More admins

[Cordilow]

I would like to request the ability to add more administrators to a forum than the original creator.  Also, the ability to remove administrators would be nice (maybe have a head administrator only who could do that, and that title could also be transfered).

I think this would be useful for the future, and it seems something that would inevitably be desired (eventually, at least), whether or not it is now (especially as forums grow larger and more eyes are desired to watch them).

Plus, it would solve a problem I currently have.  Back when we could make child forums of other people's forums, I did that, and the creator of the parent forum can't edit that child forum (as far as I know).  Anyway, being able to add her as an admin to that forum would be nice, I think (even if I had to lose privileges to it, as well, although I wouldn't mind retaining them to that one—not that I'd need to, though, in this case).

[David Beaumont]

yes something I have requested too, definitely needed for our forum.

David

[Franklin Schmidt <Nabble>]

It's a bit kludgy, but someone can create a forum and then add your forum as a parent.  Do you think we should make the "create child forum" page publicly available?  Would this solve this issue?

For an existing forum, if you want us to assign a forum to someone else, let us know and we can do it.

[Cordilow]

Adding the ability to create child forums to other people's forums wouldn't solve the issue, since you couldn't edit the description, move threads, and such, even though the parents would be connected.

As far as whether or not I think creating child forums should be public, I think it was cool when it was like that before, but I prefer how it is now, I think (even though it's a little less toward the wiki style).  Things seem a little more comfortable/secure now, for some reason.  If people want child forums, they can still request them from the forum owners (and the forum owners are more likely to understand what names will work best for them, and such).  I kind of like it this way.

It's good to know that we can contact you to transfer the ownership.  That should be sufficient (although I'd like to see it in the help or FAQs or something, for people who don't read this thread).  But, this doesn't allow multiple forum owners, still.  Really, the main reason I think multiple forum owners would be useful is so more people could move posts to the appropriate forums, if they've been posted in the wrong places.  It's not a huge issue now, actually, and probably won't be that big of a deal in the future, in most cases, but I think it would be cool nonetheless.  Really, I'd just like to be able to share ownership with others (that way if I die, or something, someone will still be around to notice and take up the forum in my stead).

That's one thing I think more online services should keep in mind: what happens to people's accounts when they die?  Are they just to sit there and rot?  There's often useful information or functionality that they (the deceased) would want to be preserved or passed on to someone else after they die, or after they get trapped in an area away from the Internet for decades.  Not that this is a huge issue 'yet'; once the computer savvy generations get old . . . it might be a bigger issue (more talked about).

Anyway, just something to think about.

[Cordilow]

Actually, about creating child forums, I think it would be really cool if people could try to create them, but then an email would be sent to the admins for clearance (they could click a link to approve that the forum be created; or deny it).  This way, if someone wants to create a child forum, but they choose a name that just doesn't fit or work, then the forum admin can deny it and create one with a better name.  Also, I think the admin of the parent should be counted as an owner, in these cases (unless they opt not to be).

[Franklin Schmidt <Nabble>]

We are working on some internal changes that may address these issues.  At an abstract level, we don't see much difference between a forum and a post.  Both have an owner, a title, and a message body.  So we are planning to merge forum and post on the back end.  One implication of this is that posts will be able to have multiple parents.  I believe this is a feature you asked for.

If you think about it, posting a new thread to your forum or creating a new child forum in your forum are similar.  If you don't like a thread in your forum, you should be able to remove it.  If you don't like a child forum, you should be able to remove it.  If either are misplaced, you should be able to move it to another of your forums.  Is there any fundamental difference between a child forum and a thread that would cause you to want to handle them differently?

On the issue of moving around threads, the rule will be that you can change the parents and children of any forum or post that you own.  So if you see a thread in a forum that you don't own, and you want to forward it to your forum, you will be able to add it as a child to your forum.  A more complicated case would be wanting to move a thread from your forum to a child forum that you don't own.  In this case, you would post to the child forum, creating a thread.  Then you remove the thread that you want to move from your forum, and you would add it as a child to the post you just made.  I think forcing you to make a post in this case is justified because you can use that post to explain why you moved the thread to a forum that you do not own.

I should do a longer writeup of these coming changes in the "Nabble Announcements" forum.  Anyway, what do you think?  Does this idea make sense to you?

[Cordilow]

It's pretty intense, I will admit, and it looks like it could be promising.

This certainly appears to be a solution to a feature I wanted: i.e. a single post being able to be seen in multiple forums (i.e. some of the Nuzmo news could also go in other forums, depending on the topic).  This would also be great for getting new forums started, seeing as if one of the parents is in a more frequented forum, the other forum will still get some benefit when people reply in the larger forum.  For instance, I made a post in Nuzmo about coconut oil, but I'd really like to have the same post in my nutrition forum, or whatever I called it (well, I sort of double posted there, for now).  The same goes for certain posts about music and poetry that could fit in various forums that aren't necessarily related in the parent child fashion (mostly, they're related, but not like that).

So, is it that threads will have multiple parents, or each post within a thread?  What I was talking about above was in relation to entire threads.  I wasn't too clear on which you meant.


>Is there any fundamental difference between a child forum and a thread that would cause you to want to handle them differently?

So, is the parent of a thread to be the person who started it, or is it to be the forum it's in?  Or is it both?  Well, I guess it would be weird to have multiple people owning the same thread, but I'm sure someone along the road would appreciate the ability (probably not more than a few people, though . . .), though I'm not sure why.

The example you mentioned about moving a thread from a forum to a child forum that you don't own is very interesting.  I agree that the required explanation is nice, and it does bump the post in that forum (which would be necessary, I think, seeing as it is new to that forum).  The only problem I see is that the need to do a new post first would be over a lot of people's heads, and I think an explanation would be handy in the FAQs—but, that can be a nice way to stop spammers from doing this inappropriately, seeing as most spammers don't seem so forum-savvy with issues like this.

I agree about the writeup in "Nabble Announcements".

Thanks for the information, by the way, and the good work.

Now, when I read this at first, I thought you were talking about the post you were replying to, directly.  I'm not sure that I notice how this would solve that particular issue.  Would this allow one forum to have multiple owners, instead of just multiple parent forums?

Thanks!

[Franklin Schmidt <Nabble>]

Cordilow wrote:

So, is it that threads will have multiple parents, or each post within a thread?  What I was talking about above was in relation to entire threads.

A thread is just a bunch of posts.  Adding a parent to a thread would be done by adding a parent to the root (top/first) post in the thread.

So, is the parent of a thread to be the person who started it, or is it to be the forum it's in?  Or is it both?  Well, I guess it would be weird to have multiple people owning the same thread, but I'm sure someone along the road would appreciate the ability (probably not more than a few people, though . . .), though I'm not sure why.

No, each post and each forum has just one owner.  The parent of a thread is the forum that it is in (or more precisely, that the root post of the thread is in).

The example you mentioned about moving a thread from a forum to a child forum that you don't own is very interesting.  I agree that the required explanation is nice, and it does bump the post in that forum (which would be necessary, I think, seeing as it is new to that forum).  The only problem I see is that the need to do a new post first would be over a lot of people's heads, and I think an explanation would be handy in the FAQs—but, that can be a nice way to stop spammers from doing this inappropriately, seeing as most spammers don't seem so forum-savvy with issues like this.

Yes.  This is intended to be an advanced feature.  The person doing it has to understand what is going on, but the reader doesn't.  All the reader will see is a thread with a top level post saying something like "This might interest you" (written by you), and a post under it, which was the root post of the thread, but with a "Fwd:" at the beginning of the subject.  So it looks like you forwarded the thread to this forum, which is pretty much what happened.

Now, when I read this at first, I thought you were talking about the post you were replying to, directly.  I'm not sure that I notice how this would solve that particular issue.  Would this allow one forum to have multiple owners, instead of just multiple parent forums?

No, each forum and post would have just one owner, but allowing you to control the parents and children of your forums and posts gives you a lot more flexibility than you have now, and allows you to do the things you asked for.

[David Beaumont]

Any progress on allowing multiple admins for a forum?

Thanks

David

[Franklin Schmidt <Nabble>]

We are working on the features described in this thread but it will take some time.  For now, why don't you create a new email address on Gmail or some some public place to be the owner of your forums.  You can then share that email/login with other people to manage the forums.  We don't have a feature to change forum owners, but you can ask us to do it and we will do it manually.