Topic

Forum remixer - a proof of concept

The forums suck, in part because of the fact that General, being the default forum, gets disproportionate amount of attention. The developers have suggested before that they may want to create a new forum landing page where posts from each of the forum are show together. This is a great idea, so instead of waiting for them to finish this SOON™, I thought I might have a go at creating it myself.

The following is a proof of concept userscript that pulls in the first few posts of various other subforums and stick them under general, while reducing the number of posts from general to balance things out. Note the script only runs on the front page of General, and that this script will slow down loading of that page, sometimes considerably. Pages are cached locally for 10 mins by default.

Install   |    Screenshot    |   Source (with configuration instructions)

Feedback, complaints, flaming bags of guano, etc. are always welcome.

Posted 4 months ago by Boom and Bust Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • +1 !! Great work as always :D
    Posted 4 months ago by Scarlett Bearsdale Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Interesting script! +1 :)

    A note for Chrome users: since Google's blocked non-Web Store installation, Chrome users will need to save the script to their computer and drag it to the extensions page.
    I've made a document showing the Chrome installation steps, as most of the third-party browser extensions for Glitch are not in the Web Store.
    Posted 4 months ago by Varaeth Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yeah, this is something that should be addressed.

    Looking at the screenshot, I like your idea a bunch, but I feel like people would still use general inappropriately since they would just be looking at what's at the top (although I'm sure it would cut down on the problem). Possibly it would be neat to have the first "forums" page (glitch.com/forum) be simply a list of links to the other forums (possibly in alphabetical order (with "my discussion" still at the bottom)?), and the descriptions of each forum.
    Posted 4 months ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This is a great idea, but I agree with diaveborn;  having them in a single column will not improve things much since people only scroll down so far.

    There's a popular knitting site called Ravelry which has a landing page of the sort I think we need here.  It takes the four (or is it six?) staff-run forums and displays the most recent post titles for each of them in a 2x2 or 2x3 grid, followed by your own personal bookmarked boards (equivalent to our "groups").  It's bedtime for me so I can't log in and screencap it myself right now, but this is the idea.  (That person is displaying their favourite personally-chosen boards rather than the main landing page, but the general layout is exactly the same.)
    Posted 4 months ago by Pale Queen Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It's a really good idea but I have to agree with the above people as well.

    Another solution might be to have a start page that was basically just "most recent posts", with a note somewhere saying which forum they were from. That way people would get an overview of all the new, interesting posts no matter where they came from.
    Posted 4 months ago by Rannera Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This would be awesome!
    Posted 4 months ago by AwesomeCardinal2000 Subscriber! | Permalink