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Forum Overhaul

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Corder
Oct Member 2017

Corder

Posts: 27,892 Sapphire Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
INTRODUCTION


Hi everyone!
I have been using various forums since early teens, and to this day I'm still rocking it. It struck me when using Runescape forums that they really have a lot fewer features than I'd wish for.
Today I moderate a large community, and the features that we have makes for a super friendly forum to use. I can't speak for Runescape Forum team, but the rate of reports we get for post/thread feature abuse is quite small. Hence I don't think it will add much inconvenience to Runescape Forum team either, but that's something we'll need them to voice in on!

Here goes some Quality of Life suggestions for our forums and website. Life is like a camera: Just focus on what's important, capture the good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don't work out, take another shot !

02-Sep-2020 15:17:27

Corder
Oct Member 2017

Corder

Posts: 27,892 Sapphire Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
NAVIGATION


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Add a new page for online users

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Add a "Get QFC" button below every post/thread, so that you don't have to quote a post in order to redirect someone to it

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Add an Activity/Latest Posts feed, allowing users to follow up on what's latest posted on. It will greatly increase the volume of posts, while also ensuring a much nicer forum experience for users

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Add preview for last post in a thread, by hovering over the timestamp while viewing a forum section

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Add a "Feature post" (Moderators only) to keep it shown on the top of the thread, regardless of which page is shown. This can be good for times of unexpected downtime, or whenever Forum team needs to pin a post (not thread)

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Add social media accounts on the bottom, so that people can easily find your Twitter, Discord, Twitch accounts etc

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(?) Add a report button. This could be limited to threads that are created in the wrong section, or actually be a fully fledged report panel, replacing the current "Forum Help" thread

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Enhance the Search functionality Life is like a camera: Just focus on what's important, capture the good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don't work out, take another shot !

02-Sep-2020 15:17:35

Corder
Oct Member 2017

Corder

Posts: 27,892 Sapphire Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
FORMATTING


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Add a "Basic" styling edit window. This would contain few options such as Bold, Italic, Underscore, Strikethrough, Font color, Font size and Smileys

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Add an "Advanced" styling edit window. This would contain the above plus Link, Quote, Bulleted list, Numberical list, Align tools, Font background color, Sub/superscript, Indent tools, Spoiler, No-parse, Horizontal line, Title edit option

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Add a more responsive preview window. If possible, make it realtime, as currently you're moved onto a new page for the preview (but same tab) which is quite tedious

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Merge "Link" and "QFC" buttons into one, where users would be presented with different ways of linking, e.g QFC ID or URL

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Remove click-to-view-image for Members Life is like a camera: Just focus on what's important, capture the good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don't work out, take another shot !

02-Sep-2020 15:17:45

Corder
Oct Member 2017

Corder

Posts: 27,892 Sapphire Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
PROFILES & NOTIFICATIONS


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Revamp forum profiles to use their own page, where other users may search threads and posts separately, and date back to their very first post instead of their last 200th, read their "About me"'s, their forum groups and post-count, etc

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Instead of "Profiling" a thread by posting in it, let users choose to "Follow" a thread

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Add symbols before a thread title, to indicate whether it's marked read/unread, and additionally if the user has posted in or followed a thread, add a star symbol to indicate that it's been posted in since (this can be good, if a user wants to follow up, and doesn't forget that they replied there and may have people waiting on a response)

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Let users choose to receive notifications for the following: New comments on followed thread;Someone quotes a post I made;Someone mentions me;A Moderator warned me(mandatory)

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When reading a thread, have a notification appear at the bottom that a new comment has been made. This will prevent the "sniping" issue, where a new post is made before the user clicks post, not knowing someone else were typing Life is like a camera: Just focus on what's important, capture the good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don't work out, take another shot !

02-Sep-2020 15:17:55

Mrs Ana

Mrs Ana

Posts: 8,998 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Hi, Corder. I'm unsure as to how long you have been using these Forums, but lots of players have suggested many more ideas than what's already included in this thread and nothing has been done. The Forums are archaic and until the right team at Jagex decides to revamp it, none of the ideas shared here on this thread of yours or any other idea previously mentioned will ever work.

We are long overdue for Forums update; however, considering how Social Media has taken over almost literary everything, the Forums have been "pushed aside", sort of speak. Social Media already offers extra features/add-ons that you may not find here on the Forums and the targeted audience is also immense compared to the active users that we get daily on the Forums.

I love the Forums, I really do and it'd probably revive them somehow if they were to receive a revamp, but we have been advocating for this for eons to no avail. Until we get the right people to get working, we will unfortunately never have a Forums update.

02-Sep-2020 15:26:42

Corder
Oct Member 2017

Corder

Posts: 27,892 Sapphire Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Hey Ana,

It's nice to hear from you. Yeah, I've only been using them for a good 5 years so I can't say I'm old here. It shocks me that nothing has been done but some minor adjustments to the structure over the years.

I'd love to give forum suggestions a read, but it seems they are long, long gone and nobody has really had an interest in bumping them, as the only one I've found is Forum Post Font Sizes from 2018 by Loki. :(

With Jagex employing new Community Managers (mostly Local Moderators as I understand) some years back, perhaps if these types of threads gains some traction in the community, they could pick out some ideas and forward them to the Web-Development team.
I had read Brandon's reply somewhere in this section on what his roles are, and it seems like he and the other few could be of use for us forumers, as far as communicating Web- ideas to the developers go. But we'll have to see on that I think. Life is like a camera: Just focus on what's important, capture the good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don't work out, take another shot !

02-Sep-2020 15:40:53

Mrs Ana

Mrs Ana

Posts: 8,998 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
We do get responses from Jagex Moderators, mainly Mod Lyon (Jagex Web Team), regarding updates to the Forums and what not; however, their time is invested in other projects and updating the Forums are currently way low on their list.

For example, take a look at this thread: Forum Notifications & Changes :
Original message details are unavailable.
There are some great suggestions in here. A few are long requested features and things that I'd love for our team to get the time to work on, unfortunately as you may know other things are taking priority at the moment (and will be for some time)

One day we'll get round to the forums, I hope. I think regardless of its problems, its a great resource for us to be able to gather feedback just like this :)

02-Sep-2020 15:58:23

Mod Lyon

Mod Lyon

Jagex Moderator Forum Profile Posts by user
Hey Corder,

Thanks so much for the suggestions. Some new and not so new suggestions there.

I think there are some we're more likely to think about than others, I don't feel the "active users now" is accurate and just leads to some of our users misunderstanding because of it, for example so we'd leave any further activity monitor our of updates and frankly probably get rid of the existing one. It doesn't add much value.

Notifications on the other hand, definitely a must have from the community minded JMods if we had free reign over these updates.

Like Mrs Ana shared, the forums aren't [regrettably] our current priority, and we're working hard on some big development sized work at the moment. I'll keep your thread on our community suggestions notes though and relay this to the rest of the team, if we manage to get round to updating these hallowed halls.

Thanks,
Mod Lyon
Jagex Web Team

Twitter - @JagexLyon

02-Sep-2020 16:48:06

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