Reputation and Comments

Time stamps have been removed, and I've shortened the length of the text boxes. I've shifted the comments further to the left as well.

Those boxes should now be gone. I'm testing them on OS&S, and I'm not seeing any white boxes to the left of the screen.

I don't think that's anything I can fix.

Odelay (and OS&S) is still giving me trouble, but that's because whomever made the theme has made it in such a way that I don't know where the hell anything is. I go to remove buttons and there are no button indicators to remove. I go to remove the white box that's underneath each text comment, and the damn thing isn't there. In Ashlands, Grazelands, and all the others, I've got it about as streamlined as it's going to get. Only in Odelay am I getting any issue. I may increase the number of comments that can be seen, if only to prevent seeing that damnable drop down box and its decision to ignore everything I tell it to do.

I've also made the comments a little longer, at 140 characters, which is the size of a tweet. Anything longer, and you should post it as a response.

Why 140? Why not keep the 75?

It doesn't have to be 140, but it would make better use of the extra space that cannot be removed in the comments section. If there's 75 characters, that's half a line of text. That leaves a lot of blank space before the next comment appears below it. At least with 140 characters, it would fill it in better, and make it look less wasteful.

The current comment system is now about as good as it's going to get. I know people want it to look like VB, but it's just not going to unless someone who has an expert level of coding and experience with Xenforo is willing to get under the hood and change dozens of variables to make it look that way, and even then, it will never look like VB. It does look a bit kludgey, but that's Xenforo all over. It's a very modular software. You can add almost anything to it, but you're going to notice the add-ons because of that. Of course, if there is no add-on, or an add-on doesn't do everything we hope it would, you have to dig inside and change things around, and quite frankly, Xenforo is rather counter-intuitive in that regard. Where you expect something to be, it isn't, and while I am getting very familiar with the software, she still has a lot of surprises. I'm going to keep working on ironing out the wrinkles, but it might take some time.

Thanks man, I appreciate the work. One of the reasons I want the comments short is that I almost never use WF on desktop mode. On Mobile this is what I see:



I think shorter comments the better.

Hmm. I can see why that would be better. Well, I can make it 75, and just tell people that if you have more to say, post instead.

I'm seeing them the same way now on mobile -- compressed into a small ribbon with a lot of space to the right.

What's it look like now?

Still the same for me.

Okay, that may be the way the responsive system is working. I had made some adjustments, but it seems to be ignoring them.

Just a heads up, I'm disabling the comment system for about 20 minutes or so, so I can work on something.

So what's the decision on reputation vs. comment system?

I only speak for me, but I'm still not happy. Not your fault at all just the software.

I think until/unless we can get the comments mod looking better I'd like to just 'likes'. As someone who primarily surfs WF on their phone the ribbons of vertical text are extremely disruptive.

Others?

Yeah, if the comments are going to display crappily on mobile devices (which lots of people use), then there's not much point in having them.

i like having the ability to comment. it does look ugly as sin, though.

What I liked about the rep system was that all of the comments were inline. Sure, it gave a rep point to whomever you were commenting, but it was streamlined, and non-intrusive.
The developer of Post Comments said that if I wanted customization, it would cost tech support help on a per hour basis, and he would need access to our Admin CP, at which time I disinclined to acquiesce to his request. I also stand by my initial dislike of having the ability to carry on back and forth conversations in a comment window instead of in the thread.

Still, whatever you big guys decide, let me know so we can push forward with it. I think the natives are getting a bit restless.

The problem with the rep system is that it did not display on mobile devices (at least not on my phone, tablet was okay), which again is problematic considering how many of us use them.

The weird thing is that, as far as I can tell, on a desktop it uses the entire available horizontal real estate, whereas on a phone browser, it chooses to only use about a third of it.

That's the software's responsive system at work. It was supposed to confine the text to 45% of the screen's resolution. It did so, but it was a bit overzealous in its execution.
Not that it matters, now, as I've removed the reputation system (both of them) entirely. As you guys have said, they're too flawed, too kludgey. That goes for the comment system as well, but the big guys have yet to come to a decision on that one, whether to try again, or just drop it entirely.

I think I actually meant the comment system, not the rep system.

Ah, okay. Well, it falls prey to the responsive software as well. That one I've adjusted all the way up and down the board, and I can't get it to do anymore than it's already doing. See, the comment system uses the template's defaults, but it doesn't say from where it draws those default figures. It could be from profile comments, it could be from moderator notes, it doesn't actually say, and there's really no way to find out. Instead, I have to tinker with each layout to see what it does, and that is very time consuming. It also leads to odd events happening, since I'm doing this while the board is operating. I try to do any tinkering early in the morning, but I'm sure I still catch people off guard when the reply button turns bright green and then disappears.

John is right. Anything longer than 75 characters should just be a post.

My preference is for just using the XF default "like" feature. If you've got something to say, post! Posts will be indexed. Posts are activity. Posts drive the board. Are we looking for a comment feature just because it's always been that way or because it's actually beneficial?

After mulling this a bit, and reading the thoughts of others, I've decided to firmly stand in the likes only camp. It was working pretty well, and was probably generating additional post content, which is a desirable outcome.

Anyone else? @evenflow, @Tex

It is clunky, I will come down in favor of likes, wanting the old comments is nostalgia.

It looks terrible.

Comments were useful when it was a nice discreet system that didn't seem intrusive.

The add-on looked promising when I found it...sorry it turned out to be relatively useless.

The look of comments is terrible right now. I do like the way the old system worked and if there was a way we could have something that was similar to that I would be in favor of it. If I have to choose between just have likes and having comments in its current state then I'm in favor of only having likes.

In that case, unless otherwise stated, I will remove the comment system by the end of the day.