it would take a long time to code and test).


In short: it's a good idea in theory, but I'm not sure how well it'd work in practice.

RvW, it wouldn't take too much away from the forums. I expect it would be kind of like how youtube posts works, where if one is deemed insignificant (there only spam) it is marked as spam and you click on a button to see the message, so you can read it anyway. So I don't think it would cause as many problems as you think, but it might make it a bit more effort.

@RvW

You might be right about the loading thing, it might not have any effect on that at all. You're probably also right about the theory/reality thing too, but I'd still like to have it considered and debated.

In theory :-), one discussion thread and one "join" thread would work well. For example:

---

Discussion thread: "I want to start this tourney blah blah blah. If you want to join, post the message 'I want to join' on the join thread here: ___________.com"

Join thread: "Please post here only if you would like to join by posting the message 'I want to join' and nothing more. I will hide your message when I have added you. Any other messages will be hidden and ignored."

---

As all the join posts will soon be hidden, it should make it much easier for people to see the directions, which should also make them more likely to follow them.


As for the point of forums becoming difficult to follow, any given reader could just get used to expanding entire threads when they open them and it would be as though nothing had changed.

I agree with the topic starter that something needs to change to control the level of spam on the forum.
I disagree though on the method to achieve this. Personally I think less severe measures and more gradual measures might be the way to go.
Looking towards the youtube reference I think that system would be hard to implement. I'm not familiar with ICT but I think an integration of forum ratings and post count might be a better way for people to get an overview of how a people is regarded for the quality of his or her posts.
It might even encourage certain individuals to atone their behaviour a bit

something needs to change to control the level of spam on the forum

It certainly does Aranka.

Fizzer doesn't care about the forums. He won't udpate them.

I can't support anything because I have no votes (despite only allotting 1 vote to each of my ideas). I also cannot post any new ideas. This is a tangent (sorry), but I think any time Fizzer implements an idea you create on uservoice, your max votes should increase by 1. That way, if you had a good enough idea to implement, it encourages your continued participation.

And I agree the forums need a complete overhaul. But I'm not sure that is very high on his priorities and you need to either go all in (and change them completely), or do nothing at all.

imho there are more important / interesting things to be improved on warlight.

Perhaps adding rep pints to the forum but only positive so trolls do not feed on negative points and give mod power to downvote only.

Like I said, I don't think it is high on the list. Getting the mobile client %100 done is far more important IMO. But I do think the forums need to be overhauled after that. I've run a couple good sized message boards and they do add a lot to a site when done right. I'd be more than happy to help with it if he ever wants my help.

But in the absence of that overhaul I would like to see uservoice altered like I said to promote continued participation of active people.

I'm not sure how much customisation is possible on UserVoice. Keep in mind it's not something Fizzer created for WL, it's an external site. If they don't happen to offer that option then it's simply not possible. (Well, unless somebody can convince the UserVoice people the option should be added to their product.)

rvw, how do you convince uservoice to make a change?

Make a uservoice?

Pooh,
Suggestions for WL can be made on https://warlight.uservoice.com so I took a little guess and checked whether https://uservoice.uservoice.com exists. It does. :)

Before spamming them, maybe we should wait for Fizzer (or somebody else who uses UV for one of their projects) to confirm whether or not this functionality exists: requesting something which is already there would be a bit silly.