Forum Migration Nov 27th!

[HoloYolo]

[quote name='Ogcorp CEO']I am a bit ticked off about the deletion of rocket builders, but where will the craft go now????!!!![/QUOTE]Spacecraft Exchange. It exists for a reason.

[billkerbinsky]

[quote name='DuoDex']EDIT : Yup.[/QUOTE]
Phew.

[Hotaru]

[quote name='KasperVld']Yes, that's fine. If you transfer it before Friday it'll autoatically be converted to the new forum as well.[/QUOTE]

Fair enough. I don't actually have such a thread, but have had them elsewhere (X-Plane.org to be precise) and may want to start one here in the future. Thanks for the reply!

[SHaFT7]

I for one would like an option for a dark theme, like dark gray with a light gray or white text. I primarily use the forum at night and on my phone, and the white background is eyeball searing. (and battery draining)

other than that, whatevs!

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Okay, I have a lot of questions, I'm sorry if they've been asked before:
[LIST=1]
[*]Can I move my rocket builder company into with no modifications before the transfer?
[*]Will BBCode still work?
[*]Will HTML markup be added?
[*]Will my subscribed threads be transferred with the same settings (No emails, just shows up in the "settings" page)?
[*]Will PMs and associated settings be transferred?
[*]Will my avatar and profile pic be transferred?
[*]Signatures?
[*]Can I still embed google calendars?
[*]If I post right before the transfer, will the post be wiped?
[*]Will old posts's embeds and formatting be changed?
[*]How will tagging people work?
[*]Will the "Jump to page" buttons work properly now?
[*]Will the forums still reside at forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com?
[*]Imgur albums?
[*]Does it use linear posting by time with quotes, or reddit-style reply visualizations?
[*]May I please see a picture of the new text editor?
[/LIST]

Thanks a ton for answering all of my questions. This must be a lot of work, thanks for doing it for us.

[StahnAileron]

On the subject of Role-playing:

I was once an admin/mod on a website with basic forum functionality. (The site was sold to a new owner and I resigned shortly after the turnover for several reasons.)

An active user requested that she open up an RP thread. We made the (mistaken) choice of allowing her to do so. It started off simple enough. However, eventually, things got out of hand. The thread had rules that some were starting to not follow or were VERY lax about. (A core tenant being you may not RP another user's char for them in any manner. Another was to actually READ the thread to get a grasp of the event before just jumping in willy-nilly.) It got to the point I had to get involved myself and reset the roleplay and kick some users. We eventually just killed the thread and made "NO RP" standard on the site. Playing around was fine, but nothing long term, in-depth, or dedicated.

From that experience, what I can say is that with RPing, some people CAN NOT distinguish between reality and the RP. The line between "personal" and "role" gets blurred. One user I recall went nuts during the whole event because the time they invested was deem a "waste of time" because of the reset. Could things have been dealt with better? Perhaps. I don't see that worth the effort though, not on a site where staff have far better and bigger issues to deal with. (It was an imageboard.) You know it's a bad time when some users state they came to the site for the Role Play instead of the site's main purpose: showing off artwork.

Roleplaying has its time and place. I personally don't think it should be done on any site/community that has a clear intent and purpose that isn't RPing in the first place. SQUAD have better things to do than trying to diffuse community conflict brought about because of fiction-induced friction between members (or groups thereof). If you want to roleplay, go (or start) some place where that is the core focus, not here where the focus is on feedback and additions to make a good game greater. A work today is defined by both the work itself and the community built around it. You can have the greatest masterpiece, but if the community around it is trash, not many will want to touch it. ("Guilty by association".)

Anyway, with Roleplay, the thing about it I noticed is that people don't know when to stop and it starts to seep. Some start to take RP events and actions as personal and it clouds their judgement. It's a stupid and horrible experience. It's not worth it, not here.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

I have a question about the soon-to-be-gone Rocket Builders forum.

As you can see in my sig, I have a currently dummy logo for "AddictionAeroworks" my name for my craft repository, I would post any craft I make there, and take requests. However, the situation would be something like, I would be the only person at this "Fake" company. There would be no roleplay, IMO. For any, say, military craft, the post I would make for them would br exactly in the format of all of the other crafts I make.

TLDR: I want to have a fake company with a name to post my crafts and take requests. No "employee" buisness or anything.

-SPAddict
So, what ya think?

[Greenfire32]

Even though I've never really been in the rocket builders area, I think removing it is a bad idea for one reason only: All those "forum rule breakers" will simply migrate to the Spacecraft Exchange thread and continue doing what they're doing.

I've nothing against those who RP on here, but if the problem is [SIZE=5][B][I][U][COLOR="#FF0000"]so large[/COLOR][/U][/I][/B][/SIZE] that banning people has been ruled as "non-effective," then removing their "home" is only going to make them branch out. I suggest redefining the rules regarding RP to say that it can only be done in the Rocket Builders area instead of blanket nuking them.

[quote name='Alshain']Meh, if you are going to change the theme, it should be dark like space. (Besides, black with white text is easier on the eyes)[/QUOTE]

Which is why books, cellphones, monitors, and packaging are all white text on black, right?

[quote name='KasperVld']
[quote name='Kerbart']Will Squads heavy interaction with the forum continue?

Will the forum continue to be the first and foremost method by Squad of announcing new developments to the outside world?[/QUOTE]Even though I know you're being sarcastic here, I should say that some of the new features will allow this to improve quite a bit, people can for example tag me in a post and I then get a notification. This feature is of course fully customizable if you don't want to be alerted when it happens, but for many people including myself I should think it allows you to move around the forums much more efficiently :)[/QUOTE]

Right, but if you could answer the second question........

[quote name='StahnAileron']
Anyway, with Roleplay, the thing about it I noticed is that people don't know when to stop and it starts to seep.[/QUOTE]

Which is why taking away the one area that they largely remain contained to is a bad idea in my opinion. Removing Rocket Builders is only going to make the people who wont follow the rules disperse and make it that much harder to keep under control. Edited November 21, 2015 by Greenfire32

[acc]

continuing my latest post...

And about the forum software: I still would prefer a custom board that fits exactly the needs of this special community, which is realy unique. Duno what your budget is for forum software, but this awesome community with extremly nice, helpfull and encouraged people deserves better than that. I mean this board is not just another forum, it's the hearth of this community. Make it unique like they are :)

[RocketPilot573]

This update seems pretty reasonable. Though I was looking at their forums and my only concern is that the page doesn't appear to use the entire window, if you know what I mean. A lot of other forums are like that for some reason and it just feels claustrophobic to me. I know this sounds silly but is there a setting for that or something? (sorry if this was answered already in case I missed something)

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/wCB2giK.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/sBcEEJs.png[/IMG] Edited November 21, 2015 by RocketPilot573

[DuoDex]

[quote name='Mad Rocket Scientist']Okay, I have a lot of questions, I'm sorry if they've been asked before:
[LIST=1]
[*]Can I move my rocket builder company into with no modifications before the transfer?
[*]Will BBCode still work?
[*]Will HTML markup be added?
[*]Will my subscribed threads be transferred with the same settings (No emails, just shows up in the "settings" page)?
[*]Will PMs and associated settings be transferred?
[*]Will my avatar and profile pic be transferred?
[*]Signatures?
[*]Can I still embed google calendars?
[*]If I post right before the transfer, will the post be wiped?
[*]Will old posts's embeds and formatting be changed?
[*]How will tagging people work?
[*]Will the "Jump to page" buttons work properly now?
[*]Will the forums still reside at forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com?
[*]Imgur albums?
[*]Does it use linear posting by time with quotes, or reddit-style reply visualizations?
[*]May I please see a picture of the new text editor?
[/LIST]

Thanks a ton for answering all of my questions. This must be a lot of work, thanks for doing it for us.[/QUOTE]

1. No. If you change to a Spacecraft Thread and don't have posts and such, yes.
2. No. There's an actual text editor now.
3. Nope, still can be abused very easily.
4. Yes.
5. Yes. (Not sure about exactly which settings).
6. Yes.
7. Yes.
8. No.
9. No, the forum will be going down for a day or so. All content from before then will be kept.
10. Not entirely sure what you mean by this, but I have seen a little weirdness with old posts already.
11. If your name is mentioned, you might get a notification - this is configurable.
12. Yes.
13. Yup.
14. Will still work.
15. A hash of both, really.
16. No, because I have to go to bed. Ask another moderator if you have any more questions/if I rushed too much on this.

[Greenfire32]

[quote name='RocketPilot573']This update seems pretty reasonable. Though I was looking at their forums and my only concern is that the page doesn't appear to use the entire window, if you know what I mean. A lot of other forums are like that for some reason and it just feels claustrophobic to me. I know this sounds silly but is there a setting for that or something?[/QUOTE]

Yeah I'm not a big fan of that either. I'm on a forum that follows a similar layout and all it does is create more scrolling/pages for me to run through simply because it wont use the whole screen.

[passinglurker]

[quote name='KasperVld']That's a tough but a good question. I'll contact imgur about the embeds :)
.[/QUOTE]
Forgive me for not finding this to be satisfactory answer but this is what we were told before and [B] nothing[/B] came of it. When the change was first made it was like talking to a wall thus was done without warning or feed back the best the few users who found the buried official forum thread in a low traffic sub forum on the change got was that you would ask imgur a long time ago

Why do we have to wait on imgur tech support? The old style of embeds still works sites like kerbal stuff use them regularly. So why can't you change them back to the old emdeds now (or when the forum soft ware updates next Friday) so that we can have decent embeds while you wait on imgur techsupport?

[KasperVld]

[quote name='Mad Rocket Scientist']Okay, I have a lot of questions, I'm sorry if they've been asked before:
[LIST=1]
[*]Can I move my rocket builder company into with no modifications before the transfer?
[*]Will BBCode still work?
[*]Will HTML markup be added?
[*]Will my subscribed threads be transferred with the same settings (No emails, just shows up in the "settings" page)?
[*]Will PMs and associated settings be transferred?
[*]Will my avatar and profile pic be transferred?
[*]Signatures?
[*]Can I still embed google calendars?
[*]If I post right before the transfer, will the post be wiped?
[*]Will old posts's embeds and formatting be changed?
[*]How will tagging people work?
[*]Will the "Jump to page" buttons work properly now?
[*]Will the forums still reside at forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com?
[*]Imgur albums?
[*]Does it use linear posting by time with quotes, or reddit-style reply visualizations?
[*]May I please see a picture of the new text editor?
[/LIST]

Thanks a ton for answering all of my questions. This must be a lot of work, thanks for doing it for us.[/QUOTE]
1. My suggesting is to remove the 'company' aspect of the rocket builder thread, and post a new thread in the Spacecraft exchange with all your craft - it'll get transferred automatically.
2. A lot of bb-code will be converted, because the migration test forum is still working on this I don't know what will and will not break exactly but expect breakage to some degree (nothing that can't be fixed though)
3. HTML and markup are two different things, but the IPS forums have a very nice WYSIWYG editor
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. Yes
7. Yes
8. No, but if it's a much requested feature we can work on that. The new editor is very customizable
9. No
10. Some things might change slightly, but overall not much difference can be seen
11. It's almost like Twitter, you type an @ and start typing the name. The forum generates a dropdown that updates as you type.
12. Oh yeah
13. yes
14. See above somewhere
15. Linear posting, as it is now
16. [URL]http://i.imgur.com/qVxtnnt.png[/URL] - note that attachments will not be enabled on the final converted forum, we don't have petabytes of storage available :P

[quote name='SpaceplaneAddict']I have a question about the soon-to-be-gone Rocket Builders forum.

As you can see in my sig, I have a currently dummy logo for "AddictionAeroworks" my name for my craft repository, I would post any craft I make there, and take requests. However, the situation would be something like, I would be the only person at this "Fake" company. There would be no roleplay, IMO. For any, say, military craft, the post I would make for them would br exactly in the format of all of the other crafts I make.

TLDR: I want to have a fake company with a name to post my crafts and take requests. No "employee" buisness or anything.

-SPAddict
So, what ya think?[/QUOTE]
There's a fine line somewhere - it would depend on the situation I guess (ie: treating requests like customers is roleplaying, but taking requests in itself is not).

@Greenfire
The 'containment' argument was considered but we feel it's time to start enforcing the no roleplay rule.

@Rocketpilot
I can adjust the width of the screen filled by the forums, perhaps it's even controllable on a user-level but I'm not sure. Will investigate. Edited November 21, 2015 by KasperVld

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

[quote name='DuoDex']1. No. If you change to a Spacecraft Thread and don't have posts and such, yes.
2. No. There's an actual text editor now.
3. Nope, still can be abused very easily.
4. Yes.
5. Yes. (Not sure about exactly which settings).
6. Yes.
7. Yes.
8. No.
9. No, the forum will be going down for a day or so. All content from before then will be kept.
10. Not entirely sure what you mean by this, but I have seen a little weirdness with old posts already.
11. If your name is mentioned, you might get a notification - this is configurable.
12. Yes.
13. Yup.
14. Will still work.
15. A hash of both, really.
16. No, because I have to go to bed. Ask another moderator if you have any more questions/if I rushed too much on this.[/QUOTE]
Perfect! Thanks for answering my dump-'o-questions. I will be making a new thread in the spacecraft exchange for AMRSD, minus employees.

[Astrofox]

So, the rocket builder's stuff is still going to be there, it's just not going to have full fledged companies though - right?

[ZodiusInfuser]

[quote name='KasperVld']They will be transferred over, and I can have a look at the storage quota.[/QUOTE]
Thanks.

An unrelated follow-up question. What is the reason for the forum migration in the first place? The OP just details what is changing, but not why it is being done. Is there a technical, financial, or other reason that means vBulletin is no longer suitable?

[LordFerret]

[quote name='RocketPilot573']This update seems pretty reasonable. Though I was looking at their forums and my only concern is that the page doesn't appear to use the entire window, if you know what I mean. A lot of other forums are like that for some reason and it just feels claustrophobic to me. I know this sounds silly but is there a setting for that or something? (sorry if this was answered already in case I missed something)

[URL]https://i.imgur.com/wCB2giK.png[/URL]

[URL]https://i.imgur.com/sBcEEJs.png[/URL][/QUOTE]

Room for (future) advertising?

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

[quote name='KasperVld']1. My suggesting is to remove the 'company' aspect of the rocket builder thread, and post a new thread in the Spacecraft exchange with all your craft - it'll get transferred automatically.
2. A lot of bb-code will be converted, because the migration test forum is still working on this I don't know what will and will not break exactly but expect breakage to some degree (nothing that can't be fixed though)
3. HTML and markup are two different things, but the IPS forums have a very nice WYSIWYG editor
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. Yes
7. Yes
8. No, but if it's a much requested feature we can work on that. The new editor is very customizable
9. No
10. Some things might change slightly, but overall not much difference can be seen
11. It's almost like Twitter, you type an @ and start typing the name. The forum generates a dropdown that updates as you type.
12. Oh yeah
13. yes
14. See above somewhere
15. Linear posting, as it is now
16. [URL]http://i.imgur.com/qVxtnnt.png[/URL] - note that attachments will not be enabled on the final converted forum, we don't have petabytes of storage available :P[/QUOTE]
Thanks loads! Oh, and we still have super- and sub- script. Sorry for the "HTML markup" mistake.

[Greenfire32]

[quote name='Astrofox']So, the rocket builder's stuff is still going to be there, it's just not going to have full fledged companies though - right?[/QUOTE]

No. It's going to be 100% removed.

[quote name='LordFerret']Room for (future) advertising?[/QUOTE]
I hope not. One of the reasons I like the KSP forum so much is that it doesn't shove ads down my throat like so many other forums do.

[Alphasus]

So, will I be able to take my old crafts and host them on a showcase thread?

[KasperVld]

[quote name='ZodiusInfuser']Thanks.

An unrelated follow-up question. What is the reason for the forum migration in the first place? The OP just details what is changing, but not why it is being done. Is there a technical, financial, or other reason that means vBulletin is no longer suitable?[/QUOTE]
Mostly technical: vBulletin 4 is really showing its age, and the different components were never really properly implemented. Technical support is fading and the quality and security of newer versions of vBulletin is sub-par. We even tried updating to vBulletin 5 about a year ago, and that was just a large scale disaster.

[quote name='LordFerret']Room for (future) advertising?[/QUOTE]
No plans to bring back advertisement on the forums. There used to be a single Google Adwords banner up here.

[quote name='Alphasus']So, will I be able to take my old crafts and host them on a showcase thread?[/QUOTE]
Yes, that'd be my advice. If you get it done before Friday it will carry over without incident.

[quote name='Mad Rocket Scientist']Thanks loads! Oh, and we still have super- and sub- script. Sorry for the "HTML markup" mistake.[/QUOTE]
Yes, the buttons for that can be seen here: [URL="http://i.imgur.com/qVxtnnt.png"]http://i.imgur.com/qVxtnnt.png
[/URL]

[BlueSubstance]

I don't really like the flat design of the new forums... But apart from that, interesting. I'm thrilled to see how this will turn out. ;)

[sdj64]

Well there are already a few good "rocket builders" in the Spacecraft Exchange (Rune and Cupcake come to mind) so there is already a model of a good non-roleplay personal craft showcase for anyone who is clueless how to move on from their company being deleted.

However I second the idea that the Rocket Builders forum should be archived and not deleted. If possible, don't even have it show up in the forum homepage but it can still be accessed as a sub-forum of Spacecraft Exchange and from Google searches, and put an admin message at the top saying that "Many threads in this forum are no longer considered acceptable forum behavior. Please remember that roleplaying is not allowed on the KSP forums."

[KasperVld]

[quote name='sdj64']Well there are already a few good "rocket builders" in the Spacecraft Exchange (Rune and Cupcake come to mind) so there is already a model of a good non-roleplay personal craft showcase for anyone who is clueless how to move on from their company being deleted.

However I second the idea that the Rocket Builders forum should be archived and not deleted. If possible, don't even have it show up in the forum homepage but it can still be accessed as a sub-forum of Spacecraft Exchange and from Google searches, and put an admin message at the top saying that "Many threads in this forum are no longer considered acceptable forum behavior. Please remember that roleplaying is not allowed on the KSP forums."[/QUOTE]
Admins and moderators will be able to access the old RB threads in case someone hasn't been able to back up their content before the update. We can always bring things back :)

[quote name='Alphasus']Also, will BB code still be used in the same way? Can I just copy and paste text over to make a post, and the BBCode will work?[/QUOTE]
No, bb-code won't work for new posts but the forum will attempt to update the bb-code in existing posts during the transfer. If you want to back up a blog I suggest switching to the WYSIWYG editor on this forum (in your settings menu), and copy the post from there into Word or another text editor. Copy back to the new forums when they're online and it should work just fine. Edited November 21, 2015 by KasperVld