WoltLab Forum Migration - Feedback

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↩  Folfy_Blue A few of Flarum’s markdown are missing from wotlab, notably the center and size tags, is this a possible fix? See:

Flarum markdown post on woltlab
Other example of the two tags not working

So this has been fixed in the latest version of the migration tool, I haven't ran it through yet but they've come back with the following comments

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I didn't realize that Flarum supported both Markdown and BBCodes. But sure we can migrate those across.

Note, that this specific tag is invalid in both Flarum and WoltLab Suite. The minimum size for both is 8. I've added support to the importer by converting the Flarum sizes into the smallest WoltLab Suite size that is equal or greater.

Can I ask one final time for people to do a check of imported content, Woltlab are going to be putting this importer into GA with their next release of the suite, and as soon as they do that we'll be looking to migrate over pretty shortly after. I really do need people to have a look and flag any other issues with the content that we migrated across from these forums.

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↩  Fyrsta Line breaks don’t appear to copy across too well, e.g. https://woltlab-test.totalfreedom.me/forum/thread/4260-a-break-from-me/ is missing the line breaks between paragraphs, not a huge thing, but a nice to have if possible.

↩  Telesphoreo This thread didn’t copy over exactly: https://woltlab-test.totalfreedom.me/forum/thread/4…ex-1-1-released

Seems as if it’s missing some returns

Let me see if I can figure out what's causing that, as it seems to be far from consistent so not sure if it's something in the way Flarum renders the content / stores it or if the import script is fucky.

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↩  Fyrsta Profile pictures don’t appear to copy over but that’s not really the end of the world.

Yes, I think I'm happy with that, it's not a big deal and given Woltlab has more profile customisation anyway, probably makes sense to let people customise their profiles how they like.

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↩  Fyrsta @ ing users doesn’t appear to be consistent. Take a look at https://woltlab-test.totalfreedom.me/forum/thread/4…ation-feedback/ for example, you have things like ↩  Allink - just a guess, but it could be something to do with display vs user names perhaps. E.g. wild1145 is showing up fine, but ↩ @'Ryan' doesn’t.

So that's just a flarum thing, the @'s with a # on it is @'ing a specific post, rather than the user, Woltlab doesn't have a concept of that because you'd just use quotes like a normal human being. It's just a case that when you reply to people or quote people on Flarum it'll do this, and Woltlab doesn't have a way to handle it, I'll raise it with them and see if they have a suggested behaviour but I'm not sure what I'd do other than potentially quote the tagged post instead?

So the Woltlab team have done some digging, turns out Flarum doesn't follow the Markdown standard when it comes to line breaks which is why the formatting looks a bit weird, they have now done some work to try to fix it, but it might break things like code block formatting a bit.

They have also fixed the issue with replies in Flarum to make it look much much better.

Given the handful of updates they've made, over the weekend I'll take an updated clone of the prod database and re-run the import on Woltlab to see what it's like, fingers crossed there won't be any other issues.

↩ @' 5 ' This is intentional. We don't want people actively going and changing the history on threads especially when they're locked. Woltlab will I believe give us some more moderation visibility to stop people purging or re writing history and us being able to see the edit history so we can restore such content.

↩  Deauthorized I'm not sure and I'm not sure we would want to. There are sensible reasons to edit but woltlab will allow people to add a reason for editing which can be shown to everyone.

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↩ @' 5 ' i understand you’re directly referencing my tendency to delete my own posts. i feel very offended by your threat to undo my work going forward. you can have my edit history for administrative reasons, but don’t reinstate messages that myself or others intentionally delete without our consent.

i sympathize with your concerns. i contribute lots of helpful and high-effort content, and each time, i consider if i’ll want to delete it once it no longer serves any utility or relevance. there are posts i intend to leave up forever. previously i’ve retracted very high-effort suggestions before they were acted on. that’s simply because i changed my mind and i want that to be respected. i’m not spamming your board.

in other words i’m the opposite of an archivist, i don’t want to be remembered when i leave TF. i also don’t intend to be profiled by members of the community based on info I carelessly let accumulate before then. disregarding locked threads, I find it immoral of you to deny me the ability to remove my own content short of requesting a complete takedown.

Not just you but there are a couple of places where this has happened and it's skewed the content of the thread. Applications for ranks are a prime example where editing or removing content after a decision has been made can cause issues when it's reviewed down the road.

It also allows us to restore in the event of either malicious / rogue deletions or where people are intentionally modifying their content to skew the narrative of a thread.

I personally disagree with the way you purge your content and would have simply suggested that when you have had enough of TF, you just burn your forum account which makes your posts non attributable but I equally won't stop you from doing what you do. Though it does mean on longer running threads and discussions your views may not be taken into account when you purge your content... It's happened a few times where I've not reviewed a suggestion / similar for so long that you have got rid of your own content.

Woltlab will at least allow me to view what it did say and allow me to decide if you or others are changing the narrative in your edited posts to paint someone else in a bad light or if it's just cleaning old content.

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↩  Tizz Anyway, you can’t delete your posts here as well, “deleted” posts are just hidden from non-staff, only forum admins can purge threads permanently.

That's why he and others edit their posts before deleting them which makes it much more tricky for us to see what it originally said even as forum managers.