Views in Core and forum.module

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Liam McDermott's picture

From the wiki:

Most of this will be dependent on Views core going into D7 core.

Interesting. Does this mean that the forum list and topic list are going to be implemented as themed Views? This coupled with action_views, editablefields (or similar), could provide inline moderation, a feature we've been badly missing since moving our forums to Drupal. For reference inline moderation can be seen in the film: 'When Spammers Attack!' or, since that only exists in my imagination, in the screenshot attached.

Also, for the forum_access module, do we think there will be any chance of getting the following features in before D7?

  • publish/unpublish posts;
  • promote/demote topic;
  • sticky topic;
  • unpublish/publish own posts;
  • delete own posts;

There's a task that outlines some of this. Fasttoggle is also worth a look. If any of these should go into the wiki, let me know.

The other thing we miss is accountability (also see the screenshot). When mods/admins delete posts (or unpublish them in Drupal-speak) a message is left behind with a reason for the deletion and the time the action was taken. This can be checked by mods and admins. The Hidden module seems to be making inroads into fixing this problem.

*** EDIT ***
Here's the screenshot:
Only local images are allowed.

Am not, of course, saying Drupal's forum should be exactly like this. It's the idea, not the specific implementation, we should take from this. :)

Comments

Hmmm, Drupal has eaten my

Liam McDermott's picture

Hmmm, Drupal has eaten my attachment twice. Are png attachments not allowed?!

Definitely the topic listing

catch's picture

Definitely the topic listing would be a view and it'd make sense for the forums list as well. I know Michelle is planning panels integration with Advanced Forum for 5/6 which should give some direction to this early on (although no panels in D7 unfortunately).

Inline editing - I'm hoping we'll get this for free if/when pages like admin/content/node get taken over by views. There's no way this kind of thing will be accepted as integral to forum module, but we can make it so that either core or contrib implementations hook in nicely.

'delete own posts' this is already in D6 with separate edit and delete permissions. Publish and sticky would mean a reworking of administer nodes probably - again this is something that could go in as a separate core patch, which we could then take advantage of - makes plenty of sense to have these permissions. 'promote own post' 'promote any post' etc. - this one definitely needs to go in the wiki.

Hidden module: at the moment there's very little moderation/workflow in core at all, but I think jvandyk mentioned this as one of his plans for D7 - again, I don't think core forums needs to deal with this on its own, but worth keeping an eye on. That might be a way to deal with 'shadow forum topics' if we still want to support that.

Inline editing - I'm hoping

Liam McDermott's picture

Inline editing - I'm hoping we'll get this for free if/when pages like admin/content/node get taken over by views. There's no way this kind of thing will be accepted as integral to forum module, but we can make it so that either core or contrib implementations hook in nicely.

Agreed, there's no way something like this should be in core.

'delete own posts' this is already in D6 with separate edit and delete permissions.

Whoops, sorry guv. Didn't do my homework! ;) I've added the other bits to the wiki.

That might be a way to deal with 'shadow forum topics' if we still want to support that.

By 'shadow forum topics,' do you mean:

  1. Deleted forum topics, that are just unpublished and not visible to anyone but mods/admins?
  2. Moved forum topics that leave a redirect?
  3. Both?

shadow - > moved forum

catch's picture

shadow - > moved forum topics that leave a redirect. This is part of existing forum module and I think some other packages do it, so would be nice to find a clean way to do it.

Right, I get you. There are

Liam McDermott's picture

Right, I get you. There are two complaints I've seen about the current implementation:

  1. the redirect points to the forum the topic is in, not of the topic itself;
  2. there's no way to expire the redirect (compounding 1);

The first problem seems to be the most important. When topics are posted on top of the moved one it'll be pushed onto the next topic list page, it's also a little unfair to make users search for a post in two lists. Expiring redirects are useful, but not essential IMO (perhaps we could ensure there are hooks in the API so a module could implement this).

Is there a reason we couldn't make the redirect point to the topic, i.e. has this been argued before and I missed it? :)

I think my preferred way if

catch's picture

I think my preferred way if it wasn't too complicated architecturally would be to allow admins to put posts in more than one forum. This'd work for 'shadows' and also announcement - you could put one sticky announcement in all available forums for example. I never actually use shadow forum topics and always assumed it was a link straight to the topic, will take a look ;)

It's not

Michelle's picture

I actually ran into this when generating forum posts with devel. It makes shadow posts by mucking around with the term ID. Which makes having it link to the actual new node really difficult without hacking the forum module. Unless we bypass the whole shadow post thing all together and do something else. Will have to give this some thought.

Michelle


See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region

Actually...

Michelle's picture

I was just working on something else and discovered this is actually a trivial change after all. It'll be changed in the next alpha of advforum. :)

Michelle


See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region

I was just working on

Liam McDermott's picture

I was just working on something else and discovered this is actually a trivial change after all. It'll be changed in the next alpha of advforum. :)

Excellent, we just need to get this into core now! Will stick it in the wiki. :)

cck + views based forum

mitchell's picture

Forum Install Profile can be a centralized place to work on this.

The views theming is a major area where this feature could be pushed along, and I'm terrible at it. I will happily implement the other related parts/features, but I don't really feel up to it without the views already done.