New Forum Software Installed - New/Changed Features

[sysadmin]

I've updated the forum code base to SMF 2.0.3.
I've restored most of the old functionality, so things should be the same as before.

New things:

• You may now change your "Display Name" to be separate from your login username.
  You no longer need to send in a postcard to update your Display Name.
  
• Various anti-spam features, to be discussed in a different post.
• You have "Buddy List" in your profile, and can follow your forum friends.
  

Changed things:

• 
  The "Ignore User" feature is now part of the Buddy List.  It will still block PMs/Posts from people you ignore.
  
• Quoting a post with an image has a different button.
• Various moderator features.

If you feel there is a feature that you want to add, please visit http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/
If there is a mod that you like, and that will work on this codebase, let me know, and I'll see what happens.

[sysadmin]

There are some other things I am thinking about:

• Refactoring the individual boards to better reflect the user experience
• Turning on enforcement of people with too large of a signature. (Hint: read the rules for the limits)
• Magically blessing forum accounts of FanimeCon Staff members.
• Purging spam accounts
• Purging inactive accounts
• Auto-locking all topics once they reach 400 days without a reply.
• Auto-deleting all topics once they reach 800 days without a reply.
• Having a convention theme template for the forums
• Making visited links purple again

[Barnes]

Here's what I think:

Purging inactive accounts

Maybe you could send an email warning about that. If you get no reply by a deadline you specify, then go ahead and purge as needed.

Auto-locking all topics once they reach 400 days without a reply.

How about 365 days, just for the sake of having a solid year deadline.

Other than those, your ideas sound just fine to me  :)

[lyricaldanichan]

I like the new features and it would be cool if we can have a theme for this forum instead of the SMF default.

Would the creative department be able to do something like that ?

[sysadmin]

Purging inactive accounts
Maybe you could send an email warning about that. If you get no reply by a deadline you specify, then go ahead and purge as needed.

Maybe.  It depends on the age of the account.  If someone hasn't logged in for two years, I don't think it matters to delete.

Auto-locking all topics once they reach 400 days without a reply.
How about 365 days, just for the sake of having a solid year deadline.

The idea is to round off to 400, so that the cutoff is a little over 1 years.  Salient topics posted in May 2012 are often relevant in May 2013, but not necessarily June 2013.

I like the new features and it would be cool if we can have a theme for this forum instead of the SMF default.
Would the creative department be able to do something like that ?

This is planned as the eighth bullet point in the list.

[ewu]

re: deletion of 800+ day threads. There have been a few times that I have used the forum for reference. Not saying that everything would fall apart if I didn't have it, but its helpful occasionally. Just a factor in balancing the options. Maybe if the 800+ day deletion only applied to non-fanime/CA posts? Depends on how much of the threads you want to clear out.