Brent C

10 hours ago, opentype said:

I accept logic, reason and facts. I do not accept flawed arguments or untrue or unsubstantiated statements. If you tell me 1+2 = 2 and 1 + 3 is 5, don’t complain that I “dismiss everything you say”. Continuing to point out that people haven’t asked to remove BB code for example, is an objective logical fallacy. It must be dismissed. The suggested conclusion (so it better should be kept or reintroduced) doesn’t logically follow from the premise. 

There’s the disconnect: I was only trying to help you to see the flaws in your argumentation so you can maybe avoid that in the future. Some people would not consider this kind of advise “useless”. 

Your statements would be valid if this was such a case. I'm sorry that I didn't add references in my initial post to satisfy your need for confirmation, even though I clearly stated the situation in the second post, and then dismantled your arguments in the next, and now it's come to claiming all my arguments are flawed, untrue or unsubstantiated. The problem here may be on your side. Perhaps you can do nothing else but go in denial towards all the statements, simply because you disagree with my vision. Either way, the question at hand was answered, and this discussion does not matter for that question, which isn't about how to argue.

Now this post is polluted and I'll take the blame for not ignoring you.

2 hours ago, opentype said:

Dismiss what? I already asked you to substantiate your claims, even giving examples of how that could look like. You didn’t provide anything other than saying “other platforms still have it“. A poor argument, which I addressed. 

Just like nobody asked Apple to remove the floppy but it still happened and eventually became the norm. Again, I already addressed that. 

Every argument. I substantiated it by saying what I did, and you again dismiss it as a "poor argument". What's the point in discussing with you if you dismiss everything? And again, yes Apple may have done it and yes, they wouldn't revert it, but it was never impossible to use floppy discs in the same way as before. You seem to have completely ignored that point.

Either way, there's no point in continuing this useless discussion as IP will not reintroduce BBCode.

Luckily there are good alternatives.

8 hours ago, opentype said:

So? It’s like saying to Apple years ago “every PC maker still puts in floppy disc drives and no user asked you to actively remove it so you need to keep it forever”. This kind of argument can be used against any change, and it turn it means nothing. 

The floppy drive can still be put into every computer either directly in the case or by cable. The point is that users can still use the floppy drive the same way they used to, with the same product. You're very quick to dismiss, yet the decision to remove it was completely arbitrary and nobody asked for it. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's obsolete. Yes there are WYSIWYG editors, but they are a totally different feature. Besides, current editors support BBCode perfectly fine, besides IPBoard of course. Anyway, there are pro and anti sides for everything.

4 minutes ago, Matt said:

BBCode still works - so you can type stuff like:

[b]Bold[/b], [i]italic[/i] and so on.

To add your own replacement style buttons, check out this guide:
 

 

Hello,

Yes basic BBCode works. The guide you linked, does it then also allow me to define BBCode that gets converted to my custom HTML block? If so, then I'll be happy enough.

Thank you all for your replies.

@Joy Rex @Lindy Indeed my community and all the other communities (about 3 large ones) related to the same scene use BBCode and are related to software development. A lot of information between those communities gets shared, but we, with IPBoard (and others that also use it in the same scene) kind of drew the short straw in terms of sharing information because of all the broken formatting. While yes, the keyboard shortcuts significantly improve the flow of making a post, and in the case of writing a new post I suppose my users will just have to get used to that idea, which is fine, there is still the (big) problem I have with people who paste BBCode-formatted posts into the editor. Many of the BBCode tags don't work. I suppose the compromise could be that there is a way to define custom HTML objects (there probably is?) for certain BBCode tags that are at the moment not converted.

It's just that... I miss BBCode... 😔

@opentype All vBulletin forums (and equivalents such as SMF, phpbb) use BBCode, no? The communities mentioned above, besides a few minor ones use vBulletin or equivalent.

If it wasn't such a hassle we would move back to vBulletin or something, but it's a huge amount of work and we had moved away from it in the past because IPBoard was more refined in terms of user experience, but if i remember correctly that was before the removal of BBCode in IPBoard.

Hello,

I'm here to touch on the touchy subject of BBCode that has been discussed many times before, yet the importance of it seems to be dismissed.

BBCode is STILL the main way of styling forum posts in many communities. In a community I moderate, many users either post broken topics (styled with BBCode that works on (all) other forum software) or complain that the BBCode that does work gets converted to HTML when they save their post.

To claim that BBCode is deprecated and an old technology is fine, but forums are right up the same alley. People who still use forums, are people who also still use BBCode. BBCode is simple, it's like writing Markdown and everyone loves that. Suddenly taking that away from everyone, in the spirit of being innovative because everyone else "still" uses BBCode is a bad move. BBCode still exists because it works great. It can't be that hard to maintain from a technical perspective. I believe your decision to drop it was more of a "crap we fudged ourselves and now it's hard" rather than a "this is what the users want" decision.

In previous discussions it was mentioned that it's technically challenging to bring back proper BBCode (into the current CKEditor?/parser). Back then a user proposed a separate editor for those who wish to write in BBCode (AND KEEP IT IN BBCode). This could be a solution to the technical dept you've created by removing it, should you wish to avoid fixing it. Otherwise, I think "a lot of work" is just the way it is. I don't think anybody requested the removal of BBCode, and I believe the demand for it is large, but not very apparent towards you guys.

Now,

If there is a way to:

• Add BBCode extensions (through plugins or a UI)
• Permanently stay in BBCode source mode (and also persist the posts in the original source format, be it HTML or BBCode)
• Support all the previously supported BBCode elements in the same format as other forum software

then please point me to that solution, and forget this post, but the last time I checked there was no proper solution. I know there is a BBCode plugin for CKEditor but that doesn't really do much besides convert (some) BBCode into HTML when writing the initial post, but this is not what is required. To my community (and probably many others), BBCode is MUCH more important than HTML. Not a single user of my community writes HTML posts and many don't want to take the time to use the WYSIWYG editor to mark up their post. Many of the users post BBCode posts from other forums as well and these often don't get marked up at all.

Anyway, thank you for considering my post and I'm sorry if it sounds rude but I'd like to stress the importance of BBCode.