Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A big step to doing this is going to be fixing the forum search tool. It's next to useless, and that's why no one bothers with it or finds anything relevant to what they want to suggest.

Put one word in and everything is kosher, the search runs and you get flooded with results that take hours to sift through just like you expect.

Put two words in and the search immediately chokes. You may get a few results and most of them will not be relevant, but more often you just don't get anything.

Try any modifiers and the server explodes.

This is pretty horrible CCP. I just tried to find a thread I know exists from a few months back and even though I remembered the title my 2 decades of search-fu expertise couldn't coax it to the surface after 30 minutes of finaggling. Your forum mods are sick unto death of squashing redundant threads, but they're never going to catch a break unless you fix the search engine to be more functional.

There should also be a pop up before posting a thread:

"ARE YOU SURE THIS THREAD DOESN'T EXIST ALREADY?"

And when pressing 'open thread':

"DID YOU USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION/CHECK THE COMMON IDEAS THEREAD AND THE LAST THREADS ON THE LAST 4 PAGES?"

Every time a redundant thread gets closed because of the OP, if he doesn't get a warning right away, add a counter, to 5 = warning, more ...
And as some request with account wide consequences (and them all being bad ideas), this is a good one.

And in the first line while opening the thread should appear the link to the forum rules, which has to be actively removed to write... If it is left in, you can already guess the importance of said thread.

Step 1: Scrap this stupid excuse for a forum.
Step 2: Install an actual, developed, supported, off the shelf solution for your forums, and customize it.

Bonus, you get a working search feature.

Do we even need forums anymore? Look at Twitter and Reddit, can't we adapt systems like upvote/downvote and hashtags?

Forums are still the same old thread/title/list of off topic replies/flame/troll crap that they always were. I agree that a better search function would be nice though.

Hashtags and votes are just search functions that have been prioritized over the rest. A good search engine gives you the ability to do both efficiently, as your choice, when you feel the option to do so will yield better results.

So no. Don't copy Reddit or Twitter or any of that other crap, because those are actually examples of simplified, less useful search functions.



Agreed, but this would only be beneficial if the search engine was superb over merely being good. If people who don't know how to use search engines well still end up posting redundant threads and this extra ammunition is given to the trolls to scream at them, it will just discourage people from posting at all. You don't want people discouraged from posting, just from posting repetitively.

And this isn't going to stop redundant threads. This thread is redundant, and it would have been redundant even if I had the search function by the thread title exactly as I suggested, since I deliberately obscured the topic with an indirect title. It's been suggested dozens of times to fix the search engine and I could have pulled up any one of those old threads, but I would have also pulled up their old discussions and baggage whereas I started with a clean slate here.

And that's something that we can't forget. Sometimes starting the discussion over yields different and interesting results.

I was under the impression CCP wrote this one in house? Or did they simply bastardize it?

I see what you did there ,)

But if its just about getting some support to fix the issue, you got mine:

+1 /supported

But besides a few superficial suggestions, l can hardly be of any active assistance here. Maybe suggest a bigger hammer for the ISD for repeat offenders. I know if have been enraged a few times and it would cost me dealry for one or the other occasion, but I could bear a warning or day of posting ban to cool me down, as long as the inciter gets at least as much.

@edit: draft was incomplete after having an empty post .. how fitting °°

THIS^, SO MUCH THIS.
I almost reflexively ctrl+a and ctrl+c my entire post EVERY TIME I make a new post. It really pisses me off. I get done writing and I click post and the page just reloads and my post is gone with a draft buuton that only has 1/3 of my actual post. Shet is rediculously obtuse and irritating.

However I'm not deluded into thinking pop ups will stop redundant threads. I'd favor any light punishment system for that.

Also, guess what happened when I clicked post!

I'll see if I can find the info I only partly recall from the first few days. But I seem to recall that they purchased the software and heavily modified it. Then broke it.

+1 Best thing since sliced bread. This is really helps correct the myriad of problems with the forums.