Goal: To create a fully-functional improved version of the TickerTalk forum interface, while preserving the original conversation-like threaded format, with the purpose of being able to pick up the slack in the event that TickerTalk is terminated or fundamentally altered from its current form.
Status: Operational. www.slackertalk.com
Background: I was originally planning to call it “SlickerTalk”, and I decided to keep that name for the “boring/boss-safe” front end, but my GF suggested the much more awesome name of SlackerTalk, which I opted to use for the main front end to the forum. I made a news post recently that describes more of the origin of the forum.
The To-Do List: Features planned or under consideration
- Possibly add a “view” counter to each post
- Option to enable a 24-hour clock
- Option to add a signature to posts
- Option to filter out profanity
- Add a checkbox to search to search by “NOT this username”
- Integration of statistics/rankings
- Convert visual display to a templated format, rather than the current in-line method. Could be extended to enable “skins” in the future.
- Improve “Post Message” form, including possible relocation of Handle line and/or a “Temporary Handle” line that is forgotten upon submission
- Fix bug related to quotes in handles
- Clean up the form of “direct post” links to have fewer ampersands/equals, more raw data (username, timestamp)
- Adjust roll metric to be based on something other than just a 150 post-count
- Add multiple-board-support, although this might not be used on SlackerTalk.com itself
- Look at adding Killfile/Scribble/Disemvowel functionality
- Launch bug tracking software for projects
- Make the “news” box dynamically updateable
- Emergency Roll button, similar to the Veto option in Halo 3’s matchmaking
- Fixing killfile script
- Auto-modify Amazon URLs to send visitors to the Slacker Shop
- Ability to add multiple links to posts
- Fixing RSS feeds to properly handle odd characters, and to show links
- Enrich the functionality of the Interesting Links interface, to be more informative (such as showing titles and/or content previews of linked pages, as well as linking to the posts that originally submitted the links)
- Add a sarcasm detector, and a healthy dose of Blackjack and Hookers
The Completed List: Features that were formerly on the to-do list, but are now live on the site
- Aug 2, 2008: Extend the RSS feed to allow you to quickly scan for new replies to your posts
- Aug 3, 2008: Added a post counter to the board page header
- Aug 5, 2008: Fixed looking-at-post-shows-post’s-board bug, so the jumper defaults to B1, and altered post submission behaviour for backboard posts
- Aug 10, 2008: Password Recovery Feature
- Dr. S. Talk: Ability to search historical posts, and quickly access the backboards they were posted to
- Cookie-based timezone localization
- Fishstick Kid “favicon”
- FAQ page
- Tiny Text for deeply-nested threads, to avoid breaking the board with indentation (and with the side-effect of turning flame war threads into midget-voiced threads)
- Options on the Change Info page to set a custom timezone, and to enable/disable Tiny Text
- Ability to hover over nicknames to see the original username, and over timestamps to see the raw time data (including seconds)
- Fix post subjects so that very long words don’t break the board
- Add a reply counter to each thread
- Improvements to the Link box, to make it more reliable when pasting URLs (especially ones without http:// )
- Modify site title tag to indicate when reading a comment/looking at a settings page/whatnot
- Jan 21, 2009: Add a link indicator to all posts with links
- Jan 21, 2009: Recent activity indicator – list of recent users (not implemented), visual indication of recent posts – (implemented: store timestamp of last active board load in session and have newer posts display differently)
- An ability to track clicks, to show which URLs are popular
- “Faves” option so people can flag interesting posts to read later, i.e., links they won’t be able to read at work but want to read at home
- Addition of more items to the FAQ (ongoing)
- Fix back button behavior in Firefox (with some caching settings, does not remember which section of the page you were on, causing more scrolling) (fixed by Mozilla Project in version 3.5+ of Firefox)
- Alert system to notify admin of unplanned downtime
- July 28, 2009: Add a checkbox to search to return “only items with links”
- August 25, 2009: Fine-tune link duplication checks to be more informative, and/or silently ignore dupes for links that were last posted more than X weeks/months ago (silent ignore dropped in favour of letting users decide whether to re-post)
Got Ideas, Bug Notices, or Requests? Contact Beryllium on SlackerTalk, or email slackertalk at gmail.
