Forum Migration Nov 27th!

[smjjames]

[quote name='KasperVld']Rocket Builders is a place that actually breaks our community rules constantly, in particular the 'thou shallt not roleplay' rule. You're still welcome to offer the craft you make, or even take requests in the Spacecraft Exchange forum though, the only thing that will change is the 'company' part of it, with the employee/director/ceo roles and inter-company drama that comes with it.[/QUOTE]

What's the problem with roleplaying? As long as it doesn't go into forbidden zones like drugs, alcohol and raunchy stuff, it's fine.

Also, just to point out a mistake on the banner up top, it's 'the forums [B]will[/B] be'. Just being helpful here, I'm not normally a grammar .....

Edit: I know I'm not supposed to talk about drugs and alcohol, but I was just referring to the subject in general rather than anything in particular on the topics. Edited November 21, 2015 by smjjames

[daniel l.]

This is both cool and scary at the same time... will we be able to give our threads custom background colors or images? and will players get little badges on their profile as a reward for doing cool things like on the starmade forum?

[AeroArchonite_]

Really though, taking away the rocket builders? Just make everyone change their employees to partners/helpers and allies to friendly "rocketeer groups" or whatever. I have seen a few rocket builder posts have roleplay-esque stuff on there, but can't you just remove those posts or give them a warning? Some of the larger companies like Zokesia Skunkworks and Kraken Tech have a ton of awesome stuff in there, and taking that away seems like it would make it a lot harder to get good rockets, planes, shuttles, probes, station cores, and other stuff like that. Most likely what'll happen if you take away the Rocket Builders subforum is that a ton of companies/groups/whatever will move their stuff onto the Spacecraft Exchange page, and most of the more observant/crafty company owners probably have already copied everything they have onto a notepad file. No offense, just sayin' that this isn't the best idea in my opinion.

[DMagic]

[quote name='KasperVld']Easily keep track of threads you've started or that you've followed, with a ton of notification options to choose from[/QUOTE]

As long as this function works properly (read: at all) I couldn't really care less about any of the drawbacks, except maybe this:

[quote name='KasperVld']We'll assess if further action is required to fix broken links after the migration, but I don't generally consider that critical.[/QUOTE]

I assume external links will carry over fine (or at least be the simplest to handle), but how about internal links, such as using the thread or post tags?

[More Boosters]

[quote name='KasperVld']Rocket Builders is a place that actually breaks our community rules constantly, in particular the 'thou shallt not roleplay' rule. You're still welcome to offer the craft you make, or even take requests in the Spacecraft Exchange forum though, the only thing that will change is the 'company' part of it, with the employee/director/ceo roles and inter-company drama that comes with it.[/QUOTE]

They're harmless though. What's wrong with fans adding some flavor to their experience? I mean I don't see a reason behind this, unlike that "no Kerman nicknames" thing which certainly makes perfect sense.

[Norpo]

[quote name='smjjames']What's the problem with roleplaying? As long as it doesn't go into forbidden zones like drugs, alcohol and raunchy stuff, it's fine.[/QUOTE]

Not a mod, but apparently some roleplay "drama" spilled over to other portions of the forums between members, and eventually the moderators just decided to can everything "roleplay" related, which is a [I]hugely[/I] broad category, but I digress. That's the story, anyhow, I wasn't around before the change.

<opinion>[I](opinion)[/I] At this point continuing to ban it seems like an [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition"]appeal to tradition[/URL] rather than there being a[I] really good reason[/I] to, but I could be wrong, I can see how if it got out of hand moderating the fallout would be a huge pain. But does that justify the cost? Who knows. </opinion>

[zekes]

Well goodbye Rocket builders. Was a good run.

[KasperVld]

[quote name='smjjames']What's the problem with roleplaying? As long as it doesn't go into forbidden zones like drugs, alcohol and raunchy stuff, it's fine.

Also, just to point out a mistake on the banner up top, it's 'the forums [B]will[/B] be'. Just being helpful here, I'm not normally a grammar .....

Edit: I know I'm not supposed to talk about drugs and alcohol, but I was just referring to the subject in general rather than anything in particular on the topics.[/QUOTE]
Omission in the banner fixed. I blame the clock for that one (1:30AM here now). As for the problem with roleplaying, I commented on that above.

[quote name='AeroArchonite_']Really though, taking away the rocket builders? Just make everyone change their employees to partners/helpers and allies to friendly "rocketeer groups" or whatever. I have seen a few rocket builder posts have roleplay-esque stuff on there, but can't you just remove those posts or give them a warning? Some of the larger companies like Zokesia Skunkworks and Kraken Tech have a ton of awesome stuff in there, and taking that away seems like it would make it a lot harder to get good rockets, planes, shuttles, probes, station cores, and other stuff like that. Most likely what'll happen if you take away the Rocket Builders subforum is that a ton of companies/groups/whatever will move their stuff onto the Spacecraft Exchange page, and most of the more observant/crafty company owners probably have already copied everything they have onto a notepad file. No offense, just sayin' that this isn't the best idea in my opinion.[/QUOTE]
There is indeed a ton of awesome stuff there - as well as in the blogs, and one of the reasons we're giving a week's notice is so that people can back up the posts in RB and their blogs, to repost them in a different format after the conversion.

[quote name='DMagic']I assume external links will carry over fine (or at least be the simplest to handle), but how about internal links, such as using the thread or post tags?[/QUOTE]
We've tested the conversion, and that forum is now rebuilding posts and such (but is functional). I'll keep an eye on links. If you used the [noparse][thread] or [post][/noparse] bb-codes then you should be fine, as custom bb-codes have been transferred. Edited November 21, 2015 by KasperVld

[Hotaru]

Personally, I don't agree with the no-role playing rule, but I understand why it's in place: RP can definitely be tricky to moderate and keep civil.

That said: deleting the entire Rocket Builders forum--which includes years worth of accumulated work by a lot of people--seems to me a "sledgehammer to crack a nut" solution that will have the ultimate effect of discouraging any sort of collaboration between KSP players in the area of, well, building rockets.

My suggestion (which admittedly would be more trouble to implement) would be to implement a specific rule in that sub-forum against "company role-play" (i. e. people having different jobs within companies, getting promoted, hired, fired, whatever) but continuing to allow the general practice of collaboration under the banner of a "company"--so long as the role play aspect of that association doesn't go beyond a simple name.

Although I've never used that section of the forum myself, I think it would be a shame if all the accumulated years of work stored there were simply deleted.

[smjjames]

[quote name='KasperVld']Omission in the banner fixed. I blame the clock for that one (1:30AM here now). As for the problem with roleplaying, I commented on that above.
[/QUOTE]

What about keeping the company stuff? I mean that sort of makes sense, but yeah, I looked back a page from my post and saw what you said. I don't frequent that forum, so I don't really have much of anything to say on it.

[daniel l.]

did anyone read my previous post? sorry but i'd really like to know the answer.

[Spartwo]

*saves all threads and blogs for reposting*

[DuoDex]

[quote name='longbyte1']No more blogs ;.; but I'd knew the forums would be migrating to either IPS or XenForo.

Do we keep the ability to change our titles? That would be nice.

Also, what about link redirection? All the forum post links are going to break. And of course rep.[/QUOTE]

[quote name='Fwiffo']Also, could you confirm this key question: Will links pointing to old threads and post #'s still be valid?[/QUOTE]

Actually, can confirm that both reputation (definitely not going to break) and user-title editing (definitely not going to break) will stay.

Can't say about the links, but preliminary testing indicates they will be broken :( Though I expect Kasper to have a few tricks up his sleeve.

[EuSouONumero345]

Will the look of the forums change? Probably not, but it just seems cool, a new theme.

[KasperVld]

[quote name='daniel l.']This is both cool and scary at the same time... will we be able to give our threads custom background colors or images? and will players get little badges on their profile as a reward for doing cool things like on the starmade forum?[/QUOTE]
I don't think those are planned features at the moment, but it's something we can look into down the line :)

[quote name='EuSouONumero345']Will the look of the forums change? Probably not, but it just seems cool, a new theme.[/QUOTE]
I've taken [URL="http://i.imgur.com/W73ty98.jpg"]this screenshot[/URL], which is only a [I]rough indication[/I] of what the new forums will look like. And ignore the missing avatars :) Edited November 21, 2015 by KasperVld

[Alshain]

[quote name='KasperVld']I've taken [URL="http://i.imgur.com/W73ty98.jpg"]this screenshot[/URL], which is only a [I]rough indication[/I] of what the new forums will look like. And ignore the missing avatars :)[/QUOTE]

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)

[DuoDex]

[quote name='cantab']It still seems like a rather drastic measure though, to just Delete Freaking Everything with very little notice.[/QUOTE]

Considering that this has been technically breaking of the rules since Day 1, I think it's high time it's deleted.

An old, old quote from vexx32 I still like to pull out whenever this issue is raised

[FONT=arial][quote]So, the basic concept of most of the roleplaying-style games as it were was that one person or a group of people would be a "country" or a "faction" or what have you, and would compete against other individuals or groups. All well and good, right? Well, not so much. You see, naturally this leads to it getting extremely competitive, and people don't like to lose and so forth. You inevitably end up with situations where just about everyone is breaking the rules of the game in order to win, and/or taking the game from that thread and allowing it to encroach upon other parts of the forum. Things like deliberately spamming others' threads in the Spacecraft Exchange in attempts to discredit them or make them look bad, etc., all for the sake of the game; some people could even go so far as to starting semi-separate wars and fights over PMs, which literally [B]cannot[/B] be moderated directly unless one of the participants deliberately brings a moderator in, and even then the moderators could only be getting part of the story.

Now, naturally, moderating such a thing is a hellish nightmare (N.B.: I was not a mod way back then) since each thread tends to have its own rules, which first of all nobody's really following too closely, and second of all are very poorly worded and leave a large amount of loopholes. The forum rules are all well and good, but inevitably at some point the users and players of the game start to get it in their heads that since they made the game, they get to dictate the rules within that thread and that the moderators should stay out of it. I'm not 100% sure if this exactly happened here, but I've seen it happen in other places often enough to say that it's fairly likely it did. So simply keeping everyone to the usual rules of decency and civility is practically impossible unless we want to be handing out infractions and bans every other day.

One of the major reasons this tends to spiral out of control is that people start to identify too closely with their characters within the roleplay and forget to clearly draw a line between the game and the rest of the usual forum interaction. It [B]all[/B] becomes part of the game, to them. If it was only one or two people doing it, it'd just be a matter of reminding them every now and again to keep it within the confines of the thread and the game, but... it tends to be the case that when one person does it, everyone just sort of picks it up and runs with it until serious infractions start getting handed out.

People don't draw the boundaries well enough, and it has long since been decided that if roleplay is to happen, it should not happen on these forums at all. At least if the roleplaying is on a totally different website, people will be better able to draw the correct boundaries between roleplaying and correct forum etiquette and interactions with other people. All it takes is one single person to overstep the boundaries of the thread and then suddenly either everyone thinks it's okay, or simply does not want to be left behind in the game by [B]not[/B] following suit... and then [B]everyone[/B] is doing it. As such, even though being extremely concise and specific about what's going on [B]helps[/B]... we'd still err on the side of caution and say it's not allowed at all for the simple fact that one bad apple ruins the bunch... like [B]wildfire[/B].

This is generally my personal view on the subject, but as far as I have been able to tell is also pretty much the official word on roleplaying pretty much as far back as I can remember. I remember taking one glance at the roleplaying that was going on at that time and just vowing to stay the hell out of it. [IMG]http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/images/smilies/k_tongue.gif[/IMG][/quote][/FONT] Edited November 21, 2015 by DuoDex

[daniel l.]

[quote name='KasperVld']I don't think those are planned features at the moment, but it's something we can look into down the line :)


I've taken [URL="http://i.imgur.com/W73ty98.jpg"]this screenshot[/URL], which is only a [I]rough indication[/I] of what the new forums will look like. And ignore the missing avatars :)[/QUOTE]

Looks pretty awesome! good to know you are now using the modern flat design style instead of gradients and false 3d. it looks pretty good.

[Tiberion]

If you don't know why Roleplaying is forbidden, you simply haven't been around long enough to know. Consider yourself [B]lucky[/B]. We do not speak of those dark days.

Also, please try to make links redirect. Its absolutely the worst when old search results in google or any old links you find are broken.

[KasperVld]

[quote name='WildLynx']May be old forum should be kept at same URL in read-only mode for some time?
Or at least, some sort of data dump to be available for reference?

Alternatively, administrators need to notify Google and others, that old forum is gone, and all links need to be removed.
Or else, it will be impossible to find something in new forum for a long time, because old links will outweigh new ones and occupy tens of first pages of search results.[/QUOTE]
The old forum will be accessible for administrators and moderators for a short while, in case people wish to retrieve content. That said, you should back up your own content if at all possible now, because there might be a small wait time for recovered content after the fact.

[Guest]

[quote name='KasperVld']The old forum will be accessible for administrators and moderators for a short while, in case people wish to retrieve content. That said, you should back up your own content if at all possible now, because there might be a small wait time for recovered content after the fact.[/QUOTE]
I'm excited about the move. I am very happy that there will be REAL mobile support. Have you considered making an app?

[COLOR=silver][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR]

Will gif avatars work again? Edited November 21, 2015 by Guest
fix spelling error

[Norpo]

[quote name='Hotaru']Although I've never used that section of the forum myself (Rocket Builders), I think it would be a shame if all the accumulated years of work stored there were simply deleted.[/QUOTE]

I agree with this; there's probably a good alternative to deleting forever 2.5+ years of combined effort and history.

That said, the alternatives aren't looking much better, so we're really looking at a "lesser of a dozen evils" situation. Rated roughly from top to bottom in quality.

Some alternatives:
[LIST]
[*]Merge The Spacecraft Exchange and Rocket Builders. This is [I]very messy,[/I] but if maybe somehow all contents of rocket builders could be shoved to the bottom pages such that the active building threads (skunkworks, etc.) will be naturally pushed (bumped) to the front by their owners, while older ones will stay in the bottom pages (but still be preserved, and accessable)
[*]Archive Rocket Builders, put it in a "Legacy" section. Lock all threads. It could add clutter the forum menu though, which is bad. Still, easily accessable, and if you shove it in the bottom, then who will see it?
[*]Have some guy go through all the threads and archive them on the [URL="https://archive.org/web/"]Wayback Machine.[/URL] (preserved, will probably outlive the kerbal space program forum itself, very hard though, and not accessable via the forums, probably not a realistic option)
[*]Delete it, but keep the contents in a hard drive somewhere. Information will not be lost, but it will be effectively be lost, never to be seen again by anyone except for admins.
[*]Wipe it. Clean. Cleanse. No remains. The nuclear option. [I](Current plan, either that or the one above)[/I]
[*]Just keep it. Reevaluate; Is wiping the Rocket Builders forum the right option?
[/LIST]

If you can, please consider these options, although Rocket Builders may seem dead, some people have put a [B][I]lot[/I][/B] of work into it, and some great crafts are in there, whose owners may not be around to see it wiped.

I suspect this may be more important than the ROUND-8 being turned into a XenonGas tank to some people :) Edited November 21, 2015 by Norpo
post v1.1, now with slightly less vaguely passive-aggressive tone, sorry probably tired 1:30 AM Kasper

[KasperVld]

[quote name='CliftonM']I'm excited about the move. I am very happy that there will be REAL mobile support. Have you considered making an app?[/QUOTE]

No need for an app! The new forums have a responsive design meaning that it scales with the device you're using it on. Even just resizing the browser window will force the web page to adapt. Looking at the forum index from the previous screenshot that can result in [url=http://i.imgur.com/D1dI9IP.png]this[/url] mobile view - and there's a middle ground as well.

[Guest]

[quote name='KasperVld']No need for an app! The new forums have a responsive design meaning that it scales with the device you're using it on. Even just resizing the browser window will force the web page to adapt. Looking at the forum index from the previous screenshot that can result in [URL="http://i.imgur.com/D1dI9IP.png"]this[/URL] mobile view - and there's a middle ground as well.[/QUOTE]
Oh, I like that.

[billkerbinsky]

[quote name='DuoDex']Can't say about the links, but preliminary testing indicates they will be broken :( Though I expect Kasper to have a few tricks up his sleeve.[/QUOTE]
That would be really unfortunate (given all the deep links into the existing forums in places like kerbalstuff and github, as well as internal links within the forums). I'd call it a show-stopper, but I'm just an end user.