Regarding the Lounge and General Discussion

[E-Man]

Thanks, Kat! I wasn't sure because when I attempted to revive the thread myself, it was deleted for some reason.

[Kosheh]

Post count isn't really that important, let's be honest, as we have some users with only 100 posts but every one of them full of quality.

For outsiders, post count pretty much dictates the user's credibility, as a high post count and an old join date pretty much says "Well I've seen some shit"

Can we just call this forum the General Lounge?

"General" being you can talk about basically anything
and "Lounge" because of its relaxed nature.

shouldn't be that huge a deal unless you're one of those people profoundly affected by the internet and whenever you pass a club calling itself a "lounge" on the drive to work you visibly cringe

[Vipershark]

Things seem to have cooled off and largely returned back to normal so I've made it so that General Discussion is viewable by guests again.

[Kosheh]

Things seem to have cooled off and largely returned back to normal so I've made it so that General Discussion is viewable by guests again.

I thought the reason it was viewable was because you're easing up the posting rules though, not because it was a hotbed of controversy...?

Thanks anyway, now everyone can see my dopey posts :0)

[Vipershark]

It was [both], but we decided that as long as things don't go too far into garbage or whatever it should be fine.

[E-Man]

Vipershark, I have a question about which topics I'm allowed to post in the General Discussion. Can I make a topic where everyone lists their Skype addresses? I think there was a topic like that before on the forum a while back and it would provide a convenient means of having some users keep in touch on Skype.

[Vipershark]

No need!
I've added a Skype field to the Social Sites function since I was able to get that to work. The other way worked well but it was a bit of a roundabout hack so unless this way causes issues, Skype names can be added to your profile through Social Sites and will display in your postbit along with everything else.

I've updated user profiles to include a Skype Name field in the Contact Details table.

To add a Skype Name on your profile, go into your User CP, click on Edit Profile, and the Skype Name field should be located in the Additional Information box on the left side at the bottom, unlike the other contact info fields which are on the right. If I can figure out a fix to include them all in the same box I'll update it to make that work but for now you can put your Skype name on your profile this way.

[Kosheh]

Just curious, is it possible to just re-purpose the ICQ number field in users' Contact Details for that [Skype ID]?

[Vipershark]

I'm not sure.

Basically, the seven fields in the Contact Details box appear to be hardcoded into the forum software itself, and all forums running this same software appear to have this same issue as far as I could tell last night. The only reason I was able to get this to work was by modifying one of the templates to force the forum to display Skype at the bottom of the table. In other words, even though it shows up in Contact Info, the actual data that that's reading is not part of Contact Info at all and is only working because I made it display something else (which was the Skype name).
....does that make sense?

I actually thought about that last night and figured switching ICQ with Skype would be the best course of action (because really, who still uses ICQ in 2014????) but regardless, I don't think it's actually possible to change ICQ to Skype so much as hide the ICQ part of the table and force Skype to show up there through the same hacked-together means. In other words, the ICQ number field would still be on everyone's edit profile page (though invisible on their actual profile) and the Skype field would still be in the wrong location on the edit page, which was the whole problem to begin with.
I'll look into it more tonight, though. It seems odd that those seven boxes can't be changed through normal means...

[Petie]

They are in fact hard coded and cannot be changed. The current social sites method is the best way of making Skype work here and I'd recommend sticking to it.

[Gors]

Bumping for a quick suggestion:

Can I stick all the 'perennial' threads? That is, the Music thread, the Movie thread, aka the threads that will always be relevant no matter the time. I think it'll be useful as these usually has more content and activity than say, birthday threads or occasional threads.

[Petie]

I personally feel we have too many stuck threads (forum-wide, not here specifically) as it stands. Threads like the ones you pointed out will remain at the top as long as they continue to be active so I see no need to stick them but others can definitely weigh in here as well.

[Vipershark]

Personally, I agree with Petie.
GD doesn't get much traffic out of said perennial threads and birthday threads. If a thread can actually become so inactive that it falls off the first page with how (relatively) slowly threads drop down the list in GD, they aren't active enough to deserve to be stickied to begin with.

[Gors]

I guess so, though it'd be easier for a newcomer to spot the 'official threads' instead of creating their own

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however, thinking about it, i have never seen anyone doing that so it's kinda moot indeed, yeah