U.S. Presidential Election

[charlierc]

24 minutes ago, Skip997 said:

Ah so it’s a generic off the shelf message board. TBH I always thought that was the case, couldn’t imagine Neil having custom built it. 

Tbf I can imagine that process would be a ballache.

Edited January 21, 2025 by charlierc

[Alvoram]

In over 20 years, I've never seen a site use their own custom forum software. I've worked with and have experience of many, PHPBB, Invision Powerboards (now community,) MyBB, Xenforo, SMF and VBulletin, forums modules for wider CMS packages such as wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla, but never an entirely ground up custom forum. 

I've coded integrations for linking PHPBB to other CMS packages in the past, so that they both use a combined user database, and that was hard enough 17 years ago. In this day and age It'd be a hell of a lot of work to code your own forum software, and for absolutely no reason, when so many good solutions exist. 

We now live in a world where most professionally built websites are built upon existing tools, such as wordpress (which accounts for 43% of all sites) amongst others, so no sense in coding an entirely new forum software package.

Neil has done a good job with the software side of the site in my opinion, a very good job, it's simple, fast and reliable and is amongst the best user experiences of anything I've ever seen of this kind. It would be easy for the new owner to go changing things, adding plugins for this and new integrations for that, but that could impact the overall user experience negatively. Last time I had to do it, Facebook and Instagram for example, required you to set up an app on their side that talks to their API, in order to enable simple embedding. 

Wildly off topic though, sorry about that, as for Trump, I have nothing really positive to add to the conversation. I do hope that he can open up more dialogue on a Ukraine solution. 

And also 
 

5 hours ago, steviewevie said:

 

 

I had to google what a BRICS nation was... Quite the blunder already. 😕 

[kaosmark2]

4 hours ago, Crazyfool01 said:

its invision which is pretty generic from what I know although im not on other sites ... Neil I believe did some of his own tweaks @Neil ? is that accurate ? 

No coded tweaks to the forum by either Neil or Iggy, apart from integration with the rest of the site (mostly showing sections to each other), but there's options within the forum software that each have used to create minor shifts.

[kaosmark2]

7 hours ago, charlierc said:

Multiple football Reddits seem to have developed a "No X/Twitter links" thanks to Musk's latest act of idiocy, or at least be asking followers if they should and the majority seem to be in favour.

 

Tempting to bring that in as a rule for here?

Speaking in both personal capacity and as a moderator, I'd be reluctant to do that without a forum poll. I can only guess at Iggy's thoughts, but he hasn't said anything about getting rid of efestivals twitter things, albeit the last conversation I had with him about it was ~2 months ago.

 

I'll add it to my list of things to bring up next time I have a bit of a conversation with him, and maybe we'll run a poll in future.

 

On the personal capacity, I've quit twitter, and deactivated my account, but I'd be reluctant to imply that people who are still on twitter are inherently nazis/fascist, even though I'm very happy to call both Musk and Trump fascists.

[steviewevie]

I think keep Twitter but enable others to be embedded like Bluesky...but appreciate that is likely a software thing and can't just be switched on.

I am actually still on Twitter, just about. I don't post there much, but still look on there as there is still a lot of the people I follow posting..various journalists, experts, celebrities, news sites, politicians etc from here and around the world. A lot of people I follow from UK/US have moved to bluesky too, but some are more active there than others.

Twitter is still a great place for latest news and funny stuff related to it, even if it's Musk being a nazi. I just stick to the For You feed and try not engage with some of the blue tick turds...unless I'm a bit drunk and angry (so quite often).

[steviewevie]

33 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

I think keep Twitter but enable others to be embedded like Bluesky...but appreciate that is likely a software thing and can't just be switched on.

I am actually still on Twitter, just about. I don't post there much, but still look on there as there is still a lot of the people I follow posting..various journalists, experts, celebrities, news sites, politicians etc from here and around the world. A lot of people I follow from UK/US have moved to bluesky too, but some are more active there than others.

Twitter is still a great place for latest news and funny stuff related to it, even if it's Musk being a nazi. I just stick to the For You feed and try not engage with some of the blue tick turds...unless I'm a bit drunk and angry (so quite often).

I mean I keep off For You, feed...and stick to Following feed...

[steviewevie]

 

[FloopFiller]

41 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

 

Great to see them all just have to sit there and listen to this without getting to yell ‘fake news!’ etc back. It’s obviously not gonna make a difference, but it’s massively pissed off the MAGA base so job well done. Very brave of her to do this knowing she’ll become a target now. 

[steviewevie]

she's not compassionate, she's woke.

 

[steviewevie]

[balti-pie]

For a billionaire leader of a first world country, he's hilariously touchy and sensitive - it might be the only endearing thing about him 

[steviewevie]

He is just going to keep using tariff threats...

[Crazyfool01]

just seen about the removal of the cap in prices for insulin .... think id be dead within a year if I lived in the US 

[steviewevie]

 

[charlierc]

19 hours ago, kaosmark2 said:

Speaking in both personal capacity and as a moderator, I'd be reluctant to do that without a forum poll. I can only guess at Iggy's thoughts, but he hasn't said anything about getting rid of efestivals twitter things, albeit the last conversation I had with him about it was ~2 months ago.

 

I'll add it to my list of things to bring up next time I have a bit of a conversation with him, and maybe we'll run a poll in future.

 

On the personal capacity, I've quit twitter, and deactivated my account, but I'd be reluctant to imply that people who are still on twitter are inherently nazis/fascist, even though I'm very happy to call both Musk and Trump fascists.

I think it's an evolving conversation as much as anything given that Twitter's ownership situation has become more volatile and we don't necessarily know if anything comparable will take its place, or at least to the same ubiquity it achieved and to an extent still has. Although I'm finding that less useful since the change of name meaning its more fiddly to embed posts from Twitter on here, to the point where I can't be arsed.

 

The fact the music community is yet to move at the same pace is also a factor. I know Robert Smith of The Cure made a big show of quitting over the weekend, but it's a slower drift for others. I think it's easier for things like sport Reddits, given a lot of football, F1 and other sporting journalists already have BlueSky accounts just to hedge their bets.

 

Certainly, I'm aware it's tricky to say Twitter/X is now exclusively the preserve of the fascist community when there are still people there trying to fight the good fight. But it's certainly becoming a worse place to use in general given it feels buggier and where Elon's finger on the button is making more dubious stuff more visible. I have concerns other social media is also trying to cram similar such bollocks down people's throats, its just that its much more brazen in Elon's private play park.

 

I will say I still have an account but haven't posted in a few weeks. There's a work commitment that means I've had to use it, but I'm tempted to see if BlueSky can take its place when the next time I need it rolls around.

Edited January 22, 2025 by charlierc

[FloopFiller]

Bluesky is a great alternative and feels very much like the Twitter of old, complete with a huge lack of constant ads clogging your feed, but its user base hasn’t quite gotten there yet and so far it all seems very ‘left leaning people patting themselves on the back for leaving Twitter’. I hate the right wing shithole Twitter has become, but Bluesky needs to have a bit of the juice/confrontation/opposing views or it just becomes a boring echo chamber. 

[Skip997]

4 minutes ago, FloopFiller said:

I hate the right wing shithole Twitter has become, but Bluesky needs to have a bit of the juice/confrontation/opposing views or it just becomes a boring echo chamber. 

Facebook has the same right wing shithole issue, made even worse by an insane number of ridiculous conspiracy theories. 

[steviewevie]

 

[SheffJeff]

I love sh*t like this, unless it's from the likes of Trump/Starmer/Farage/(all Tories) which is probably hypocritical but I don't care because I love sh*t like this.

 

[steviewevie]

5 hours ago, SheffJeff said:

I love sh*t like this, unless it's from the likes of Trump/Starmer/Farage/(all Tories) which is probably hypocritical but I don't care because I love sh*t like this.

 

Trump is going to tariff the f**k out of them.

[MilkyJoe]

12 hours ago, charlierc said:

Although I'm finding that less useful since the change of name meaning its more fiddly to embed posts from Twitter on here, to the point where I can't be arsed.

 

 

In case you missed it, Twitter posts embed fine on here now without the need for any jiggery pokery.

[steviewevie]

enjoy...not at all like a weird comedy sci-fi...

 

[charlierc]

11 hours ago, MilkyJoe said:

In case you missed it, Twitter posts embed fine on here now without the need for any jiggery pokery.

And just in time for me to lose interest in using that shitheap's posts. Shame.

[steviewevie]

With all the radical executive orders...lots of stuff promised leading up to the election, some of it signed infront of maga crowds...some will get through, but some will be blocked by judges or the legislature..and then Trump can tell the people they are blocking him delivering what they want...we need to bypass the blockers, the deep state, lock them up...and so US moves closer to an Orban style illiberal democracy, and eventually authoritarianism.

[steviewevie]

Hyped for a war between USA and Denmark. Who's side will we be on?