New forums: Independent accounts or single-sign-on?

[Brutus5000]

Hello everyone,

as you may or may not have noticed we are running these forums on an ancient unmaintained phpBB version. This also forces us to use unmaintained PHP version itself, which is a general security thread that needs to be handled at some point in the future.

Unfortunately, this forum was manually modded (likes toplist, etc.), so there is no way to follow a normal update path to the latest phpBB version. But phpBB may not be the choice of software for the future anyway.

So, in the end, I think we need to install a new forum software. And if we do that we can decide how to handle forum accounts.
I would like to gather your general opinion on how you want the forum to work in the future.


Solution A:
The forum accounts are still independent of the regular FAF account. You need to manage two passwords. Username changes in FAF do not affect the forum account. Forum accounts are not verified to match FAF accounts.

Advantages:

• You can ask for help if you have issues with your FAF account.
• It's a bit more failsafe. With single sign-on, you cannot log in if the API is down.

Disadvantage:

• Spammers and robots
• People impersonating other players and/or avoiding bans.

Solution B:
We introduce single-sign-on. Basically, that means that you can sign in with your FAF credentials into the forum. Your forum account will be created on the first login.

Advantages:

• You only need to remember one account.
• Every account is verified FAF account. No fake accounts are possible.

Disadvantage:

• If you don't have a (working) FAF account, you are locked out. (Steam linking is not required for a forum account though.)
• A migration of the existing forum will be much harder or even impossible.

Solution C:
A mix of both. Single-sign-on is possible which leads to a "verified" forum account. Independent accounts can still be created.


Feel free to share more pros and cons or other ideas.
In this poll you are allowed to change your choice.

[Louvegarde]

We introduce single-sign-on. Basically, that means that you can sign in with your FAF credentials into the forum. Your forum account will be created on the first login.

Gonna answer that question rightaway before anyone asks it :
In case this happens, ban appeals will obviously go through a different way (mailing list for example) to make sure banned accounts can still appeal their bans.

A migration of the existing forum will be much harder or even impossible.

I'm sure there's a way, even if that implies making a script that creates a new row in the new forum database for each post and thread we had in the old one

[keyser]

the most important question, will i lose all the like that i have farmed patiently ?

[Morax]

A public vote on a forum that allows independent accounts to decide if the new forum allows independent accounts seems a bit interesting ; )

I assume this forum will be backed up for awhile so folks can transfer their important posts? Eg any mods or other, purely, timeless informational posts.

[PhilipJFry]

the current solution is cancer cause making an acc in order to post on the faforever forum while already having a faf account is a barrier

if mixed mode is too hard to pull off then ppl can still get in touch with us via the faforever discord in case something goes terribly wrong (api down or whatever)

[Morax]

I voted B so we're free of Feather

[Blodir]

I'm into B, but there's a few concerns. 1. Will we be able to access a forum archive 2. No forum software that I know of come close to the usability of phpbb as far as UI/UX for experienced users

[nine2]

hat tip for making this a vote

[Gorton]

I personally think Xenforo is an excellent forum design, but i'm unsure of costs.

[Farmsletje]

time to spam new accounts to vote for the option to keep account spam available