Forum update: New features (August 2020)

We have a few quick updates regarding the Forum:

Refactoring the “Community” section

Previously, all Forum posts would be sorted into one of three categories: Frontpage, Community, or Personal Blog. We treated “Community” and “Frontpage” posts differently, giving them their own separate pages on the site.

While “Personal Blog” posts will still exist separately from “Frontpage” posts (because they don’t show up on the front page of the Forum), “Community” is no longer its own category. Instead, we have a “Community” tag which acts like any other tag; you can choose to filter it however you see fit from the front page.

Currently, all Forum accounts start out with community posts hidden from the front page. 

• If you un-hid these posts at some point, that setting won’t have changed, and community posts will still have the weighting you chose.
• If you never touched that setting, or if you view the Forum while logged out, the weighting of community posts will be “-25” by default. (The algorithm will show posts with the Community tag less prominently, as though they all had 25 less karma.) You can change this weighting at any time.

Updates to the “About” page

We have a page — How to use the Forum — which displays rules, norms, and advice for anyone who uses the Forum. If you haven’t read it, you should check it out!

In fact, you may want to check it out even if you have read it, because we just made a bunch of updates. Among other things, we’ve added information about the Forum’s various content editors and more details on what we hope people will include in their posts.

Sometime in the near future, we’ll start to send this page to every new Forum user. Given that, do you think there’s anything else we should include on the page? Anything we should change or remove? If so, please let me know: [email protected]