Sticky posts.

Im not sure if this is a problem only seen in the chess forum but we often get the same questions asked again and again more often than not these questions are "How can I improve" related. RahimK started off two threads "Need Help Getting to 1600 Rating" and "Need Help Getting to 1400? since then another has been made by Dragon Fire "Need help getting to 2000 rating" These threads have had a number of posts each and cover a lot of questions asked by players who want to improve. Would it be possible if the member did vote on it, to have these 3 threads made as 'sticky' threads at the top of the chess forum since at the moment they are just being bumped every so often to keep them on the main page. I think most people who post in the chess forum would agree with me on this point.

Thanks 🙂

I certainly agree in spirit. Perhaps it does not need to be these three threads exactly, but to have some sort of commonly asked questions section above the regular forum would go miles towards cleaning up the chess forum. Add a link to the FAQ and we can hopefully say goodbye to all the "help me" threads and get back to the serious business of pretending to understand this game enough to talk about it.

Originally posted by thesonofsaul
I certainly agree in spirit. Perhaps it does not need to be these three threads exactly, but to have some sort of commonly asked questions section above the regular forum would go miles towards cleaning up the chess forum. Add a link to the FAQ and we can hopefully say goodbye to all the "help me" threads and get back to the serious business of pretending to understand this game enough to talk about it.

Indeed. It would be nice if each forum could vote for say 3-4 sticky threads they want stuck to the top of that forum for 6 months or so then a new vote and so on. About 20-30% of the questions commonly asked in the chess forum have the answers in just three threads, having them made sticky (which im sure most of the people who use it would agree too) would save no end of clutter for the regular users.

Naturally the sticky threads in general will be different from those in chess but I suspect every forum suffers from the same problem to some extent or other and would probably welcome a few sticky threads with the commonly asked questions and answers for the forums subject.

I agree and did not see this thread when I posted the "nobody should be left behind" post in the Only Chess forum. Then again it may be that the admins would need to get a proper forum like Vbulletin rather than the present one with all its limitations.

Features present on standard boards are absent here :-
- search function (google is used)
- user titles such as rating
- ability to use html/bbcode
- ability to edit one's posts after one or two hours

Originally posted by z00t
....would need to get a proper forum like Vbulletin rather than the present one with all its limitations.

Good idea.

Bump.

This thread should be stickied. 😉

Please, please for the love of God reform the forums! I find these forums insanely frustrating to use .. terrible search, no rating, no stickies, (no rss?). It dissuades me from contributing

There are so many great open source forum options available .. why custom code one? (i think this is custom coded)

If they chose one of the PHP based forums i'm sure the board code wouldn't be too hard to implement.

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Good idea.

I suggested this in the developer forum and got "vBulletin is crap" .. very helpful, and not to mention insightful.

I think that if you made a forum from scratch you would be insulted at the suggestion that they switch to php etc...

but I agree that these forums are limited, for one while Im typing this it would be great to see the post I am answering. Otherwise, I have to open an new tab to make sure I read the question right. (I don't have any mental capacity - I am a chessplayer)

Based on my limited experience with php it's very likely that going to a new forum would mean a lot of work bringing this forum's content over.

Originally posted by idioms
I suggested this in the developer forum and got "vBulletin is crap" .. very helpful, and not to mention insightful.

Nearly all the forums I go to use vBulletin and to me they seem excellent.

Originally posted by briancron
I think that if you made a forum from scratch you would be insulted at the suggestion that they switch to php etc...

but I agree that these forums are limited, for one while Im typing this it would be great to see the post I am answering. Otherwise, I have to open an new tab to make sure I read the question right. (I don't have any mental capacity - I ...[text shortened]... likely that going to a new forum would mean a lot of work bringing this forum's content over.

This whole site is coded in PHP. That's why it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to implement an "off the shelf" PHP based forum system (and that's why I suggested it .. If it was coded in Java i would have suggested one of the Java based forums)

The content migration will have nothing to do with the display language, it depends on the datastore (A simple SQL database from what I can see). It shouldn't be too hard to migrate content from one SQL database to another. Even if it was I'm sure people would put up with 2 forums (one archived readonly) and a new one while the transition was made.

I know it's hard to let go of something that you have coded yourself from scratch (i don't actually know this is the case for the RHP forums I'm only guessing) but there comes a time that the infrastructure that you built for a small number of people won't serve a growing user base. RHP provides a fantastic correspondence chess interface, something nobody else is close to IMO but coding a forum has been done so much better elsewhere, why not capitalize on this and focus on your strengths?

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Nearly all the forums I go to use vBulletin and to me they seem excellent.

Perhaps Russ doesn't want to pay money for something that we already have? There is a stickied thread in Help as you might have noticed. It's not a limitation of the forum software.

Originally posted by XanthosNZ
Perhaps Russ doesn't want to pay money for something that we already have? There is a stickied thread in Help as you might have noticed. It's not a limitation of the forum software.

That's also why I suggested FREE, open source alternatives. I had noticed the sticky thread in Help .. of course its not a limitation of the software, there is practically no limitation of the software .. IT'S CUSTOM CODED! My point is not that all the features that people are requesting can't be done with the current forum, my point is, surely it would be easier to implement a free, open source, PHP based forum system that already has all of the features that people are asking for?

I'm not ranting or flaming just for the hell of it. I really do enjoy this site. This forum is "Site Ideas" .. all i'm doing is making a suggestion, which IMO would make the site better. There maybe a million and one reasons for not implementing a third party forum system but there is quite a level of frustration on RHP regarding the setup of the forums so I don't believe that my idea is invalid.