Fluxer
Replies: 22 comments 64 replies
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The channels list already feels like something that can become cluttered quickly, so one thing I don't really like are the link types. It feels like they could be placed inside of an "information"-type channel instead, or what the documentation type does |
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I agree a server can quickly become cluttered... I have made the experience myself X) I would say, maybe additional organization features, like sub-categories that can be closed / opened (maybe closed by default ?) could be interesting to reduce visual clutter ? But at the end, I feel like, no matter how much you try, if you have a lot of needs, then you'll have a lot of channels and thus a lot of clutter :/ |
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Clutter is managable with hiding channels, muting, and copying discord's channel subscription system. |
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An idea for Calendar channels: Basically, You have a page that has a calendar on it and a list of events. The events are tied to that calendar, and can be quickly observed that way. You can create new events by either hitting the "New Event" button or clicking on the day/time and creating a new event similar to the flows on any standard calendar app. Give it a starting time, ending time, set up recurring events, a description, image, etc. This information could become the top post for the integrated forum thread. From there, you have the "I'm Interested" flow that discord has for it's event system. Hitting the bell that you are interested automatically subcribes you to a thread for that event (if that is enable in the calendar settings), and you are notified when the event starts (creating the event gives you reminder options). There should be options for recurring events as well. This is very similar to a forum in discord, and with the stated roadmap goals of exporting forums to web you could export the calendar too if you want. (Note on the image: I clipped the current fluxer UI to do this example, so I'd recommend removing the ability to send messages to such a calendar channel. It's essentially a fancy forum display, allowing you to have threads with date/time information. The subscribers to the thread are the people interested in the event) EDIT: I think there is benefit to keeping calendar events channel based, using channel permissions. In discord, Events are tied to the guild and there is no way to restrict who can see certain events. By keeping events channel-based, guild owners can create things like a "Leadership Calendar". Games where you coordinate with variously trusted individuals you can limit who sees raids or operations (ie: with the game Foxhole, You generally want to invite members of allied orgs into your discord to coordinate, but you dont want to give them full access. Also you may have members in your guild who play against you for a match and then come back, so you want to limit their permissions). This is also useful for guilds that have mixed local IRL friends and internet buddies... you can have a place for just the IRL friends to organize events without every person on the server having access to information like people's physical addresses if they are shared in calendar events. You could achieve Discord's "Events" category by showing the user every event they have access to. |
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Should note, in google calendar, the mini calendar is always on a day-of-month display, not a month-of-year. the reason for this is you can change what type of display for the main panel (daily list, weekly, monthly, agenda mode) and the mini calendar always shows you a reference where you are in time. |
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I see ! Lots of interesting stuff, I'll see if I have time to make the changes to the model today ! |
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I think a calendar channel would be pretty cool to add! I think being able to like add your Google calendar or calendar from other sites/apps would be useful too. You could add upcoming community events, birthdays of members, etc. |
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Check out our current calendar design here: fluxerapp/fluxer-meta#3 |
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My biggest piece of feedback (which i put in that ticket) is that calendars should not be per community. They should be channels and conform to the permissions system that channels do. This is vital for separating out different types of calendars without having to create additional community servers to do so. |
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I like the idea of a calendar channel and doc/info channel that can be just a markdown edited document |
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Just adding that some matrix clients do this, like Commet (https://commet.chat/), which has the "calendar" and "photo album" channel types, and these can be useful for some communities/groups. |
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Interesting ! I'll add the "Photo Album" channel type to the main proposal ! |
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The calendar that @RoyAwesome done is a lot better imo. Would be interesting to have a photo album channel though. I think some album software apps have ways to resize how they are displayed etc. |
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I think a Hub/Board Channel Type would be very nice to have (just like Discord's forum), for Developer servers a Hub Channel type would be good for searching projects from other people. |
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Hi ! Sorry for the long waiting... |
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thank you! |
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and also the icon concepts |
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Instead of a number maybe it could be a letter C? |
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@smoky-oni I suggested the c as if you have a bunch of calendar channel icons suddenly change number for the channel type when the date changes, that isn't great for a user experience. A simple C for calendar wouldn't have such an issue. @alzalia1 Any thoughts? |
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I think instead of a letter something like this would work better (a rough idea, since I'm not the best at making icons). most icons usually use a number, but I've seen a few use this pattern since it resembles the dates on a calendar: |
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Maybe even just have it blank? Like this |
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as #530 got closed with the note I should move here. Which I do with this post :-)
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Hello ! I'm more than willing to add this idea to the main message, but could you first explain maybe a bit more what a "flarum type" forum involves? A (very) quick look at it and I'm under the impression it is like a discord forum, with tags that you can apply and then filter with ? Is your proposition more about features or display style ? Thanks a lot ! |
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Hi okay I will try to explain what I mean. I think what I mean is a mixture of both feature and display style. I try to keep it short but if it becomes a wall of text I apologize in advance. English is not my native language, so if i write something nonsensical please ask for clarification I will try to rephrase then :-) Starting with how discord does the forum. honestly its visual style is cluttered, unclear and I find it hard to find the right forum threads. I am not sure if just visually changing the display would make it better. I compared the discord style to the flarum forum style to see the difference. here a screenshot side by side of a flarum forum and a discord forum to compare: The Flarum forum has less white-space compared to the discord forum. It adds in categories which is nice and shows who and when has replied to the thread instead of just showing part of the thread starters first sentence. The flarum forum shows the avatar of the thread starter which saves on space making the display more compact and makes the different threads visually more distinct from each other. A discord server can have multiple "forums" which is a cool feature. But sometimes on a discord with lots of channels its hard to find them all. The first ideas come to mind is to have a button that just hides every channel except forum channels. Another idea would be a forum view. It switches to a view similar to flarum and converts the different "forums" and "forum groups" into flarum Categories/sub categories and shows just the threads. screenshot what I mean with forum group and forums: and the last part: a bridge to a public flarum forum option: The route of a plugin for a forum software would also make it agnostic to which forum software is used as people who dont want to use flarum as their public forum could just write a plugin for the forum software of their choice and connect the internal forums of their own fluxer comunity to another forum software like phpbb, discourse etc. I think I could write a lot more paragraphs but that would likely go to much into detail how something should look or implementation. I hope my rambling makes half way sense :-) |
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I see ! So, to try and recap (tell me if I'm wrong) :
If I understood correctly, that indeed seems interesting ! I added this discussion to the main message as part of discussions about the forum channel. Edit: Don't hesitate to expand even more on your ideas ! It can be helpful for devs if they end up wanting to implement this :p |
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yeah that sounds good :-) Your recap feels like a good baseline :-) I will think how to expand my ideas more. Thanks for considering my ideas :-) |
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Couldn't this be done via the CSS stuff or smth? |
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is the Documentation channel type for a Wiki style channel? Because having a Wiki on fluxer would be incredible and let us avoid relying on Fandom |
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It would be especially game changing if it was easy to set the stuff up for CSS stuff etc for the cool looking things people can do, which on fandom is seemingly rather complicated. Or if it had some kind of built in wiki to show how to do basically everything on it. That brings me to another idea. |
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In my idea, this channel would pretty much be a place you can input html and css and just render it. No javascript or any scripting language for very obvious reasons, just raw HTML x CSS, which I believe would still allow to do a lot ! Maybe I can make it a bit clearer in my proposal ? I'll add this discussion as reference for the documentation channel. Or maybe there could be two modes to a documentation channel : a "simple" mode which would be a markdown editor, and then an "advanced" mode where you can do html and css ? |
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It could just be a markdown so regular people can use it. Html and css is too much for the average person, a markdown file lets you get all the features of wikipedia people need for their own wikis |
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That why two modes could be interesting ! The default would be markdown, so that anyone can use it, but then an advanced mode would let people use CSS to make their own personal themes and such if they want. Although, I do have to recognize that an HTML mode would probably be more work to implement than just a markdown mode. But I still think the two can be interesting ! |
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Ah, I missed the part about css and html. But this is what I'd like, specially for people that work on bots and such, would be a nice way of giving them the option to make better interfaces. Simple markdown won't cut it for that tho, and it would feel limited to just wiki type documents which I don't think is lacking as much as better UI features for projects in general. Having both options would be better. |
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Feature request: Built in link in bio channel type. Proposed solution: It could look smth along the lines of this perhaps. Tbh, I don't have huge hopes for this actually being added, given there are many link in bio sites out there but having one built in would be cool! Notes (optional) |
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Hello ! It does look like a very good idea, especially with how many servers have a "presentation" channel ! I'll add your idea to the main message. |
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Thinking about it, I like this functionality but I don't like it being restricted to channels. Being able to use it in other parts of the platform (like seeing the bio of a user you're talking to in DMs) or use them as shareable cards that then expand to reveal the whole bio would also be great. I think this feature should be be it's own thing, but also have the option of a channel that directly supports displaying a list of members who have opted-in and previewing them how you'd like. That way they could be customized and it would look better multi-platform. |
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How about a built in guide book. Could probably add a small guide book icon in top right or smth like that. The guide book could take you to a screen showing how to use different things on Fluxer. It could have guides to showing how to use the CSS Fluxer uses for themes, maybe even how to use different channel types added. Etc. |
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Well.. I'd be down for it to be a channel type if it wasn't just a thing in top right only for Fluxer to use. Could be cool if it were for both. Could be like an actual book thing with pages that turn or smth. |
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So would the servers you're in be able to edit the book, like add chapters / pages ? Or would this only be a global fluxer thing ? |
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It could be both. A channel type that works like how the one that is shown in the app would theoretically work. |
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I added the channel type in my original message, as well as a link to this discussion. If you want to expand on your idea here, don't hesitate to ! |
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Ok |
Document channelsTL;DR — As a compromise between a fully-fledged in-app document-editing tool and some way to go beyond markdown. I propose a very simple PDF-display channel.
To follow-up on this discussion that took place in the FluxerHQ; I wanted to propose what I think would be a very good middle-ground — A Document channel, as Hampus coined it; which would be a very basic in-app PDF viewer. I know this might sound very lackluster compared to the scope evoked in the discussion (trimmed for your convenience); but hear me out!
Here is a proof of concept of what it could look likeSorry if the pixelate effects hurts your eyes, I only had a private document on hand :( |
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I want to also bring up a new channel type that Discord is recently working on, Spoiler Channels. It functionals simliarily to NSFW channels but non-NSFW (same protections are inherited from regular channels) and does not require age verification. This is for communities, where movie/game spoiler matters or talked about heavy subjects, such as polictics or religion. Source: https://xcancel.com/DiscordPreviews/status/2049095808851599738#m |
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I wouldn't be surprised if it will happen, but I am a little surprised it would have been leaked on there instead of on here or just actually announced. |
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Something that could probably solve a bunch of the clutter problems and make some of these other channel types look nicer would be to have a channel that can behave as a sub-category. At first you'd think of something like discord threads BUT, what I have in mind is a bit more flexible. Basically you'd be able to allow channels to have a collapsible list of other channels attached to it. So you'd have a nice list of link channels that doesn't get messy, or be able to implement this "link in bio" idea a bit more simple and clean. You'd also be able to have different directories (I guess) for the document channel type suggested above. But overall you'd be able to organize the main channel types (text, voice, link) in a way that lets you attach related sub-channels right to them, so you could have a link or voice channel and then have a text channel attached to it. Of course as more channel types get added they'd also benefit from this functionality. I'd imagine tho that you'd want to restrict the depth of sub-categories to just 1 or 2, and default to collapsed, just to avoid making the channel lists look too cluttered and janky. Edit: Also for permissions, I'd imagine you could add a secondary permission list to the main channel so that sub-channels would inherit permissions based on those permissions instead of the main channel's first permissions. So you could have read only and such, but also not have perms become too messy each time you move a channel to a different category or subcategory. Defaults would be something like sub-channels always inherit a main channel's secondary permissions unless otherwise stated, and when moved to a category they'd automatically sync to the category's permissions by default. Edit2: Further clarification, this is not my take on what threads should be like for Fluxer. I think threads and channels should have a clear distinction between each other so they aren't as confusing to navigate (like on discord.) but I plan to make a post later that goes into that in more depth. |
I was actually thinking of another solution a day after posting that, but basically a way to have channel lists with layers, and I think on mobile that may work better. Specially because my idea was you could pin whatever channels from deeper layers you'd like to see all the time on the first layer of channels for quick access, but then I thought how tedious it would be finding channels on PC having to navigate multiple layers. So I guess maybe it's better to have a different solution for each? |
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A different solution for each can be confusing for people new to the app as well as people who don't have the best memory (which seems to be like half of people over 40) lol |
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I mean a different solution for Mobile and PC. Navigating different channel types with different layouts can be just as or even more confusing. My current worry right now is that links can start to take up a lot of space for what they do, which even on mobile can be annoying to navigate if the amount of channels gets too long. But it's also nice having them be readily available from other parts of the community unlike if you were to make a channel with a bunch of links (which would be more annoying to navigate between on mobile). |
I think being able to pin channels you always want to see and have access to would solve this, but the point is to be able to organize the channel list in a way that lets you have channels you won't always use without them getting in the way. Collapsing and opening the list would only be a problem before you pin a channel you're interested in. I have no idea how well this would work for the "Link in Bio" on mobile tho, since I feel that channel type would better suited having its own type of list to be able to search members and possibly view a bit more details while navigating the list of bios before opening them (on mobile). |
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Okay, after going over this again, I think having the option to pin channels is fine. But to better serve mobile users you could allow nested channels whose entire navigation depends on a main channel and add a "home button" between the "back button" and nested channel's name in the channel header. That way the main channel can use whatever channel template you feel like to better present what it's trying to do. Either way, discussing mobile right now is almost pointless since the Flutter app may handle the channel list differently and the layout may work better to handle these sorts of issues. |
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Guilded had some cool options for different channels; they were a huge help in organizing work and teams. That’s always been the feature I wanted most in Discord. If these new channels are available, I’ll switch everything over to Fluxer in a heartbeat. |
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This doesn't feel like a channel, but maybe a tool like discord's poll feature |
These are entire channels with their own structures; if they were polls, they would be impossible to read
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If they do add this it would be nice if you could toggle it between a vertical layout and horizontal for showcasing the schedules. As in it could show times on top and days on left and time on top, like how twitch does it. |
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I wonder who is in charge of the design for ui stuff. I'd be down to help with that stuff tbh (as in create a picture not via coding) |
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Hello ! I added your proposal to the main message, sorry for the long delay ! |
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edit: Having access to more advanced UI customization than simple markdown would also help with devs not having to host dashboards offsite and making it more accessible. Being able to tab through more than one UI using the same channel will also make stuff appear more clean. That way you can have a channel for all bot UIs with each having their own interactions, and then one for separate documentation on other stuff with their own document trees. |
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One thing I'm really hoping is for channel types to not be locked behind the community server toggle. I don't really see any reason why a server should have channels tied to the community setting how discord has it. Why tie stage channels, forum channels etc behind community when these are popular features that anyone might want to use. I could understand stage channel being tied to plutonium instead perhaps, but the other ones should at least be usable on regular servers. I could understand announcement channels being part of community but forum channels? No way. To sum up: Any thoughts? |
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Hello, yeah I agree ! I added a note on the original post to mention that ^^ |
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For threads, I think we should be able to pin the thread itself into a channels pinned messages. On discord the best you can do is reply to a thread message then pin the reply. 
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@alzalia1 I'm not sure how exactly it'd look as a pinned message but I was thinking it would just say the threads name and the fact it is a thread using the thread channel symbol. |
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I was also thinking you could create a thread with threads listed in the thread in a nested way, which might be cool. |
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Discord does this with threads already, so I'm guessing Fluxer probably will as well since threads are basically just links to a channel. |
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I agree this would be cool ! Adding it to the main message. |
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CalDAV / WebDAV support should definitely be a thing, that I can subscribe to the calendar to my phone, computer or email account. And be able to show my events as "busy" to the fluxer client, during my own calendar events, those I choose to share. |
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Problem Proposal 
Image depicting a gallery view of media that has been shared or subscribed to. A mouse cursor depicts highlighting media that then shows the amount of comments on a media and the user. An arrow next to the user allows to open a a small profile view of the creator and see in a quick view what other media they have on their account.
Image depicting a chat view where a discussion has been going on about a video that someone proceeds to link to. The link being a direct view from the media channel. It's titular text is above the media content. Next to the media you have comments made to the video that are public. Next to public comments there is a reply window to discuss about the media. The arrow allowing for a reply to the discussion about the media.
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While being able to connect to the fediverse is a REALLY cool idea, I think it may deserve its own proposal ? Like, this is a proposal for federation with this channel as a by-product (to me at least). But I can definitely still put your idea in the main message if you want ! |
It was closed under #1243 |
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No problem then ! I'll add it right away ^^ |
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Missing threads feature and possibility to make public discussion Proposal Image depicting a list view of some threads in a forum type threaded channel. Image also contains users from outside the fluxer network who have posted, either connecting their account to fluxer or the server broadcasting the forum space publicly. Image also uses fluxer logos for samples as to where an image would be located if the topic contained an image. |
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This Threadiverse connection had it's own post under #1241 |
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Media channel (the default for posted videos, GIFs and images) where they were explicitly posted, and possibly, optionally, a media channel that automatically displays all media in the group. It should be possible to add a reaction on each media. 
like: |
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something I posted about https://github.com/orgs/fluxerapp/discussions/321#discussioncomment-17516590 |
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I wrote this because I thought that forum channels were going to be just like in other social networks but I'm going to put it here just in case it's useful. Right now, on some platforms, when people create a forum channel they have the ability to add tags in their forum channel, allowing people to have a fast way of searching threads, however sometimes tags aren't enough and using too many tags can lead to an uncategorized mess (and people scrolling forever to search for a specific tag). Proposed solutionI propose Subtags. What I mean is basically a way for tags to be categorized. People can have normal tags (the ones that most forum platform implements) and tags that can have more tags inside of them. For example a forum channel for software releases can benefit from Subtags like this:
Subtags will help community owners to categorize tags for easier access and less uncategorized mess. |
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How would selecting the subtag work in practical use? |
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Problem
First off : this is by no mean urgent. Thanks a lot for all the work produced !
Also, english is not my main language so I excuse for the weird sentences.
Right now there are three channel types :
Per the roadmap, forums, threads and stage channels are also part of the plan.
On the long term, however, I believe it would be interesting to integrate even more channel types.
Caution
Those suppositions are, as their name suggests, purely theoretical. This list is purely here as a suggestion, I am not able to assess the feasibility of those proposal. Please, if one (or all) of the proposals seem inconceivable even in a distant future, notify me so I can remove it. My intention is merely to give ideas and to help group ideas of channels in one issue. By no mean do I intend on putting pressure on anyone !
Proposed solution
Note
It would be cool for those features to not be locked behind a toggle. Most channels presented here should be available to everyone, and not to certain "server types" like on Discord with community settings. ❤️
Note
Not really a channel per say, but it would be cool to be able to ping threads !
General Channels
Some "general" channel ideas
Federation-related channels
Channels with federation capabilities (& that can be connected to the fediverse as well ?)
Notes (optional)
If anyone wishes to add on this, whether by adding on one of the already mentioned proposals, or with a new one, please, do !
This issue is bound to be edited as ideas come and go.
If creating such a "large scale" issue (in a way, I mean idk) is a problem, I am very sorry for the inconvenience caused :/
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