we live in hell

i'm going to suggest some plugins i think might be cool to have. some i might do anyway, but certainly interested in hearing what others might like.

• shoutbox (basically a real-time chat)
  
• ability to use @ to tag people (this seems like a great one to me)
  
• alerting system (this can integrate with @ tagging)
  
• view unread posts (basically a one-stop "see all new posts since my last visit" page)
  
• ad manager (the idea here would be that we all advertise our own stuff, i would NOT be selling ad space to outsiders)
  
• private message log -- I WILL NOT INSTALL THIS. I actually wanted to call this out specifically. there's a plugin that will allow me to view people's PMs. while i could technically already do that by dumping the database, you can have my public promise right here that i will not be doing that. in fact i will find a way to expire PMs after a length of time so there's no long-term record of them.
  
• avatar gallery (some basic avatars you can choose from so you don't have to upload one or use the boring default)
  
• tag system (at least one person asked for this and i confirmed it can be done)
  
• blog system?
  
• newsletter system
  
• private message reporting (this seems like a good idea in case of abuse)
  
• minify (this reduces bandwidth usage)
  
• spoiler code (hell yeah)
  
• arcade? that's neat
  
• firewall (if it does what it says it will be very useful)
  
• 2 factor auth (another good idea)
  
• fast quote (select desired text, click button, quoted!)
  
• wiki (dunno what we'd use it for but, maybe?)
  
• activity bar (a little chart on your postbit showing how active you are; just for fun)
  
• todo list (probably more for me than anything)
  
• PM pruner and DB optimizer (exactly what i was looking for!)
  
• Admin CP honeypot (another security measure)
  
• image resizer
  
• it's complicated (relationship manager, lol)
  
• politics tagger/hider (this allows posts marked as "political" to be hidden by users who don't want to see them; this would be a merciful option for some, maybe)
  

(that's me getting through the first 24 pages of plugins, lol. i have 24 more to go, but i will update as i review the rest.)

i am pointedly NOT adding plugins to improve SEO, integrate with socials, etc. i could do those things but philosophically, this place is about carving out a niche away from the Big Platforms. increasing our dependence on them is counter to that goal. i'm still on the fence about blocking outgoing links because i don't want to censor what people post, but i definitely don't want to integrate with social media platforms in general. i might make exceptions for open/federated platforms like Mastodon.

continuing on:

• courtesy edit time (this gives you a grace period to edit a post during which no "edited by" notice will appear. good for cases where you notice a typo right after you post.)
  
• MyDropzone (improved attachment handler)
  
• drafts autosave (autosave your draft posts/replies so you can come back to them later)
  
• hide content (allows you to hide content with "hide" tags)
  
• email admin on registration (just useful for me)
  
• PWA+AMP (seems a plugin can do this? will try it)
  
• verify new posts (warn you if a thread has new replies while you are replying)
  
• RSS feeds (for anyone who wants those)
  
• link anonymizer (anonymizes outgoing links)
  
• turn order (for RP threads)
  
• postbit dice (dice roller for RP threads)
  
• hovercards (show user profiles while hovering over their names)
  
• MyAchievements (achievement system, i dunno, might be fun)
  
• NewPoints (bunch of plugins for this, a points ecosystem; also for fun, not sure about a practical application)
  

i'll come back to this and decide which ones to install first, but if anyone has any thoughts, speak up!

added poll so the voice of the people can be heard.

What I type in my private messages is between me and the FBI agent investigating me (hi Danielle!).