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Forum Suggestions and Improvements

UT

UT

in my defense, I have none
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Appellate Judge
If you have technical suggestions or improvement requests for the forum, post them here.

Things to keep in mind:
  • Be specific about why you're asking for this; what is the use case, what problem does it solve, etc
  • Be specific about what change you're looking for; explain the desired input and output clearly and objectively.
  • Anything that requires significant modifications to XenForo will likely not be considered.
Some things that should not go here:
 
To start us off (and give an example of a good suggestion) I am cross posting Bobsican's suggestion:
Bobsican said:
Would it be possible for this forum to add the following things as stuff that can be quickly shown within text :like this:? For example, :poke ball:, instead of having to manually link elsewhere such image or uploading it directly to the respective post.

Normal.png

Ghost.png

Water.png

Fire.png

Grass.png

Bug.png

Dragon.png

Dark.png

Fairy.png

Psychic.png

Ice.png

Electric.png

Poison.png

Ground.png

Rock.png

Fighting.png

Steel.png

Flying.png

Stellar.png


These would be quite useful when discussing sets, and in particular I'm certain some OMs and several Pet Mods would benefit from this quality of life addition, I'd think the text that'd be used within :this kind of code: is also quite self-evident for each respective type, so I'm going to omit suggestions on that to ease reading.
Click to expand...
 
To add onto Bob's suggestion, if it is possible for BB codes to work with :forme-mon: instead of always :mon-forme: that'd be great. A personal example would be the amount of times I've been asked how to get the Primal Groudon mini sprite to work is surprisingly high. It is definitely more of a national Dex thing, but the same thing probably comes up for the other ND folks with mega evolutions from time to time. The types having a BB code would be fantastic in a tera generation.

Edit for clarity: ie. : primal-groudon : and : groudon-primal : both spit out :groudon-primal:
 
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Request: Allow for long quoted posts to be collapsed after they have been expanded.

Reasoning: When you quote a post, if it is long enough, a shortened version of it appears and you can click to expand it. I’m using UT’s post earlier in this thread as an example.
1748904780237.png

However, once it is expanded, you cannot collapse it again.
1748904830197.png

Normally, this isn’t an issue, especially if you’re on PC. However, on mobile, specifically for posts that have multiple long quotes, it can make scrolling through a post tedious and confusing. I’d appreciate the ability to collapse a long quote once it’s been expanded to improve readability on mobile. A good example of a post that has this issue is here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/cap-36-part-8-stat-spread-submissions.3765528/post-10580780
All good if it’s a Xenforo limitation, but it’d be a nice quality of life thing for mobile users.
 
Would be nice to have a "confirm before leaving" setting like we already have on Showdown, that would ask you for confirmation when you try to close or refresh a smogon tab while you're writting a post. That would be very useful to prevent missclicks when writting analyses/QC/GP/translation/long discussions posts, it's very frustrating when you lose work. Especially useful if you forgot to save/I think most people don't save after every sentence, would be a setting you can turn on/off and would make C&C writting easier for people like me who often close tab by error.
 
Can you tone down the ad frequency? The pop-ups really slow down the site, seems to have changed 1-2 months ago. I don't care about the occasional ad, but occasionally it gets close to once every 1-2 page changes which is approaching movie piracy site levels.
 
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I want to suggest a channel that we can suggest events to be hosted.

- The idea behind it is that some players may have good ideas to event formats, either for new competitions or to reformulate existing ones, however they dont have the time nor resources to do it.

- With the page, someone else can take it over and make that happen. I think it can be positive because it allows some ideas to come for life and maybe some of them can become official tournaments for Smogon, or at the very least make some official tournaments have small rule changes that overall improve the tournament.

There is the World Cup of Pokémon, which is primarily a Team Tournament. Inspired on the FIFA Club World Cup's sucess Worldwide(Except Europe), I would love to start a World Cup but Individual. Where instead of teaming up and relying on a good Partner lineup, you can win the tournament by your skill.

The primary Benefits for that would be, together with revealing talents to the WCoP, would allow players to play in a fair and square tournament, since one of the Main differences is the tournament being played in a League format, with regional qualification divisions, promotion and relegation, so everyone would play and practice vs people of same powerlevel, that would be playing in the same Division, making it more Friendly to people who are starting a career on Smogon.

Due to personal Reasons, I couldn't host such thing, and even if i did, it'd most likely to flop since im not well know on Smogon. However, someone else can take over, and maybe make it one of the 4 most important tours in the Website along the WCoP, SPL and SCL.
 
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  1. the rule against "double posting" vaguely says "do not double post";
    this does not explain what "double posting" even is.
    it is easy for someone to get the wrong idea that double posting is posting the same post twice, while in actuality the rule forbids two posts in a row.
    so please rephrase the rule.
    I got penalized for this and I know that other people have been penalized as well, so please re-phrase it so there will be less preventable penalizations.
  2. while there IS an exception that allows double postings for "Civil double posts" this exception is not written in the global forum rules but it is written in the warnings , please do not write half the rule in different parts of the of the forums; write the exception in the global forum rules in order to prevent missuses of the "report" button.
  3. could you please make it so banned users can appeal on their own? it is very hard to find someone to appeal for us.
  4. also in the "alerts" some times we are told what to do or not do by some unanimous mod(s), but those aren't being saved anywhere so it is easy to repeat our mistakes if we forget. so please change the system in order to reduce the chance of future repeated offenses.
 
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Soiramio3000 said:
the rule against "double posting" vaguely says "do not double post";
this does not explain what "double posting" even is.
it is easy for someone to get the wrong idea that double posting is posting the same post twice, while in actuality the rule forbids two posts in a row.
so please rephrase the rule.
I got penalized for this and I know that other people have been penalized as well, so please re-phrase it so there will be less preventable penalizations.
Click to expand...
The full rule in question:
Do not double post - edit your first one instead. Exceptions may occur if the thread you are posting on is a personal one such as an art thread, or if the thread is particularly inactive.
Click to expand...
An interpretation of double post = repeat exact same post makes absolutely no sense with the context the rule adds beyond "do not double post". We always try our best to make our messaging clear for everyone, but we also feel it's fair to expect a little bit of reading comprehension on our users' end, and there gets to be a point where trying account for people reading only the first bit of a rule or otherwise removing the final 1% of potential for borderline intentional misreadings would take a disproportionate amount of staff's energy that we could use on much more relevant things. For the other penalised people you mentioned, it's more likely they were unaware of the rule outright so no amount of rephrasing would have saved them.

@ "civil double posts", the added context in the rule already makes it clear that the rule is not intended to punish people who are expressly not flooding or stream-of-consciousness posting, at least to the extent that it's not possible to take repeated reports in good faith. Codifying any and all specific exceptions is bad practice anyways, and it's better to let staff moderate with the rough circumstances in mind that a rule is meant to address.


Your third point is fair and we've tried to find ways to do it, but it's been impossible to pull off with the way xenforo handles bans. If at any point in the future something changes about the forum software to make it a practical option this will probably happen, but yea for now the current system is the only feasible one.


@ your fourth point / verbal warnings through alerts, like with any nudge/verbal warning both online and irl the idea is that you're supposed to (and can) simply memorise these, and even if alerts were saved for longer than they are now it does not seem exactly easier to remember to look there than to memorise the nudge in the first place. The way the system here works is simply one of very gradual increases; while you may be worried about an infraction if people do end up forgetting repeatedly, in a situation like that it'll just about always be a one-pointer which is in fact more in line with an on-the-record warning that does not at all affect people's forum experience, and the warning PM also doubles as the more permanent record of the warning that you seem to be asking for. If you as you say feel like a properly recorded warning is enough for people to learn for real, then this is also where things will end before anyone gets into any real trouble.
 
Lumari said:
An interpretation of double post = repeat exact same post makes absolutely no sense with the context the rule adds beyond "do not double post".
Click to expand...
actually this misinterpretation makes perfect sense.
the dictionary definition of the word "double" is :
"consisting of two equal, identical, or similar parts or things."
Click to expand...
so it is easy for someone to read that and assume that if the 2 comments in a row are different then it does not count as a "double" post.
if the rule was phrased so it will forbid "dual" posting then it would indeed be a reading comprehension issue.(dual =/= double).

civil double posts", the added context in the rule already makes it clear that the rule is not intended to punish people who are expressly not flooding or stream-of-consciousness posting
Click to expand...
my second point is that the exception itself is a-okay but you forgot to write it in the global forum rules so it is easy for someone to fail to read it, like I did.
If at any point in the future something changes about the forum software
Click to expand...
can't you just make a special discord server just for banned users?

I don't have anything to add about the fourth point.
anyway, thanks for your response.
 
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1. With regard to the above double-posting discussion, I concur, I made that exact mistaken reading when I first joined, I would have very much appreciated a clarification that it means making two posts in sequence, not spamming identical posts

2. I would like a feature to block/hide specific users. This would be useful in the case where user A hasn't broken any Smogon rules but user B, for offsite or other reasons, would prefer or feels they are better off having a wall preventing interaction between them.

That said, I don't think that that's actually possible with our system...
 
OverMind said:
1. With regard to the above double-posting discussion, I concur, I made that exact mistaken reading when I first joined, I would have very much appreciated a clarification that it means making two posts in sequence, not spamming identical posts

2. I would like a feature to block/hide specific users. This would be useful in the case where user A hasn't broken any Smogon rules but user B, for offsite or other reasons, would prefer or feels they are better off having a wall preventing interaction between them.

That said, I don't think that that's actually possible with our system...
Click to expand...
1752527942388.png

Ignore button on profile
 
Copybox
I'd like to offer players a "copybox" BBCode to condense functionality we use constantly in BBP.

How it would work:
  • Wrap a large, formatted segment of a post with [COPY] and [/COPY].
  • The forum generates a box around the contained text, that features a clickable "Copy" button.
  • The button puts all of the contained BBCode into the user's clipboard.
It would look like this (but less ugly):

1753194131072.png
:charizard:
Charizard,
:crucibelle:
Crucibelle,
:delibird:
Delibird,
:dragapult:
Dragapult,
:gallade:
Gallade,
:garchomp:
Garchomp

Clicking "Copy" would put this in your clipboard:

[IMG alt=":charizard:"]https://www.smogon.com/forums/media/minisprites/charizard.png.m.1733184959[/IMG]Charizard, [IMG alt=":crucibelle:"]https://www.smogon.com/forums/media/minisprites/crucibelle.png.m.1733184959[/IMG]Crucibelle, [IMG alt=":delibird:"]https://www.smogon.com/forums/media/minisprites/delibird.png.m.1733184959[/IMG]Delibird, [IMG alt=":dragapult:"]https://www.smogon.com/forums/media/minisprites/dragapult.png.m.1733184959[/IMG]Dragapult, [IMG alt=":gallade:"]https://www.smogon.com/forums/media/minisprites/gallade.png.m.1733184959[/IMG]Gallade, [IMG alt=":garchomp:"]https://www.smogon.com/forums/media/minisprites/garchomp.png.m.1733184959[/IMG]Garchomp


Built-in RNG
I'd like players to be able to obtain a set of random numbers that are seeded based on the thread number.

How it would work:
  • Among "insert link", "insert image", etc, there would be a button to "insert random numbers".
  • The forum would look at the thread ID, and the ID of the user who pressed the button, and return a batch (15-20) of derived numbers.
    • They don't need to be perfectly; atomically random—they just need to be random enough, and fixed for a given combination of thread, post count, and user.
  • The post that contains the tag will display a sequence of the derived numbers. For example, [RNG=15] would display 15 such numbers, seperated by commas, newlines, or whatever else seems appropriate.
  • The post would display the rolled numbers even if "deleted"/hidden, without displaying the post's author or the rest of its body.
    • Just "These numbers were rolled here: [numbers]" would be enough.
This would be a massive improvement for BBP (we currently have to roll on Discord, and then link to the Discord message... Which requires a Discord account). But this would also be helpful for other threads that need to "prove" their RNG: assigning roles in Mafia, making pairings in casual tournaments, and more.


Moderator Annotation
I'd like to be able to create moderator-only text in (our own) posts, invisible to normal users.

How it would work:
  • Wrap text in your post with [MOD] and [/MOD].
  • The text will be wrapped in a stylebox, much like a quote block is, that indicates that its visible because the reader is a moderator or higher.
  • That text won't be rendered for non-moderator users.
This would allow me to leave the equivalent of code documentation in our very dense mechanics rules, visible only to people who are tasked with maintaining those rules. These comments could contain info about why the rule is how it is, and how to maintain the rules text, without interrupting the information for regular players.
 
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I have some more suggestions regarding mini-sprites:

- It'd be ideal if users could hover on a given mini-sprite to then get the name of the Pokemon and forme (think like how an user may hover over someone's badge to then know which badge it is exactly), this'd be particularly useful to tell apart rather similar formes like :genesect-shock: and :genesect-chill:, as well as :pikachu-hoenn: and :pikachu-sinnoh:, especially in Pet Mods where they do get significant changes in-between.

- A functionality to be capable of searching for them while reading the forum with CTRL+F like in Showdown would ease a lot accessibility when looking for the given Pokemon in metagame resources and forum discussion alike, especially as not always the Pokemon name is typed alongside the mini-sprite as well, and even so I've heard that doing so makes reading harder for some regardless. Here's an example from PS!:

1753199702539.png
 
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I want to suggest a thread with the history of all the suspect tests in the forums of the OU.

in the thread for shared power there is a part that has a complete list with every single suspect test that has ever happened in that meta game's history with links to each suspect test.
something like that should exist in other metagames as well.
it helps the newcomers to see how things have changed over the years and also let us speculate on if a suspect test has a chance of happening soon or not.

1761331411091.png
 
Soiramio3000 said:
I want to suggest a thread with the history of all the suspect tests in the forums of the OU.

in the thread for shared power there is a part that has a complete list with every single suspect test that has ever happened in that meta game's history with links to each suspect test.
something like that should exist in other metagames as well.
it helps the newcomers to see how things have changed over the years and also let us speculate on if a suspect test has a chance of happening soon or not.

View attachment 781810
Click to expand...
i'm seconding this. there are a number of instances where i could've saved a lot of time if this existed. i've had to hunt down every ou suspect and quickban multiple times, sometimes to illustrate a point about how active the tiering council is compared to previous gens at the same time during their lifespan, sometimes to catch people up on what they missed because they left way earlier in the gen and are just coming back, and sometimes just to make a meme about stuff that was banned. this would be a good resource to have for all of those purposes, as well as being a good introduction to newcomers who want to know why we did or didn't ban certain things. i'd even suggest making this a standard across all official tiers

(unless this is already a thing and i somehow missed it)
(edit: it was already a thing and i missed it)
 
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Soiramio3000 said:
I want to suggest a thread with the history of all the suspect tests in the forums of the OU.

in the thread for shared power there is a part that has a complete list with every single suspect test that has ever happened in that meta game's history with links to each suspect test.
something like that should exist in other metagames as well.
it helps the newcomers to see how things have changed over the years and also let us speculate on if a suspect test has a chance of happening soon or not.

View attachment 781810
Click to expand...
This is something you should bring up in the appropriate thread of the Tiers Forum which in this case for Overused is this one. Making it effect all tiers or to become standardized is something that requires a lot more discussion as the tiers aren't a unified entity.
 
Hey, would it be possible for the Copyedit button (characteristic of sections such as C&C, TFP, and Translations) to also be around in DMs?

I've been generally told to try to get QC checks by users that aren't part of a proper Flying Press QC section by DMs over just granting them access to that one subforum, it'd ease a lot this kind of work over having to manually "remind" users about having to place their QC check within a spoiler box for productivity purposes.
 
Hydrametr0nice said:
Hey, I'd like to suggest changing the alert palette in the "Smogon Dark" style mode. It's much easier to distinguish read alerts from unread ones in the Light "Smogon Classic" mode than in the "Smogon Dark" mode, specially if you're scrolling. Make the read alerts lighter, even a different tone.
Click to expand...

Played around a bit, but because Xenforo's so much fun sometimes finnicky for implementing very targeted theme style edits, it can/would affect other things as well, most noticably headers in tables and notices at the top of the forum, an example of the latter and notifications below. There are probably other things I didn't quickly find from trying to see where else the color is used, as this particular theme has a lot of custom changes from the default fields across different parts of the theme, but reverting is easy enough should it ever be necessary.

I upped contrast by deepening the shade as opposed to lightening it, since, well, it's dark mode. Because this isn't an incredibly huge change, I likely will silently push it from my test branch to the main theme in a couple days, but feedback is obviously welcome in the meantime.

1763236002837.png

1763236073843.png
 
ken said:
Played around a bit, but because Xenforo's so much fun sometimes finnicky for implementing very targeted theme style edits, it can/would affect other things as well, most noticably headers in tables and notices at the top of the forum, an example of the latter and notifications below. There are probably other things I didn't quickly find from trying to see where else the color is used, as this particular theme has a lot of custom changes from the default fields across different parts of the theme, but reverting is easy enough should it ever be necessary.

I upped contrast by deepening the shade as opposed to lightening it, since, well, it's dark mode. Because this isn't an incredibly huge change, I likely will silently push it from my test branch to the main theme in a couple days, but feedback is obviously welcome in the meantime.

View attachment 786602
View attachment 786603
Click to expand...
Hey, thanks. Every bit of contrast helps. I don't know if it's enough, but it's kind of hard to judge without actually using it.
 
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