How can the forum be improved?

Yeah, I was having an issue a while ago. Turns out it was a combination of underestimating how many threads get comments in 2 days and apparently going blind. I have made the habit of bookmarking these threads in the meantime.

I like the idea of a user led LUG. No formality, no time limit, no pressure. I usually head to meet.opensuse.org/bar when I have Linux questions or want to chat about BBQing or any random thing.

This sounds great!

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It is very easy to setup Matrix integration (and most any other platform) using the Chat Integration plugin. Admin sets parameters by category / tag / ignore… and it works from there.

Without this, you could use an RSS Bot in Matrix to subscribe to “Latest” or a similar rss feed from Discourse.

That sounds frikkin’ cool.

*edit* damn there’s people there right now lol, popped in an out. Need to remember that link.

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Man that makes life easy. Thank you.

I checked the instructions and that should be doable. Might be worth having the RSS for the shows as well.

Making it a matrix/forum vote might be a good idea?

Example:

Matrix users only:
[ Yes/No ] I want DLN shows posted to Matrix when they go up.

Matrix & Forum users:
I’m a user of: [ Matrix/Forum/Both ]
[ Yes/No ] I want DLN Forum threads posted to Matrix when they’re created. *
[ Yes/No ] I want all DLN Forum posts posted to Matrix when they’re made. *
* If a majority of Matrix or Forum users say no it’s a no for that item.

The /bar is always open so people come and go. Sometimes it gets pretty busy lol

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I’ll make a comment that I have about forum usability that is chargeable to Discourse rather than to this particular implementation:

I find the Notification list format that Discourse uses bewildering. It doesn’t seem to function as I would expect it to, with a list of new posts, or a list of activities by other people that i might be interested in, since my last visit.

Maybe the issue is that the icons are supposed to be telling me something that I can’t figure out. But the real issue is that I’d like to “Dismiss” the notifications and thereby keep track of whether I had looked at them or not. Then, when I visit the forum, I could more easily keep track of what I’d like to go back and read.

But there seems to be no way to “dismiss” or “mark as read and get rid of” the old notifications in that dropdown, so I’ve stopped trying to use that and thereby don’t even make an effort to go keep track of things I’d like to go back and read if I miss it the first time.

If I am missing some setting that would change this behavior please let me know.

You could always just spin up a new Matrix chat room if you don’t want it posting to what you’ve already setup. Will look like this in Matrix once you customize (this particular integration is actually an RSS bot for matrix looking for a specific tag):

Poll functionality is built into Discourse fyi if you want to enable it. See https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-create-polls/77548

I am not sure about your specific issue but try to look into the settings for notifications.
Mine look like this:

Of course all posts that I subscribed to are sent to me by email.

Cool.

Continuing the discussion from How can the forum be improved?:

Can you post a screenshot. Happy to assist you. fyi, you can alter your personal notification settings under:

https://forum.tuxdigital.com/my/preferences/notifications

You can change what see by default, instead of just a categories list, at:

https://forum.tuxdigital.com/my/preferences/interface

image

Also, learn more about any aspect of notifications at https://meta.discourse.org

It appears to be a bug. The screenshots or pictures can be slightly above 500kb and the pictures will hang on upload.

Here is a link about others having the issue as well.

I ran the vote in Matrix first to see what they’d like in chat.

It’s going to be an RSS of the episodes/livestreams and forum network announcements.

Setting up a bot that only scrapes forum network announcements might be tricky, especially if they’re not all done the same way. It might be better done manually.

@Ulfnic I recommend assigning a tag, which you can make unavailable to the forum at large by restricting to a particular user group / trust level while still making it possible (for those with access) to use across any number of categories.

RSS bot in Matrix only tracks new topics, not replies. :+1:

Tags already support RSS. So, to follow new topics in news you’d just need the url
https://forum.tuxdigital.com/tag/news.rss

One improvement I’d love to see here is the replacement of youtube links with odysee links, at least for the main DLN content creators here.

I understand the popularity side of this. I just don’t have any love for youtube and I am way past being ready for another app to take it’s place.

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CubicleNate is now hosting Linux Saloon which is set up like a LUG:

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Oh, this was formally BDLL, I’m in…definitely.

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The “About” post for describing the category About the LUGFest category has still default placeholder.

Maybe a reorganization of the categories could be done. In example, what does “Front Page Linux” mean? There is no explanation and the category name is confusing me as a new user. I open it up and it contains links to the YouTube channel TuxDigital (where I come from). Didn’t expect that. But shouldn’t it be under the category “Shows”?

And some of the categories on the main page seems to be out of place to me. In example why is there a “Quality Control Platform” on the main page? Shouldn’t it be under “Destination Linux Network”? “LUGFest” Is completely empty and I don’t know what purpose this category has. “Uncategorized” sounds like you have forgotten to give it a name, instead what is really is: “Off-Topic”, which describe it’s purpose better. “Help Desk” could be renamed to “Help and Support” or maybe “Ask for Help”. “Linux Discussion” as a category in a Linux discussion forum sound a bit strange. It looks like a “General Hardware and Software” category and for the sake of consistency the word “Discussion” shouldn’t be needed in the category name.

I am new in this forum (as you probably can see anyway) and these are my first thoughts and may not make sense to you as someone who knows this forum and it’s structure. I am not familiar with DLN or any other part of this community, I only watch “This Week in Linux” (and love the show).

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Rocco, against his better judgement handed me the keys to the cabin on this one. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: For real, he is happy with what I am doing with it and I think we can make great things happen with Linux Saloon.

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Is there a way to insert Tabs into your text editing?

Just missed having a tab function, but not sure how difficult it would be to include?

  • (oh, also hashtag labels and a search function. Sorry, just kidding. :slight_smile: )
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Dude that drives me crazy. I have to make a tab in mousepad then copy/paste it in.

I think the problem is tab is a fundamental standard of HTML for transitioning between form elements so the browser thinks you want to move to the next thing. This can be prevented with JS but…

2015 quote from the co-founder of Discourse:

Nor did there seem to be a desire to make an alternative key combo for tabs or put a tab producing button somewhere.

Best thing I can think of is hacking together a CLI command that puts a tab in the clipboard and pastes it with a shortcut key using xclip and xdotool.

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Does not have to be the tab bar or any other key. Just insert Tabs the same way you insert bold or italic text.