Upcoming Site Changes

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by dcarr

+1 for the vBulletin upgrade! Thanks Brandon!

For now, maybe just archive the spotlights somewhere (would be easy for anyone to do, in fact) and consider reviving them later once the upgrade dust has settled.

I concur.

[Tetraman]

When will reputation be removed?

I always liked Spotlights and would be sad to see them go, however I do understand that it's mostly just clutter. If individuals had the ability to trim the quotes they spotlighted and/or the quotes they are spotlighted in then maybe you'd see a little less random quotes if posters could go back and revoke their choice of what is good to highlight...but how you pull that off I have no idea...

If the only options are keep spotlights or toss spotlights, I choose not to vote and trust in the webmasters of the forum.

[Steve W]

As a person that approves or denies spotlights I will throw out my 2 cents Canadian.

It is very difficult to decide what is and isn't a spotlight. I, an old man, may think something is great were as Karthik, a young 'un, might think I am totally wrong. Sometimes I see 20 bad spotlights that I do not approve then wonder did I do the right thing. It is a slippery slope on what is good.

I am willing to cull if requested and know that there are a lot that I would remove but would all people agree with my selections?

If there was a way to have any recommended spotlight approved by, let's say, 3 authorized approvers before being added then that would help. If it means a lot more work on everyones behalf, is it worth it?

[DonRotolo]

I'll fall in with the "I like spotlights, but if they hinder an upgrade, adios" crowd.

I won't repeat what everyone else said, but I will add that sometimes it's a thrill to see one of your own quotes up there. You definitely get great "cred" when you're demonstrating CD to someone and one of your own pops up.

As for the rest: I'd even be a bit more aggressive in removing & consolidating several fora.

[coalhot]

+2 for the VB update. 3.6.4 seems like an old and quite vulnerable version...

As for the other changes, I like them. Keep everything clean and simple. It's going to be sad seeing it change though, it's been the same since I first came here in 2008...

[dag0620]

Throwing in my weight, I too did like the spotlights for the various reasons posted above. I think my knowledge of things FIRST would not be nearly as vast as it is had it not been for spotlight posts.

With that being said, a VB4 or VB5 upgrade would be greatly appreciated, and I'd hate to see one feature hold up the upgrade.

I'm always a huge fan of stripping down and streamlining things, and I'm glad to see CD go in that direction!

[Calvin Hartley]

Spotlights....... I too enjoy these greatly. I've found many interesting and informative topics by simply clicking and intriguing spotlight. I would be disappointed by their removal. As for cleaning them up, (as mentioned previously in this thread) I really don't have much of an opinion. Whether they do or they don't, won't make a whole lot of difference from my point of view. I'm still a relatively new member of this forum after all.

[EricH]

I too enjoy looking at the spotlights. Some of them are good for a laugh (usually from the "quotes" thread). Others go to places that make people think. The great thing about them is that you never quite know what the link will bring up--technical discussion, chit-chat, or maybe Car Nack.

Edit: However, a number of them do seem to lead to "Invalid thread specified". Those should definitely be removed if there's any removal.

[Taylor]

Spotlights rock.
Sticky threads - not so much. There are a BUNCH of outdated/obsolete/just plain useless stickied threads that take up a ton of space at the top of the forum pages.

[jwallace15]

Did some thinking last night when my computer was off; what if you limit spotlighting posts to those with a full bar of rep/ >1000 posts? That way whoever is spotlighting a post clearly knows what they're doing and won't waste the forum's time with useless tripe.

[BigJ]

Originally Posted by jwallace15

Did some thinking last night when my computer was off; what if you limit spotlighting posts to those with a full bar of rep/ >1000 posts? That way whoever is spotlighting a post clearly knows what they're doing and won't waste the forum's time with useless tripe.

I dunno, most of my rep came from making bad jokes...

[Chris is me]

I understand a lot of the sentiments in this thread, and overall I'm somewhere in the middle in terms of the spotlight system.

I totally get and agree with Karthik and the others thinking along those lines. Spotlights lately have been at best silly and at worst something no one will understand in the future at all. Seriously, look at page 1 of the Spotlight list and compare it to page 51. You can't argue that there hasn't been a drop in quality content.

I also agree with Gregor. So much of what I've learned about FRC was from months of reading every spotlit thread I could get my hands on. When I was a bored, inspired high schooler with a whole summer of nothing to do, I read at least a dozen of those threads a day and soaked up knowledge like a sponge. Some method to preserve quality threads and posts is beneficial.

Ultimately, though, I want the solution that lets us upgrade VB as quickly as possible. There are a lot of new features that would be very beneficial to the community. I personally don't care for / won't use social media integration, but VB's Social Groups in particular have a lot of potential. Depending on implementation, teams could make their own private Social Groups. This would help encourage more CD use and also provide a place for teams to collaborate online that isn't Facebook.

So my proposal is simple: Get rid of Spotlights in software as we know them. Archive all of the threads and quotes somewhere. Then, on an independent website (or at least, not a VB page), we can start compiling links to good threads. If there's a resource somewhere with lots of insightful CD threads that's kept up to date by a handful of users, then students can still learn from them as Gregor and I have. It could also collect inspirational quotes like Spotlights are supposed to do, if we want. Basically, I'm saying there's no reason we can't replicate the functionality of Spotlight as a community outside of a custom vBulletin plugin that impedes updates.

Originally Posted by jwallace15

Did some thinking last night when my computer was off; what if you limit spotlighting posts to those with a full bar of rep/ >1000 posts? That way whoever is spotlighting a post clearly knows what they're doing and won't waste the forum's time with useless tripe.

A lot of the "bad" spotlights come from these users.

[rachelholladay]

+1 to everything Chris is Me said. I'll move my earlier sentiments to that camp.

[Tristan Lall]

Would you mind generating a version of the Spotlight table with all of the entries on one static page? That way the content can be preserved in context (as opposed to sifting through the old posts manually).

[synth3tk]

Originally Posted by Brandon Martus

Once these changes have been made, this will allow us to easily upgrade vBulletin which has some new features which may be useful and provide other valuable features (Facebook/Twitter integration, blogs, groups, etc.).

The only part I really care about.

Thanks for everything you do, Brandon!