I’ve finally gotten around to contacting someone about integrating The Spearhead’s CMS with the phpBB forum so that comments on our articles can go through the forum rather than the main site itself. Hopefully, we can get this out of the way quickly. I would have done it myself some time ago, but the DIY instructions are a bit too vague for an amateur programmer like me. Fortunately, WP-United is now offering installation assistance for a very reasonable fee, and I just requested a quote.
I’ve been getting occasional complaints from readers about the comments for some time. People have various issues with the comments (mainly I have received complaints about feminist commenters and such, but there have been a few other issues as well), and recently I’ve had to deal with a few rather vicious trolls. As The Spearhead grows in reach and influence I suspect this problem will grow along with it, and I don’t really have time to moderate every single comment — there are just too many.
So my plan is to beef up the forum by posting the magazine’s articles directly on it and letting people have at it there. For most of you, this shouldn’t change things much at all. If you haven’t registered on the forum already, it’s an easy thing to do, and when this job is complete you will be able to read and comment on all the posts there. Of course, the link to the forum will remain, so it’s just a click away from the main site.
For the magazine’s main site, we will publish selected emails as a weekly “letters to the editor” feature. Particularly insightful comments on our articles – both pro and con – will be selected for special consideration and published in a post along with some commentary. In the forums, however, we will maintain a laissez-faire policy regarding comments, only deleting those that are excessively disruptive, obscene and/or trollish. On the main site, commenting will be disabled, so if the free-for-all of the forum doesn’t appeal to you, it will be easy to avoid.
It shouldn’t take long to implement these changes, and until the integration is complete I’ll leave things as they are. However, the site may go offline temporarily this weekend while the upgrade is underway.
My hope is that this will satisfy the better part of our community while actually enhancing interactivity. Different people have different preferences, and I’m working on providing different options to suit them. Implementing WP-United is probably the best way to do that.
