Message boards

BOINC provides its own software for web based message-boards (also called 'forums'). Messages, and descriptions of the message boards, are stored in the BOINC database. Two types of message boards are supported:

• Forums: These are conventional message boards, typically sorted so that most recent messages are first.
• Questions and answers: These provide a 'self-organizing FAQ' that shows questions (sorted so that current and frequently-asked questions are listed first) and answers (sorted so that 'good' answers are listed first).

To create message boards for your project, edit the file html/ops/create_forums.php to create a set of message boards appropriate for your project, and then run that script, i.e. type

php create_forums.php

User attributes

The Special user feature allows certain users, like project administrators, developers etc., to be shown with that title under their name in the forums. It is important that people who are new to a project knows who to pay attention to - and this is a way of giving them a hint. To enable the feature simply run a query on the forum_preferences table. You can currently use the following list of titles:

$special_user_bitfield[0]="Forum moderator";
$special_user_bitfield[1]="Project administrator";
$special_user_bitfield[2]="Project developer";
$special_user_bitfield[3]="Project tester";
$special_user_bitfield[4]="Volunteer developer";
$special_user_bitfield[5]="Volunteer tester";
$special_user_bitfield[6]="Project scientist";
$special_user_bitfield[7]="Help desk expert";

A project administrator can set these attributes using the administrative web interface.

Moderation

Post-level moderation abilities

• When browsing posts a moderator is able to delete (or hide really) a single post by clicking the 'delete' link in the top information bar for that post. It is possible to select a reason why that post was deleted (this will be displayed to the poster). Also can a message be sent directly to the poster's mail address by typing in additional text in a specific field when deleting.
• If a post was deleted by accident it will still be available to moderators (it now has 'deleted post' in red in the top information bar for that post). A moderator can click 'undelete' to make the post available to the public again.
• Moderators can move a single post to another thread by pressing the top information bar 'move post' link. The moderator will need to know the destination thread ID. Again a message can be sent to the poster.
• TODO: Moderators can set the post rating (do we want this?)

Thread-level moderation abilities

• A moderator can delete an entire thread using the 'delete thread' link located at the very top of the page.
• Move threads to other forum
• Undelete threads
• Users can vote negatively against the first post to eventually mark the thread as non-interesting (is this known?)

User-level moderation abilities

• Users can vote negatively against posts to eventually hide them.
• users can ignore other users.
• It is possible to list all posts for a user and look at them one by one.

Locking old threads

Some projects like to lock threads that have been inactive for some number of days. To do this, use the script html/ops/autolock.php; usage:

autolock.php [ --ndays N ]

locks threads not changed in N days (default 90).

You can run this as a periodic task from config.xml.