There’s been a lot of chat recently about what’s wrong with this forum. So let’s see if we can turn that into a positive and come up with how we would like a new forum to work. I’m not suggesting at this stage that I or anyone else will actually build such a forum. That might happen. But a lot of things would need to be agreed upon first before building a new forum would be worthwhile.
In my experience as a software and hardware engineer of many years, such a thing would not be trivial. It will take a lot of planning, discussion and thrashing out of ideas before we even put finger to keyboard. Figuring out what to build is often harder than building and testing it.
Let’s have positive ideas noted down here. Negatives are not welcome. Talk about what you want, not what you don’t want. Think about how your idea would actually work before you post so that we don’t have to wade through too many infeasible ideas.
I will start by saying that I think this current forum starts from a good place, with great volunteers and some good rules. Execution isn’t great, but that’s not the fault of the people running it. More, I suspect, the technology and those providing it. So I think the current principles and rules are sound and therefore let me start with some basic suggestions based on those. These are for discussion. They’re not absolutes.
1. Privacy first
Users may not disclose any personally identifying information. Accounts will be linked to an email address for practical reasons but this will not be displayed. A nickname will be shown instead. An avatar can be used but it cannot contain identifying imagery. Messages cannot contain phone numbers. Other media cannot be uploaded. No urls or other external info. The forum is for discussion only. That might need some work, especially around urls.
2. Moderation
Full moderation destroys the immediacy of chat and isn’t welcome. The downside to that is that bad content will appear at some point. We probably need to use an automatic scoring system that flags accounts with markers which causes a human moderator to notified if a threshold is breached. The odd misdemeanour can pass without comment but regularly repeated triggers of the automated scanning requires the attention of a human. Accounts can be marked for pre-moderation if deemed necessary for a while, or even blocked as a severe penalty.
3. Reputation
Lots of problem free posts together with likes can drive up a reputation score for each account. Perhaps a high reputation feeds into the moderation threshold. Perhaps it allows the use or urls etc.
4. Right to be forgotten
Don’t keep discussions forever. Most stuff is just chat that can be destroyed after a few months and probably should be. Mods can be requested to lock an important discussion or make it sticky for a while or keep it indefinitely
5. Keep it simple
Initially go for just a basic text chat. Markdown but no major formatting. Chat group categories for organisation. Other features can be added later.
Let the specification begin!
