Just an idea that's been in my head for a long time... reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- compaqxp · 2013-07-29 06:23 Having a BBS style sort of thing while incorporating more modern forum elements. You'd still have games and stuff, but message area would be laid out more like you see with online forum software. Part of the idea would be to have everything stored in possibly something like a MySQL DB, with the goal of maybe being able to access an SMF DB and have both an online and TELNET version. Obviously there is no working software behind these images, but maybe someday. Honestly I don't know if this has been done, I only use a few BBS's so... Just thought I'd share an idea I've had. I've got lots of ideas for the inner workings of such a thing, but I can't write that all in here. EDIT: Just a few more random images that failed to upload before. http://imgur.com/a/aMVrI ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElGenioMalvado · 2013-07-29 23:37 I think this would be INCREDIBLE. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- yergi · 2013-07-30 02:17 Implementation of this wouldn't be hard at all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- compaqxp · 2013-07-30 02:25 For me it would be a challenge, but I need something interesting to challenge myself with. I'd do it, but I don't really know if it's worth my time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TargetDummy · 2013-08-07 18:18 Please consider it. I would become a regular visitor to your BBS if you did. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kirkman14 · 2013-08-17 02:14 Something I think would be interesting for BBSes to implement is a social tagging system, ala "@" on Twitter or Facebook. You could mention a person in a message board post, and the user would get a notification on their next login. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- compaqxp · 2013-08-24 03:49 I agree, that'd be something interesting to do that I never thought about. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- compaqxp · 2013-08-24 03:52 I am considering it. If I do start work on this it'll be a project for later during the winter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 478324782 · 2013-09-28 20:28 I really like the idea. I asked about this in a Synchronet IRC channel a year or so ago and someone told me to talk to the guy who actually made Synch about it. I think there are better ways to go about it, however. For example, you have a whole column for whether the topic has been read or not. You could just make the color darker or brighter to indicate a read topic. The different sections also seem to waste space; you could just have each topic on one line with neatly organized columns instead of separating them with lines. If a topic title is too long, you just add "..." at the end of the title where it should cut off. You could add a little indicator for when there are new posts in an already-read topic, such as an icon like [!] at the beginning. You could tag/subscribe to topics and then receive a message whenever someone posts in it. Synchronet has IM functions where if someone messages you, you receive the message the next time you hit a hotkey or something. Topic/new message alerts could be done similarly, where it shows maybe the first five lines and then asks if you want to read or reply. You might not even need to go back to the forum topic in that case, if at all possible. I might draw up a concept in PabloDraw later. IMO it would be best to do this as a plugin/mod for Synchronet, but I have no programming experience and I can't fathom actually implementing these ideas. Otherwise I would have done this months ago. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 478324782 · 2013-09-28 23:21 I'll post my little concept here. [Forum index](http://i.imgur.com/DbzGQH0.png); [Forum example](http://i.imgur.com/sxBPMOw.png). I'll try to explain a couple of things. The forum index is really simplistic. There might be one or two more columns that could be added to it, but this works just for example's sake. The forum itself has a few ideas I came up with after the last post. It has clean and clearly labeled columns, allowing for more space in the actual topic line. Maybe about 10 topics can fit on each page, but the column labels could be removed after the first page to make room for a few more topic lines. A light blue topic indicates one that hasn't been read, while the darker one indicates that you've read it. As I explained before, three white ellipses indicate the topic title is too long to be displayed. The whole thing will show up when you enter the topic. For example, topic 04 is cut off. The whole topic would read "about three days ago I went driving, when this happened." Topic 05 just has more exclamation marks. EDIT: It would be cool if in Lightbar-mode, having the lightbar on a topic with ellipses scrolls the title so you can read the whole thing before even entering the topic. After the topic title, there's room for three icons. The first is meant to be a sort of padlock, indicating the topic has been locked. The second one is a subscription icon, indicating you've subscribed to the topic and will receive popups/IMs when there's a new post. This could maybe be configured to just send you a private message without bothering you, whichever you choose. The third icon simply shows that new messages have been posted since you last read the topic. The last two fields are self-explanatory. Other than all that, there might be someone who can come up with better colors or any other small improvements. As far as other features go, I think reading a topic should be almost the same as default. Placing quotes in boxes is seemingly a little better than just using > symbols. I think it would be fine to only be able to read a single message a time, pressing , and . (< and >) to move backward and forward within the thread. Having a box around the entire message is a bit of a waste of space, in my opinion. One small idea I had for posting a message is having a little symbol- picker. You pres Ctrl-E or whatever to begin picking a symbol, and a little box pops up with a scrollbar and you can use the arrow keys to pick it. Kinda like [this](http://i.imgur.com/e1ol5L6.png). I wish I had the skills to make this, but hopefully someone picks it up and makes a couple plugins for Synchronet. I'd start my BBS back up for something like this.