Forums: The Tools We Need

Back at WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. SF (in October 2014) we discussed the forum tools we needed to have in the ‘eventual’ port of the forums to bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. 2.x. We then put it to the side because that port was miles away.

It’s getting closer, so I’m posting the notes because, as JJJ said:

Once we can compare needs to the plugins list I posted on make/meta, then we can work towards a setup where all support forums run unified code.

So please, read this list and bring up anything we’re missing or you think we should ditch.

I apologize for the formatting of the notes below, they are actually exactly what we were saying at the time.

## To Do

  • Integrate with slackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.
  • Show list when people reply to new threads
  • Easier follow up to threads I’m working in

## Tools we use today

  • bozo (needs to be renamed – user role instead?)
  • Akismet
  • 3rd party – chrome tools by ksimmijer(?)
  • Auto responders text expander
  • Iftt – emails
  • James’ fork to show threads to reply to

## Known issues

  • emails not being sent
  • Bozo posts not being seen by RSS/email even when cleared
  • Poor spam catching
  • Tracking why people are bozod
  • Autocomplete topic titles similar to Wpcom and how it suggests posts and docs
  • Moving posts between bbs

## Things we need

  • split topics
  • Categorize types of bugs
  • Search with filters: this theme, this tag
  • List posts by last reply
  • Better moderation roles – allow people to spam/delete users
  • After x posts manually tagged as spam, user is marked as bozo
  • Big Red Button – press and blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. user
  • Better spam detection
  • Role management for spammers vs poisonous people
  • Use post status on topics/replies
  • Bulk moderation from front end
  • Spam protection on registration
  • List website url
  • Upvote/downvote answers for useful or ‘this is the right answer!’ Picked by the op

TagTag Tag is one of the pre-defined taxonomies in WordPress. Users can add tags to their WordPress posts along with categories. However, while a category may cover a broad range of topics, tags are smaller in scope and focused to specific topics. Think of them as keywords used for topics discussed in a particular post. user as bozo, select reason by drop down “your post is being moderated….” Define as a taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. in WP-admin. Alternately, have a ‘mod-watched’ user role to allow sorting.

We need better moderation tools for user management, including curtailing spammer registration, abusive people, etc. we also need to allow for theme/forum mods to wrangle their own subjects without editing the content.

#bbpress, #tools, #wcsf2014