Crossposting

davej

Would it be a good thing to be able to do some sort of limited crossposting on boards ?

Or is this the worst idea of all time and of all nations?*

I'm aware of the fact that this could potentially be abused by spammy muppets, but I have seen more than a few cases where an option to crosspost a message to, say a maximum of 2 other forums, could be warranted. For example someone who is selling their camera on For Sale may want to inform the Art|Anim|Photo board too.
In fact it might be an idea to restrict it so that you can crosspost from a few select forums only, For Sale being the prime candidate.
Besides spamming (and a spammy muppet will always find a way to be a spammy muppet), the other problem may be the issue of a similar thread existing on two different forums. One way of solving this would be to autolock the "secondary" threads and/or point any replies to the bottom of the "primary" thread.

just thought it might be a way to improve the user friendliness of boards..

davej

amp

As a refugee from Usenet I find the word crossposting deeply unnerving. In fact I'm typing one-handed while biting my nails.

I understand the idea but I feel that the possible miss-use of it verus the very rare need to actually use it along with the fairly seperate hierarchy of boards makes this one a non-runner imo.

DeVore

I'm also an old Usenet sea-dog and "crossposting" also makes my timbers shiver.

While I understand your desire for it (and it could be set up to limit the negative side... as you suggest, limiting the number of boards to be crossposted to) it can be used as the nuclear weapon of trollers.... crossposting Paganism and Christianity or CS and Quake ...


The real death blow to the idea though is that its utter non-native to VBB and would require a fairly massive hack afaik. We are considering alternatives to VBB for the medium term because we're tired of saying that but for the moment its unlikely to be a runner.



DeV.

davej

Yes I too am well aware that "crossposting" is a dirty word, and perhaps I shouldn't have used it.

What I'm talking about isn't crossposting really, it's more a handy mechanism to inform more than one interested party about something that may be of relevance to them. If restricted by the mechanisms I have outlined above I don't see it being too much trouble at all.

fairly seperate hierarchy of boards

hmm, I'm not sure if I agree with this. Much of the "hierarchy" of boards appears to be fairly arbitrary. I'm not sure I would even class the system as a hierarchy. This is not a criticism, I think you have to be pragmatic about certain things. There are historical reasons as to why such-and-such a board is under such-and-such a heading. Just take a look what's in the After Hours area.
John Dewey would be spinning in his grave at some of the stuff in there!

Something along the lines of what I'm suggesting would go someways to help address the fact that no system is perfect. Also it would be an interesting project for any admin to implement.

davej

DeVore

like we dont have enough to do!?

Yeah, I know the navigation/structure is a bit odd... it came out of meh brane... so thats not so surprising.

I've been thinking about this very topic a fair bit lately actually, no firm conclusions but I know what you are getting at...

DeV.

davej

ok DeVore I just read your post and I fully suspected that the technical problems of actually implementing it (especially when it comes to new updates of vbb), would be a problem.

As for your fears of nuclear war, that's why I suggested that only a few select forums would allow you to initiate a multipost*. Whitelist rather than blacklist. The type of forums permitted to do so would be the very ones that have trouble fitting into the boards hierarchy.

Dev, you've spoken often of the future of boards and how it is evolving. I guess it's easy enough to predict that vbb is going to increasingly become a limiting factor for moving things forward.

davej


* tm, copywright davej etc..