Connected Forums

[Ghost]

I have always had this idea in my head that something drastic must be done to make forums more popular, or at least bring them closer to where they were throughout the 90s and early 2000's. The idea I have essentially would allow forums to connect to each other, sharing members and even threads. I know this might sound crazy to many of you who would rather manage a small forum on your own, but I hope you keep reading. You would still have ownership, you would still manage your forum how you like, but you would benefit from a collective effort. I am sharing this idea here today because although I would love to build it myself (and I could), I simply do not see myself having the time or dedication to do it any time within 2019.

How it Works: "The Hub" (or whatever it would end up being called)

• Participating forums (of varying software) install a plugin that allows them to connect to "The Hub"
• The Hub can see your member profiles (not passwords, emails, etc though), forum sections/threads/posts
• When you connect your forum to The Hub, you view a long list of "Hub Sections"
• For each of your forum categories, you connect each one to a Hub Section. For example, you could connect your "Xbox Games" section to an Xbox Hub Section, or the overall Gaming section on The Hub
• When a new thread is created in your Xbox Games category, your site (forum plugin) tells The Hub
• The Hub then tells forums that are similar to yours about your new thread - basically other sites will have this new thread on their forum as well. This is a shared thread, and threads made on other forums would be visible on your forum as well
• If another forum also has a section connected to the 'Xbox Hub Section', they *might* see some of your forum threads from your Xbox Games category - depending on some fancy algorithms
• Shared threads are NOT links to the other forum
• Shared threads WILL contain a link to the connected forum, but replies/activity is all done on YOUR forum. Your members never have to visit the connected forum at any point.
• Shared threads follow an algorithm, making sure they are not shared on every single forum on The Hub, are only shared with forums similar to yours, and are only shared once the thread has received a certain number of replies
• When YOUR forum members reply to a shared thread, those replies are only shared with the forum that created the original thread.
• When the shared thread appears on your forum, your members can only ever see replies made by members on your forum, or replies made on the original forum that shared it to The Hub
• The forum that shared the original thread with The Hub would have a thread full of every reply from every connected forum, as well as the replies made on that site itself
• If a specific reply from the YOUR forum is quoted in the original thread/forum an exception is made: other connected forums will see that reply from your forum so the new quote/reply makes sense.
• If a member is tagged In a shared thread, an exception is made: any post by the tagged user in that specific thread is shared with all connected forums so the new reply makes sense
• Other exceptions: any time a quote or tagged member triggers an exception for content sharing, any other quotes or tags will also trigger exceptions. This has a ripple effect where technically if every reply in the original thread has a quote or tagged user, every single reply is shared between connected forums.
• When a member signs up to your forum, they can opt-out of joining The Hub
• If a new member doesn't opt-out of The Hub, their membership details are stored alongside a cryptographic key. Their email/password is not shared for example. When they log in, they can see all of their normal content, but they can also see replies to their posts/threads from The Hub - IN YOUR FORUM. They will never have to log in to a page associated with The Hub, and they will never have to sign up on another connected forum to participate in The Hub's shared threads
• When a member changes their username, bio, signature, etc it will ping The Hub to share the new info so that signatures/profiles on other forums can be updated.
• Forums can decide whether they wish to store The Hub info on their own site (increasing their database size) or connect to The Hub on every shared thread to pull the info (which would slow down their site's loading speed on shared threads)
• Shared threads and member profiles by default will be hidden to search engines to avoid SEO overlap with content.

The purpose of this idea is to allow new forums to gain exposure by sharing their threads with other forums. Each connected forum benefits from:

1. More threads (that can be automated, or put in an approval queue for your specific forum)
2. Your own threads will be more visible and receive more replies
3. Very secure connection methods & data storage to avoid privacy concerns
4. No changes in your ability to design / alter / moderate / manage / etc your forum - You still own your domain, hosting, etc. The Hub does not host or manage your forum in any way. It is just an API to help threads and member profiles be shared across multiple sites

This is my idea for the future of forums. It would bring participating forums together in a way we have never seen before, making sure you maintain the administrative responsibilities and benefits, making sure your forum can grow quickly, making sure your members always have a chance to opt-out of sharing their details/replies/threads with the Hub, and making sure that it works across all of the most popular forum software (XF, MyBB, vB, IPB, phpBB, etc)

Other considerations:

• To avoid major database use, post/profile/thread edits are delayed in their roll out to connected forums
• Shared member profiles are limited to a compressed avatar image, username, signature, and titles
• Shared members automatically appear as a normal user rank on connected forums. Admins on your forum appear as Members on connected forums
• The Hub will periodically check that shared threads are correctly linking to connected forums somewhere on the page
• No database credentials are shared - all data goes through an HTTPS API using JSON and call back files
• The Hub does most of the work. Your forum will never send or receive data with any other forum. It filters through the Hub.
• The Hub will never have a public forum of its own - it would be to much of an advantage over connected forums
• Forum Admins will have a Hub settings page on their own forum admin CP, and some other settings in their private Hub dashboard
• The Hub will auto detect abuse, low quality content, or duplicate content
• The Hub will always make sure your forum settings, censors, and other options are followed. Hand written rule threads cannot be followed - the Hub will offer many options to ensure you can properly moderate incoming content
• If you disconnect from the Hub, you will keep all of the content shared with you - which can be imported to your database if you've chosen to not store it locally when you set it up
• If a thread is removed after being shared, The Hub may or may not remove it from connected forums depending on the reason for deletion And the number of replies
• Disconnecting from the Hub does not remove your previously shared content from other connected forums.
• If a member opts out after already sharing content, their previously shared content is not removed from connected forums
• The Hub will always comply with laws relevant to its hosting location and US and EU privacy/data laws.
• Formal processes will always be available for content removal. All references to content NOT being removed In the above bullet points will have exceptions for US/EU laws and formal/legal requests
• The Hub reserves the right to comply with requests from law enforcement in the USA and may do so without notifying affected forums/users
• The Hub will only store threads/user info for a certain amount of time. Forum Admins who choose not to store data in their own database will lose access to those shared threads
• Once a forum disconnects from or connects to the Hub, any content stored on their database becomes their responsibility even if that content is shared from another forum. Additionally, every forum admin agrees they are liable for any content coming from their site and agrees to use the Hub emergency report feature for any illegal or disallowed content.
• Each participating forum agrees to display the entire Hub terms of service with no modifications, which may pass on liability to members for their own content
• The Hub reserves the right to remove any forum from the service without prior notification.
• Forum Admins will have a license (free) to use the Hub plugins/services.
• The Hub can trigger your forum to remove the plugin / connected content. If code modifications are detected to prevent this, the forum admin may be in violation of the license agreement
• The Hub will periodically send signals to forums to check if the plugin is working as intended in relation to plugin/content removals, edits, creations, etc.

 

[/foogle]

Take a look at Muut.com and mytalk.io, good examples

 

[Chase.]

I'd love this. This is something I thought of (more or less) years ago but didn't think was possible. Would definitely like to see this work.

 

[Ghost]

Take a look at Muut.com and mytalk.io, good examples

Yes, those are good enterprise solutions for sure. However, my idea for the Hub would not be a forum software or website. It would just help the forums connect by using a complex series of API end points.

I'd love this. This is something I thought of (more or less) years ago but didn't think was possible. Would definitely like to see this work.

Yes, it is definitely possible to do. It would take a lot of time and effort, but at the end of the day it's just core PHP, MySQL, and some plugin rules for each forum. The hard part is making sure all the different software can work& not break when there are updates.

 

[Chase.]

Well, it would require a technician who's on it 24/7, because I can imagine lot's of things breaking at some point.

 

[Ghost]

Well, it would require a technician who's on it 24/7, because I can imagine lot's of things breaking at some point.

Well, once it's released it would really just come down to patching any initial bugs. Once that is done it wouldn't really randomly break unless the main web server or databases went down. Then from there it would just be plugin updates going forward with the main Hub server staying nearly the same for a while. The main breakages would probably come from Admins attempting to change code or not having their server configured properly for the plugin to function. I imagine the biggest issue would be Admins updating their software without waiting for a related Hub plugin update to be released.

 

[Chase.]

Well, once it's released it would really just come down to patching any initial bugs. Once that is done it wouldn't really randomly break unless the main web server or databases went down. Then from there it would just be plugin updates going forward with the main Hub server staying nearly the same for a while. The main breakages would probably come from Admins attempting to change code or not having their server configured properly for the plugin to function. I imagine the biggest issue would be Admins updating their software without waiting for a related Hub plugin update to be released.

Wouldn't a block for update work out ? Or is this impossible to setup?

 

[Ghost]

Wouldn't a block for update work out ? Or is this impossible to setup?

Maybe a warning could be displayed, but a full block is probably against the rules for plugins on the official plugin sites. You would have to make the plugin remove, alter, or break the update related scripts which isn't really a good idea. It would function like any other forum plugin - if you want it, don't update your software until the plugin has an update available. However, the plugin really wouldn't alter designs or database structure, it would just modify a few functions In each software that are responsible for fetching threads / replies / author info. Everything else would remain the same, so shared threads and replies would still work with other plugins, designs, and settings.

 

[Katrina]

So much to read! I'll have to read it through again and again to get all the points down in my head but a couple questions I'd like to ask (and I'm sorry if the answer is obvious in your OP) are:

1) What happens if a member is on moderator queue on my site and he's a part of that hub? I see something about settings remaining in place so does that apply to Mod Que, bans, suspensions, etc?

2) What about certain topics I would NOT want discussed on my site that are allowed on others? How do I filter that?

3) Would my host be accommodating and not see the hub as a potential threat to be blocked?

 

[Ghost]

So much to read! I'll have to read it through again and again to get all the points down in my head but a couple questions I'd like to ask (and I'm sorry if the answer is obvious in your OP) are:

1) What happens if a member is on moderator queue on my site and he's a part of that hub? I see something about settings remaining in place so does that apply to Mod Que, bans, suspensions, etc?

2) What about certain topics I would NOT want discussed on my site that are allowed on others? How do I filter that?

3) Would my host be accommodating and not see the hub as a potential threat to be blocked?

Yeah, I laid out a lot of bullet points because I hope someone can take this idea and make a great service, or I can have it here for reference if I get around to it in the future 🙂 Sorry so much reading though!

1) Well, the Hub will only retrieve threads/posts that are published to your site. So if someone is in a moderation queue, their content will not be sent out by the service until you approve it. If that member was a part of another connected forum, it's possible their content could enter your site without approval because their account on the other forum isn't directly connected to the account on YOUR forum. I can think of a few ways to fix this, but the obvious solutions would require members to share their email address with the Hub or have an account on the Hub, which are both things I think should be avoided for privacy.

2) I suppose the Hub could have filtered words/sites/etc that automatically prevent certain content from going on your site, but obviously there may be some that get through. This would be no different than a member on your own forum circumventing word censors though. The main solution to this is having a queue in your forum that forces you to manually approve threads/posts sent to you by the Hub. It would be a lot more work, but is the only fail-safe option. However, generally speaking you would set your forum up to be connected to similar content and could always block content coming from certain users or entire forums if you catch anything you dislike.

3) Hosts would have to make a manual effort to block the Hub. The way it would work is some scripts on the Hub server would connect to your site and request information. As far as your host is concerned, when the Hub requests info from your site it would look very similar to a normal user connecting to your site. There would be rate limits in place so the Hub only fetches content every so often - perhaps once per hour. Of course, this adds delays to new threads/replies, but is the best way to avoid database failures (on the Hub) and automatic firewalls/bot banning from your host. For the most part, there wouldn't be much for your hosts to complain about because ideally everything would be set up to limit the number of times your website is connected to by the Hub and your website wouldn't be required to make any outgoing requests to the Hub. Hosts rarely have anything in place preventing another site from requesting info from your site. For example, I could create a script right now to go to ForumPromotion.net and find all the new threads in the last hour. Because I would rate limit it to not request too many pages too quickly, FP's host would most likely not detect my script as a web crawler. However, if FP had a script to frequently connect to MY site (reverse roles) then perhaps the host would ban FP faster because they would detect FP trying to crawl the web. Essentially what I'm saying is that the server that the Hub would be on does most of the work, and all of the connected forums have to do barely any work or connecting, so they wouldn't trigger hosting suspensions.

 

[/foogle]

In other words, Multiple logins under one account.