Better Procedure for Making Discussion Forums Public

A place to discuss topics affecting quizbowlers as a community rather than quizbowl as a game.
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Votre Kickstarter Est Nul
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Better Procedure for Making Discussion Forums Public

Post by Votre Kickstarter Est Nul »

I think discussion forums should start to be made public much faster, ideally as the set becomes clear. Having set discussions go public with a set would allow for future editors/writers to read current set discussions, allow at-home or at-practice scrollbowlers to comment on sets before they're too old for comments to be useful, etc.

I'd like to propose that set owners or head editors ask the admins to make their forums public as soon as a set is clear. I know nothing of the making of private forums or of making them public, and I hope none of this comes off as demanding unreasonable things of forums admins. Mike Cheyne pointed out in discord that it's a hassle for admins to constantly be abreast of which forums could be public now. Shifting responsibility to set owners would save the admins any work of keeping track of when sets go clear. I have no real idea what form this would take (pming admins? a form pinned to one of the subforums?), because I don't really know the behind-the-scenes process. I therefore also don't know how simple what I'm proposing is. The decline of the forums as a discussion hub is obviously no secret, and I'd like to think this could help.

Is this a feasible solution? If not, are there other ways to approach this? are there ways non-admins could help in having forums go public quicker? I'm obviously happy to part of anything that needs doing, if there are things that need doing.
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meebles127
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Re: Better Procedure for Making Discussion Forums Public

Post by meebles127 »

Would it be possible to perhaps have a ticket system or google form, so owners of private forums can submit a 'ticket' to get their subforums made public when their sets are clear?
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Re: Better Procedure for Making Discussion Forums Public

Post by Whiter Hydra »

At the moment there are discussion forums from 2015 that are still private. At the very least it would make sense to make discussion forums public at the end of the academic year, except for the rare cases where mirrors are planned for multiple years.
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Mike Bentley
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Re: Better Procedure for Making Discussion Forums Public

Post by Mike Bentley »

I suspect the problem here is that there's a bunch of busywork involved in setting up and maintaining forums. Ideally, we could create a solution that's more self-serve since it's the set editors who care most about this for their sets. Whether such a solution is feasible in PhpBB or not, I don't know.
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Auks Ran Ova
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Re: Better Procedure for Making Discussion Forums Public

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Votre Kickstarter Est Nul wrote: Tue Feb 15, 2022 1:12 pm I'd like to propose that set owners or head editors ask the admins to make their forums public as soon as a set is clear.
I think this makes a lot of sense and I'm not sure why I didn't think of it before. Just sending a second email to [email protected] when the set is clear will alert the admins that the forum can be made public, and should allow us to respond with the same relative alacrity that we're generally able to manage with forum creation, neatly obviating the major issues right now (we can't possibly keep track of when every set becomes clear, and at the end of the year it becomes a relatively low-priority task that can easily get pushed aside by, among other possibilities, our other quizbowl responsibilities). I'll add a note to the private forum request guidelines shortly (EDIT: done).

Set owners/head editors can expedite this process by including the name of their tournament in all of their private-forum threads, whenever possible; it makes for a much more navigable archive when there's not 100000 indistinguishable threads named "Specific Question Discussion", and saves us time from having to manually change them all ourselves.
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Votre Kickstarter Est Nul
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Re: Better Procedure for Making Discussion Forums Public

Post by Votre Kickstarter Est Nul »

Thanks for the quick response Rob! I'm glad to see it could be resolved so easily. At the risk of creating a little surge of work, I hope editors of some sets cleared from this year take advantage of this.
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Re: Better Procedure for Making Discussion Forums Public

Post by Stained Diviner »

Is there an alternative other than emailing that address? I have sent several emails to that address over the course of several years asking for private forums to be dealt with, and nothing has happened.
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Re: Better Procedure for Making Discussion Forums Public

Post by Stained Diviner »

It's fixed! Thank you to the person who did it.
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Re: Better Procedure for Making Discussion Forums Public

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Stained Diviner wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 8:04 pm It's fixed! Thank you to the person who did it.
You're welcome.

As noted above, please email [email protected] when your set is clear, and we'll endeavor to make the forum public as soon as possible; otherwise, we'll try to do a sweep during the relative slack time each summer.
Rob Carson
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