Forum Suggestions and Improvements

[UT]

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:

• Anything related to Pokemon Showdown!; it has its own suggestions forum here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/forums/suggestions.517/
• Anything that is not a technical change to the forum; policy, tiering, tour policy, and reporting user safety issues all have separate avenues for contacting staff already.

 

[UT]

To start us off (and give an example of a good suggestion) I am cross posting Bobsican's suggestion:

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, , instead of having to manually link elsewhere such image or uploading it directly to the respective post.

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.

 

[bumboclaat]

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

 

[dex]

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.

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

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.

 

[RL]

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.

 

[melancholy0]

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.

 

[CaioXLive12]

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.

Example of Tournament idea who could end there

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.

 

[Soiramio3000]

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.

 

[Lumari]

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.

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.

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.

 

[Soiramio3000]

An interpretation of double post = repeat exact same post makes absolutely no sense with the context the rule adds beyond "do not double post".

actually this misinterpretation makes perfect sense.
the dictionary definition of the word "double" is :

"consisting of two equal, identical, or similar parts or things."

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

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

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.

 

[OverMind]

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...

 

[a fairy]

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...

Ignore button on profile

 

[LouisCyphre]

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):

Charizard, Crucibelle, Delibird, Dragapult, Gallade, 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.

 

[Bobsican]

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 and , as well as and , 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!: