this is the thread where i talk about things that still need to be done
general
subforums
at least allow multiple forums. allowing them to be arbitrarily nested is probably not a bad thing, but it may not be needed right now either.
pagination
both for view forum and view thread page
reply button
markdown quotes (">") don't work
search ?
rss
api for arbitrary bridging
preview function for writing posts
notification system, or at least some way to ping people, maybe.
similarly, a way to track what posts someone has read, so you can see easily what threads have had activity on since you last visited.
should scroll down to your post when you post something done
a text editor slightly more sophisticated than a textarea might be nice. something like the dokuwiki editor which autoindents for you etc, but is mainly just a textarea, would be good. this would require js however.
display number of replies on the thread listing page, and also maybe the author of the most recent post.
make post id numbers clickable and linkable
'change password' page
(discord) webhook support
sticky threads
stylistic
make the pages look less bad
they mainly look ok now but still some of them are not great
make fuzzy timestamps slightly less annoying kinda
content is too wide to read comfortably on view_thread on small screens. probably have a column thing in the middle. done
the alternating grey colours are extremely ugly and don't work very well i have changed them
flashed messages box interacts badly with the navbar on mobile fixed, mainly
spacing around headers in posts is slightly too big fixed, mainly
for GEORGE
private subforums
needs some kind of permissions system, at least allowing a "list of users allowed to see this subforum", but some more control would be nicer too. still needs some work
voting system
each user who can see a thread can vote for or against or abstain on that thread. vote totals for a given thread are displayed in a prominent place, on the view thread page and also in the thread overview listing still needs some work
for conic nomic
voting system (see above)
categorisation system for threads: threads can have tags, and threads on the view forum page can be filtered by tag. tags can be changed by thread author and/or subforum admins (requires a per-forum moderator permissions system thing)
Tags and subforums sound like they would have significant overlap. Also, perhaps a general reactions system is nicer than voting, unless you intend to use it for ranking.
Tags and subforums sound like they would have significant overlap.
probably. the use case I have in mind for tags is that you can tag proposal threads as "pending", "approved", "enacted", "rejected" and so on, while still also having the option to see all proposals in one place if you want.
Also, perhaps a general reactions system is nicer than voting, unless you intend to use it for ranking.
perhaps. allowing voting options to be configured per-subforum could potentially be useful in certain cases. I am intending the voting system to be used more for literal actual voting on some thing contained within a post, rather than as a ranking system: I don't want to create a reddit clone here.
yes. the hard part would be working out how much of a thread a user has read, but i suppose assuming that they have read everything currently posted when they load a page would work.
You could track how far they've scrolled with JS, or alternately when pages arrive base it on that. Also, the post IDs should be clickable and linkable.
many of the things on the list have now been done, which is reassuring. however, there may be other things that would actually be good, that are not on the list.
ability for site admins to manage tags (instead of having to directly access the database to change any of them)
presumably this implies a site settings page for admins
presumably this also implies a way to determine who "admins" are. probably just a list, modifiable by admins. or maybe there is an "owner" who can appoint admins. or something.
(possibly) ability to have more style options on tags as well as just text and background colour
when we have multiple (sub)forums, then there should be per-forum tags (ie rules about what tags are usable in what forums). new tags for a subforum should then also be creatable by the "admins" of that subforum.
this implies some kind of per-forum moderation system, which i haven't fully thought through yet.
if we have nested subforums, then there should probably be an option to make tags inheritable and not inheritable, perhaps per-tag.
(or you could just recreate tags you want to inherit tbh)
add syntax for mentioning another user, perhaps @username. when a post containing mentions is posted, that user is notified about that post.
perhaps also support mentioning groups of users, eg all the moderators of a given forum or all the site admins, or something
each user has a set of threads they are 'subscribed' to. there is a button to subscribe/unsubscribe on every thread. when you create a thread, you are by default subscribed to that thread.
there is a 'notifications' page that lets you view unread notifications.
presumably there is some system to work out which notifications you have read and haven't read. i will think through that later.
also, if we separately have a 'number of unread posts' field on each thread which is separate from this notifications system, then that will use the same system as this, presumably. (presumably it will be useful to see the number of unread posts on threads you aren't subscribed to)
once we have subforums, you will be able to
subscribe to a forum, and be notified when new threads are created there
(separately) enable auto-subscription to all threads created there, and be notified of all posts created in those threads
subscribe/unsubscribe to all existing threads at once easily.
presumably we should avoid notifying a user twice about the same post (ie via subscribed thread and via mention)
but if a post is edited so that it now contains a mention we would want to notify them
if a post is deleted presumably notifications pertaining to that post should be removed. if a post is edited so it no longer contains a mention then the notification of that mention should presumably be removed. (we should think about what ux makes most sense here)