Further BBC coding options


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I'm sure there is a reason for the limited coding options we have, but i would LOVE to see some more options presented. Some great options would be:
[code]
[img]
[imgleft]
[imgright]
[align=left/right/center]
[u]
[size=#]
[color=xxx]

These open up A LOT of fun tools. My personal reason is the creation of posting formats for play-by-post games to help better illustrate your character.
The uses from am DM standpoint alone are astronomical!!


Don't expect images to show up ever. The others may be more likely.


Underline and color are already available via my Paizo Forum Tools Browser Extension.


Sindenky wrote:

Some great options would be:

[code]

Okay, yes.

Quote:

[img]

[imgleft]
[imgright]

Please no. On the greatest strengths of this forum is that it can't be cluttered with crap. Guaranteed for every on-topic image like "here's a map of our encounter, can chararcter do X", there will be at least three "here's a puppy" images. Or goatse.

Quote:


[align=left/right/center]
[u]

Sure. And actually, underlining being absent is quite surprising.

Quote:
[size=#]

Well, there is bigger and smaller, which I support because nothing absurd can be done with them.

Quote:
[color=xxx]

Mmmm, as long as it's limited to say five defined colours, I'd be okay with that. Like bigger and smaller, there could just be [red], [blue], [green] and... oh, that's probably enough.


As much as i know people would fear the over-saturation of images, i genuinely have more faith in the community i guess. I have been on several message boards that allow images, and sure maybe every so often you get that one guy that cant seem to not drop in something stupid, but the only 90%+ of the community use them images to GREAT effect.

Community & Digital Content Director

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We really should have underline and some expanded text formatting options, I agree (in fact, this such thing has been on our To-Do List, but higher priorities keep pushing it down).

However, we will likely not ever be implementing user supplied images on our forums, given the volume of posts made to the site everyday and the amount of time staff would need to spend vetting them. I'd rather our moderators were spending time doing other useful/cool things :)


Anguish wrote:


Please no. On the greatest strengths of this forum is that it can't be cluttered with crap. Guaranteed for every on-topic image like "here's a map of our encounter, can chararcter do X", there will be at least three "here's a puppy" images. Or goatse.

This kinda speaks volumes about the immaturity of this board as a whole, if true. Of all the boards I've been on and moderated, there's only one story I have where somebody went around posting shock imagery, and he was TRYING to get banned. Just disappeared for a couple of years, then came back and blew up his account.


Chris Lambertz wrote:

We really should have underline and some expanded text formatting options, I agree (in fact, this such thing has been on our To-Do List, but higher priorities keep pushing it down).

However, we will likely not ever be implementing user supplied images on our forums, given the volume of posts made to the site everyday and the amount of time staff would need to spend vetting them. I'd rather our moderators were spending time doing other useful/cool things :)

I wouldn't expect the moderators to have to vet every single image. I'm positive that inflammatory imagery would be brought to your attention in a quick and timely manner. The added benefits of imagery to the forums would more than make u for it.

One small incentive would be that these forums are pretty old at this point, and a large upgrade like this would go miles to show a dedication from the team to provide new and ever improving environments and tools to its community. Though we are a nice distance from every even coming close to calling this game or these forums "dead", improvements like this so late it the game really squash any fears of that being the direction we are taking.


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Sundakan wrote:
Anguish wrote:


Please no. On the greatest strengths of this forum is that it can't be cluttered with crap. Guaranteed for every on-topic image like "here's a map of our encounter, can chararcter do X", there will be at least three "here's a puppy" images. Or goatse.
This kinda speaks volumes about the immaturity of this board as a whole, if true. Of all the boards I've been on and moderated, there's only one story I have where somebody went around posting shock imagery, and he was TRYING to get banned. Just disappeared for a couple of years, then came back and blew up his account.

First, keep in mind that this hobby is exceptionally accessible to people of a massive variety in ages. Ten-year-olds can spend a few bucks on dice, and because of the PRD, play without any further expense. Yes, some nice adventure modules and/or minis all help but dice are the one thing you actually need. So immature? Sure, in many, many cases literally so.

Second, I think people in general are immature, in this sense. I don't honestly expect a statistically significant number of goatse posts, but I absolutely, positively expect we'd see wall-to-wall meme pictures. Why post a single sentence when you can drag in some 1024x768 JPEG of Monty Python with a few words overlaid? Why say "I agree" when you can post a picture of Barak Obama with the text "I agree" overlaid? Why - in short - use words to convey your viewpoint on a forum when you can use a picture instead?

That's really my point. I absolutely get it that there are cases where a picture would be useful. But this is a textual medium, and it should - in my opinion - remain textual, not visual. But people tend to think the crap meme-picture they're linking to is a LOT more entertaining or useful than it really is. So given the ability, I expect a tonne of near-zero-value posts.


It might be an interesting experiment (beta?) to allow image posting in PbP threads by the GM and enrolled players. Nontrivial to restrict posting to players-only in those threads, but a good compromise. Essentially, let the GMs police imagespam in their own thread, but have the tools to enhance PbP.


I'd love to have [code] added.


Anguish wrote:
Quote:

[img]

[imgleft]
[imgright]
Please no. On the greatest strengths of this forum is that it can't be cluttered with crap.

Of course it can be cluttered with crap. People post spam all the time, it just takes the form of four-dozen one-word-posts in a row to eat up an entire page.

But for what it's worth, I usually use QuickJava to block all images from Paizo.com. If they added more ways for users to post images (beyond the current method of "spam with a bunch of aliases with different avatars"), I would probably continue to block images from Paizo.com.


Oladon wrote:
Underline and color are already available via my Paizo Forum Tools Browser Extension.

Psst, this post may have been missed due to only being one line, but you guys should be aware that [u] and [color] already exist (they're just not core to the forums). This extension is not just for PbPers.

Gisher wrote:
I'd love to have [code] added.

I'm curious — what would be the use cases for this?


Oladon wrote:
Oladon wrote:
Underline and color are already available via my Paizo Forum Tools Browser Extension.

Psst, this post may have been missed due to only being one line, but you guys should be aware that [u] and [color] already exist (they're just not core to the forums). This extension is not just for PbPers.

Gisher wrote:
I'd love to have [code] added.

I'm curious — what would be the use cases for this?

Mainly for positioning text. [code] uses monospaced fonts so every character has the same width. It makes it much easier to make things like this line up on all browsers.


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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Code is also useful for displaying small grids (battle maps), where you can use various letters and special characters to represent walls and unit placement. Would be useful for positioning-based discussions in the rules and advice forums, and possibly useful in PbP as well. Of the suggestions, that is the one I'd be most looking forward to.


Gisher wrote:
Oladon wrote:
Oladon wrote:
Underline and color are already available via my Paizo Forum Tools Browser Extension.

Psst, this post may have been missed due to only being one line, but you guys should be aware that [u] and [color] already exist (they're just not core to the forums). This extension is not just for PbPers.

Gisher wrote:
I'd love to have [code] added.

I'm curious — what would be the use cases for this?

Mainly for positioning text. [code] uses monospaced fonts so every character has the same width. It makes it much easier to make things like this line up on all browsers.
skizzerz wrote:
Code is also useful for displaying small grids (battle maps), where you can use various letters and special characters to represent walls and unit placement. Would be useful for positioning-based discussions in the rules and advice forums, and possibly useful in PbP as well. Of the suggestions, that is the one I'd be most looking forward to.

Ahh, grids and positioning, yeah, that makes sense. Thanks to both of you for helping me out there -- I was going "How often do you paste blocks of (program) code into Paizo?!" Makes so much more sense now. :)

I'm going to add that one to my list of likely future features for the extension... it'd be really easy to add with the tag work I've already done for [u] and [color] (someone else could even add it and submit a PR!).

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