Sean Mirrsen

And because of that, you only repped-up those posts which were actually of outstanding quality, those that impressed you significantly enough that you would not be deterred by some simple thing like a message prompt. Right now you can get rep for arguing on the forums. I detest every single point of reputation I "earned" since the forum move, because I know that, objectively, I did not deserve any of them - I only got them because giving out "rep" is now so easy it can be done without a thought.

I don't 'like' that this emphasizes leaving a "like" over leaving a comment. I detest "likes". "Likes" don't tell me anything. As an artist, for instance. I can't tell if a "like" was because somebody liked my precision in linework, or if someone appreciates the detail I put into a design, or they like something about an artistic choice I made in drawing something, or if I just happened to be drawing something about their favorite series/character (which is further muddied by crossovers), or if I somehow stumbled upon their weird fetish. "Likes" are useless, featureless blips, clumped into an indistinguishable blob on a radar screen that, to continue the metaphor, used to show the details every appearing blip, at least half the time. You're probably going to say that the same can be done with a post, or a PM - but then the user has to do two actions! Leave a like, and post something! And a post can be seen by everyone (not a good idea if the subject post was a long time ago), and a PM may seem like an invitation to talk, which I know a lot of people just won't want to bother with. They will leave a like and be done with it. The old system was neat and tidy, it bundled the reputation bump with a short message that prompted no reply, and was candid and effective. What we've been given with this forum "upgrade" is just the social media standardization virus doing its best to ruin what little bits of uniqueness the various interesting sites around the web still have left.

Please recall how the old system worked. Now look at how the "like system" works. Can you please identify for me the ways in which the "like system" is "the same thing as before", besides the fact that you need to click a button to use it? Hint: there is only one, which is that it also results in a user having their rep count increased. The user gets no message to go with the reputation, and everyone can see not only when a post was liked, but also who it was liked by, creating bandwagons. I already proposed how it could be improved at one point - by keeping the 'like system' in the one function it deserves to have (a counter for people who agree with the post, for impromptu polls, suggestions, and valid answers in the support sections), and reinstating the old reputation system in full.

The like system is the offspring of the Twitter generation. I know the phrasing was a bit... ornate, but still. I'm complaining that the old reputation system, which was in practice a lot more like a weighted personal message system (and thus a lot more, well, personal), was replaced by the pointless +1 counter you have anywhere else, be it Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc.

It's not a rep system. It's a like system. You had a unique and meaningful setup for users to personally express their appreciation of exceptional posts, and you've trashed it to bring in this worthless offspring of the Twitter generation.

I "like" things because we no longer have a rep system. Full stop.

So? Forbid RP in non-RP threads, infract or mute offenders. There was a specific problem, and the chosen solution was the equivalent of setting the house on fire to evict a squatter - the squatter moved on, but nobody else can use the house now! And no, the rules of the forum - all rules, as stated - specifically exist with the pretext that all who are found in violation of the rules will be punished. Whatever the rule was created for, punishing offenders is its operational mechanism. Instating a rule when its violations are happening, is always done with the understanding that whoever are meant to be punished, are going to either cease violating the rule, or be punished. And people who fall under its "to be punished" clause, in 2.2j's case, have only a tangential relation to the cause of the rule's instating. By "protecting" them in this way, the rule also took away one of the people's (especially people like us's) freedoms. (But, I really shouldn't be surprised. This whole forum move snafu was centered around taking away freedoms, as it were. Of choice, of expression, of right to complain... it seems it's just traditional by now.) The only "acrimonious nonsense" I can see in this case is labelled "2.2j". Bitter in nature, foolish, and absurd. (Yes I used a dictionary. I'm not a native English speaker, fancy that. :P)

2.2j is the kind of rule that just beckons me to find legitimate ways around it. It's obnoxious and pointlessly strict and is exactly the sort of thing I'd never pay attention to were I not in-character at all times. For instance, I could do recruiting for a PBP RP that would take place outside the visible forum, as was established in an earlier discussion. Then, seeing as it would no longer be technically RP, I could post the end result of an RP session - as a "story in progress" - into the KSP Fan Works if it was KSP-themed, or into The Lounge if not. I could basically run an RPG in PMs and just post the status updates as the GM/storyteller for the players to see, wherever I need to without technically breaking any rules. All 2.2j would do is add clutter to my inbox. It's really a pointlessly broad rule. A lot like gun control. An unruly person can cause trouble for moderators even without roleplaying. A team of roleplayers playing the same game is less likely to cause trouble because they're working together. The rule is punishing roleplayers when it should be punishing those who cause trouble.

Being over-the-top was rather the point. And as for this.. So, how likely are you to implement BBCode and post preview, on a forum platform that has dropped support for both? Last time I saw someone pull something like that off was in The Martian, and that involved digging through rather a lot of fecal matter. Either you don't consider those to be worth looking into (as seems to be the case right now), or you're going to be jumping through so many hoops you'd be better off finding a new software to migrate to. There are limits to how "constructive" a given criticism can be. I positively hate the WYSIWIG-only setup. I had to connect the keyboard dock up to my laplet just now, because I couldn't hit the "move quote" control with my finger on this thing's 1080p screen. Because it ends up being tiny, and is the only way to move a quote block embedded in the top of the post. "Mobile-friendly software" my donkey.

Then you are an evil organization that pursues its own needs without any regard for its customers' feedback and abuses the fact that said customers are mostly no longer able to withdraw the money they've given it. You've not only failed to so much as mention the extent of the changes you were bringing (by, say, providing a preview or pointing to an existing forum where the software is set up), and not only managed to select the kind of software that is different in such a fundamental way as to break every conceivable workflow and established usage parameters, but also did the move when the primary maintainer of the forum was due to leave for vacation, broke half the forum's formatting in the move, deleted part of the forum in the move under a laughable pretense, and, in combination, failed to so much as give a transient aerial rodent's hindquarters to all fundamental complaints directed at your decisions. Also seconding the "vote of no confidence", as little as such a notion may apply in this situation.

Make a poll on the General Discussions board. Not down here, where hardly a third of the forum activity happens, but up where most of the players can see it. Maybe mention it in the next Devnote Tuesday? Actually ask your userbase whether they like the change done to the forum or not, and make it clear you will listen. Then you can say whether or not we're a minority. I won't even mention the number of people the change might have driven away (because I have no data on that). (or the number of people who left because you've killed RB for violating a rule specifically created to kill RB. :| )

/me engages conspiracy-theorist mode. It could have been done deliberately. To create an extended period of time when no changes could have been made due to entirely valid reasons. Actual technical issues could undoubtedly arise, but even a cursory look at the sheer format differences between the forum software packages would allow to predict that the majority of issues would be ones of usability, created by sheer ontological inertia. The period could thus have been engineered to force the dissenters encourage prior users to adapt to the new software rather than have to change anything major due to community pressure. What can I say, the whole situation does lend itself well to this kind of thinking.

/me takes away Kozak's Star Trek license.

As an aside to that aside, I consider that the worst article of the entire What If series. For the reason that it took one facet of the questions mentioned, and ran with it without answering the actual questions. Indeed two of the three questions listed imply having to control the speed of reentry, and the first question explicitly proposes slowing down. So naturally the entire article is devoted to saying how going into space means going fast, and no word on whether slowing down would be a valid way of avoiding the need for a heatshield.

Yes, the difference is in the mass, payload mass delivered to separation, and the horizontal velocity attained before returning, most of all.

Can we just keep migrating onwards? To something that uses BBCode natively? Pretty please?

Go ahead and try that out with actual links in a forum post. I'll wait. (Unless they already patched out the URL parser, which I doubt, what you suggest results in a mess. It's not possible to post either a [url=http://fake.link.com]link or an image - http://fake.image.com/file.png because the URL parser takes over, transforms the links, and breaks the flimsy wet-cardboard construction that passes for a BBCode parser in IPS. Putting the two together has appropriately broken results. Unless you feel like typing the URL out manually as well, I suppose. Because apparently that's the only way to break the URL parser.) Better option if you're making lots of posts with tables, maybe. And yes, I did try writing tables and lists in BBCode. For me the persistence of it made editing and making sure everything was in the right place a lot easier than you might be imagining, especially coupled with the post preview feature endemic to forum software actually supporting BBCode. At the end of the day, it's the same argument as the one I have against MechJeb. It's software that is made to do things for me, when I don't want things done for me, especially if it means being limited by the capabilities of the software. You want your WYSIWYG editor? You can have it, but give us full BBCode support and post preview back. If Squad is concerned for the new wave of console users being confused by old-school BBCode forums, it doesn't mean they can trample over their old userbase to pamper to them. (Do note, that's an if. I'm not saying they are. Yet. )

And if you used the editor buttons with BBCode, you could just wrap URL around an IMG block with two clicks (plus pasting links). Or paste IMG into URL. You could see how it worked and intuit from there, without giving up ease of use or flexibility.

...how are people supposed to figure out these things? This is some kind of WYSIWYGPYCGITW editor. (what you see is what you get provided you can get it to work) Using [url=site.link][img]image.link[/img][/url] was so much easier and more intuitive...

Yeah. The URL parser really screws up any attempt to manually post an image or URL here.

Hmm. *tries several times* Nope. Short of writing in pure HTML, it doesn't seem to work.

IPS4 no longer technically supports BBCode. Which I see as a sufficient reason to axe the whole thing and go back to the old forums pending a better software choice. It doesn't have a preview function because its ability to understand BBCode at all is too limited to matter, and it's seen as an outdated concept because, apparently, some people think other people always want to have less flexibility in trade for simpler usage.

I thought that's why he was asking permission.

I'm assuming burnoutforzai tried to create a spoiler, failed, searched for solutions on the forum, found the thread, and seeing as it's not terribly old and the question is relevant, bumped it.

I believe the underlying problem is that IPS's approach to forum maintenance finds many parallels in Squad's (perceived or not) approach to it. https://community.invisionpower.com/topic/417407-ips-40-the-current-state-of-bbcode-and-its-future-is-bbcode-officially-abandoned/