Is there a way to provide more profile fields, like social media handles, description, websites, etc? I've often wanted to find out more about fellow members, but the profile page is pretty slim on info.
@theoryshaw it will no longer ask you to answer the wiki captcha when signed in. Whoo! Also, I've added in extra profile fields. Let me know what you think and what the fields should be. I grouped social media into one field, but I'm not convinced that's the right move.
I discovered that KiwiIRC has a client builder: https://kiwiirc.com/clientbuilder/ - I've therefore created a branded chat link! When we standardise on a colour scheme we can brand it further :)
I've noticed, and maybe i'm doing it wrong, that if you login to the KiwiIRC as a new user that you can't read past conversations. Is the correct? If so, can that be corrected?
@theoryshaw correct, that is how IRC works. I agree it is less than ideal in the modern age, but I don't know a service that provides a bouncer for free. I also don't think there is such thing as a threaded conversation in IRC. In IRC, a thread = a channel.
I guess i would vote for just using Matrix only. they have bouncing services and threaded conversations. Also, a new user can read past conversations. The IRC channel looks empty for a new comer, since they can't see past conversations.
You can also link to specific conversations as well. Could help augment the wiki. "See conversation 'here' about XYZ."
@theoryshaw@Moult could you please add a link to the Matrix room in the IRC channel description? I don't agree with you @theoryshaw that Matrix should be primary. IRC is something anyone can just get started with. Matrix is not. Anyway, you won't get @Moult to stop using that channel.
However I think we should consider a more user friendly #osarch channel without all those bots. Anyone can watch both channels. But casual osarch chat and software help, in my opinion, would be more accessible and useful in a channel with less bot-noise.
Do you guys think it's to soon to talk about BlenderBIM/Home Builder UI in OSArch forum? I'm making some 3D icons to learn Blender and Freestyle. They are getting very nice! And I have some strong ideas about possible UI sollutions. I can start a topic for each part? Like one for discussing icons(style) and perhaps one topic for discussing window asset layout for example. I think each main part of BlenderBIM/Home Builder deserves a own topic. So it's clear to focus what the feedback is. I think that's better than one UI topic covering all subjects. If you guys think it's a good idea to talk about UI, could you add a forum category? Thanks! I can start the first topic this weekend.
@Meetlat I've discussed with @Moult about categories. The problem is that people usually show very poor discipline using categories so everything ends up in a big mess without active moderation. Who cares? Well, if you can't find the information you want then there's not much point having it. But I've also been wondering if the volume of new posts on all sorts of subjects is getting a bit unwieldy. I just bookmark the ones I want to follow and only come back to those ones.
After our last discussion we implemented tags which some people are using well. Are you missing any tags? Let me know.
For now we only have 'general' and a Spanish category. What are you suggesting another category could be? "Developers" for example? You can hear I am personally scepticle, but of course if several peoples are convinced then we should just do it and see what happens. But only if we find a good name that makes it instantly clear whats inside.
Happy to announce that I think the email migration has gone well. We are now sending between 100-500 emails per day, with 78% of these being delivered. As for the remainder, we've had a number of spam signups. Recaptcha has been enabled during signup but clearly Recaptcha is a famous tune and bots know how to bypass it. I've now added the fiendishly difficult captcha question "What word do the letters "OS" in OSArch stand for?" We'll see how that goes.
I did a dumb DB purge of all non-activated user accounts who haven't revisited the website. A skim through shows that this is 99% obviously a bot, and maybe 1% uncertain, with maybe under 10 legit users caught up in the purge. This purges about 500 users, and leaves us with 780 "more valid" user accounts on the forum. There are probably a few broken foreign keys in this dumb purge, but so far things still seem to be working so...
By the way, if anybody knows their way around web dev and sysadmin and would like to volunteer to manage this stuff, happy to open it up :)
Also, Matrix link has been added to the IRC topic.
@Moult about emails - since most people di> @Moult said:
I think I speak for many when I claim that this forum's default search function sucks pretty bad.
I wish we had a discussion about Vanilla initially. I know it's highly subjective, but discourse, seems much more capable, like search. Probably, too late now, but if there feels like there is a need to change to another system, would be good to have a discussion about it, with the most frequent users (of which I admit I am not a part of)
I'm a little swamped right now to handle a forum migration, and I don't really have any issues with Vanilla apart from the search personally. If someone else wants to handle this (@tetov ?) happy to migrate so long as there isn't any downtime.
From memory Discourse had some pretty picky behaviour about things like wanting to squat only on port 80 which is fine if you have a little cloud instance or do nothing other than run a forum, but is kinda unacceptable when you have a full dedicated doing quite a few things running a few webservers simultaneously. Shame on you, Discourse! More reading: https://meta.discourse.org/t/install-discourse-change-docker-port-80/31114/9
@Moult and I went over the web infrastructure today. I now have access to server and admin roles on Wiki, forum, and site.
We (mostly @Moult) also added SphinxSearch as a plugin to the forum.
You may notice some markup present in the post excerpts shown on the results page, @Moult's theory is that it's related to some changes to the post editor that happened a bit ago but only applies to older posts.
There's a new widget in the sidebar next to discussions showing related threads, and when creating new threads there's suggestions of already existing ones.
Please let us know if you find any bugs or have thoughts about the search functionality.
Comments
Is there a way to provide more profile fields, like social media handles, description, websites, etc? I've often wanted to find out more about fellow members, but the profile page is pretty slim on info.
Would be cool, to point to irc/element chat channel.
https://app.element.io/#/room/#freenode_##architect:matrix.org
@theoryshaw chat link added! Will check out the other stuff tomorrow!
@Moult @theoryshaw I suggest it's better to point to the IRC channel than the matrix channel. I don't think you can use matrix without an account. The IRC link is really easy to get started with: https://webchat.freenode.net/##architect
I've linked to them both here: https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=How_to_contribute_to_OSArch which is the target of the 'Get involved' link in the wiki main menu.
@duncan that makes sense. I've updated the link.
@theoryshaw it will no longer ask you to answer the wiki captcha when signed in. Whoo! Also, I've added in extra profile fields. Let me know what you think and what the fields should be. I grouped social media into one field, but I'm not convinced that's the right move.
I discovered that KiwiIRC has a client builder: https://kiwiirc.com/clientbuilder/ - I've therefore created a branded chat link! When we standardise on a colour scheme we can brand it further :)
I've noticed, and maybe i'm doing it wrong, that if you login to the KiwiIRC as a new user that you can't read past conversations. Is the correct? If so, can that be corrected?
Also, can you thread conversations (or reply to a conversation) in KiwiIRC, like you can with Matrix?
This seems out of place in the hierarchy of the site map.
@theoryshaw correct, that is how IRC works. I agree it is less than ideal in the modern age, but I don't know a service that provides a bouncer for free. I also don't think there is such thing as a threaded conversation in IRC. In IRC, a thread = a channel.
I've removed the "Mark All Viewed" link.
I guess i would vote for just using Matrix only. they have bouncing services and threaded conversations. Also, a new user can read past conversations. The IRC channel looks empty for a new comer, since they can't see past conversations.
You can also link to specific conversations as well. Could help augment the wiki. "See conversation 'here' about XYZ."
@theoryshaw @Moult could you please add a link to the Matrix room in the IRC channel description? I don't agree with you @theoryshaw that Matrix should be primary. IRC is something anyone can just get started with. Matrix is not. Anyway, you won't get @Moult to stop using that channel.
However I think we should consider a more user friendly #osarch channel without all those bots. Anyone can watch both channels. But casual osarch chat and software help, in my opinion, would be more accessible and useful in a channel with less bot-noise.
Do you guys think it's to soon to talk about BlenderBIM/Home Builder UI in OSArch forum? I'm making some 3D icons to learn Blender and Freestyle. They are getting very nice! And I have some strong ideas about possible UI sollutions. I can start a topic for each part? Like one for discussing icons(style) and perhaps one topic for discussing window asset layout for example. I think each main part of BlenderBIM/Home Builder deserves a own topic. So it's clear to focus what the feedback is. I think that's better than one UI topic covering all subjects. If you guys think it's a good idea to talk about UI, could you add a forum category? Thanks! I can start the first topic this weekend.
@Meetlat I've discussed with @Moult about categories. The problem is that people usually show very poor discipline using categories so everything ends up in a big mess without active moderation. Who cares? Well, if you can't find the information you want then there's not much point having it. But I've also been wondering if the volume of new posts on all sorts of subjects is getting a bit unwieldy. I just bookmark the ones I want to follow and only come back to those ones.
After our last discussion we implemented tags which some people are using well. Are you missing any tags? Let me know.
For now we only have 'general' and a Spanish category. What are you suggesting another category could be? "Developers" for example? You can hear I am personally scepticle, but of course if several peoples are convinced then we should just do it and see what happens. But only if we find a good name that makes it instantly clear whats inside.
@Meetlat go ahead and create a topic and see how it goes :) Happy to create a category and see how it goes. Any suggestions on a category name?
Happy to announce that I think the email migration has gone well. We are now sending between 100-500 emails per day, with 78% of these being delivered. As for the remainder, we've had a number of spam signups. Recaptcha has been enabled during signup but clearly Recaptcha is a famous tune and bots know how to bypass it. I've now added the fiendishly difficult captcha question "What word do the letters "OS" in OSArch stand for?" We'll see how that goes.
I did a dumb DB purge of all non-activated user accounts who haven't revisited the website. A skim through shows that this is 99% obviously a bot, and maybe 1% uncertain, with maybe under 10 legit users caught up in the purge. This purges about 500 users, and leaves us with 780 "more valid" user accounts on the forum. There are probably a few broken foreign keys in this dumb purge, but so far things still seem to be working so...
By the way, if anybody knows their way around web dev and sysadmin and would like to volunteer to manage this stuff, happy to open it up :)
Also, Matrix link has been added to the IRC topic.
Would be nice, if the 'likes' weren't truncated, just so you can see who chimed in with cheer or jeer. ;)
For the Vanilla forum, is there a 'mark all as read' function? Would be nice to add, if so.
@theoryshaw done. Now available as a link at the bottom of the sidebar panel.
I think I speak for many when I claim that this forum's default search function sucks pretty bad.
@tetov would you be interested in joining me in installing and setting up https://github.com/bauerjj/SphinxSearch ? Worst case we just put a DuckDuckGo search widget in the theme.
Sure, or CirrusSearch since the MediaWiki extension for Sphinx is no longer maintained? Let me know what time works for you.
@tetov I'm referring to the forum, not the wiki. The forum runs vanilla ;)
@Moult Sorry, don't know why I assumed wiki! Sounds good then!
Could we change the email settings to include the posts in notifications? It seems like it’s possible reading the docs.
@Moult about emails - since most people di> @Moult said:
I wish we had a discussion about Vanilla initially. I know it's highly subjective, but discourse, seems much more capable, like search. Probably, too late now, but if there feels like there is a need to change to another system, would be good to have a discussion about it, with the most frequent users (of which I admit I am not a part of)
I'm a little swamped right now to handle a forum migration, and I don't really have any issues with Vanilla apart from the search personally. If someone else wants to handle this (@tetov ?) happy to migrate so long as there isn't any downtime.
From memory Discourse had some pretty picky behaviour about things like wanting to squat only on port 80 which is fine if you have a little cloud instance or do nothing other than run a forum, but is kinda unacceptable when you have a full dedicated doing quite a few things running a few webservers simultaneously. Shame on you, Discourse! More reading: https://meta.discourse.org/t/install-discourse-change-docker-port-80/31114/9
I could migrate the forum. Would need some time to test it out on a dummy Vanilla install first.
While I agree that hogging port 80 is bad, wouldn’t it be enough to reverse proxy community.osarch.org to Discourse docker container? @Moult
@tetov I did try that, but something stopped me which I can't remember. Always happy to try again.
Can we do something about search first? If we migrate or not we will need a good way to search old posts.
@Moult and I went over the web infrastructure today. I now have access to server and admin roles on Wiki, forum, and site.
We (mostly @Moult) also added SphinxSearch as a plugin to the forum.
You may notice some markup present in the post excerpts shown on the results page, @Moult's theory is that it's related to some changes to the post editor that happened a bit ago but only applies to older posts.
There's a new widget in the sidebar next to discussions showing related threads, and when creating new threads there's suggestions of already existing ones.
Please let us know if you find any bugs or have thoughts about the search functionality.