Not for handling permissions to the forums or subforums but for merely identifying a certain user as a user of a certain distro in their profile.

Currently the method of entering the distro as a custom profile field is fine, but a bit flawed because people who type Debian-testing will not appear in the same list as those who type Debian (testing).

So what I suggest is that LQ creates usergroups for specific distros so that when they choose to join a group (say Slackware) they are identified as Slackware users in their profile. Also they can choose to add themselves to as many distro usergroups as they want and then have the option of choosing the group which they want to be identified as on the forum say "Slackware user" (because it's their primary distro or something) they can appear as a particular distro user in the forum. (their other distros usergroups will still appear in their profile).

Also by having custom user colours for these groups, we can easily identify which user is a Debian user and which user primarily uses Slackware.

This is possible in vBulletin I believe.

How about if you've just built your own custom distribution that's not on LQ's list, do you then need to either lie (like by saying you're using Debian even the customed distro was only debian-based, or someting) or let the whole thing empty, thus not providing any information (well there are empty "Distribution:" fields now too..)?

Good idea though..it's just that there should be some way of adding the distributions, but then again, if this power is given to the users themselves, it would lead to the same situation as it is now. Maybe it could be solved by adding a "Custom: <what?>" selection after all the static distribution names.

A bit difficult with multiple distros though (unless you had to select when setting up a new thread)

Not at all, it's just a usergroup which identifies you on the forum - nothing more or less. In vBulletin, Jeremy can create a usergroup for each distro and then users just need to join the group(s) they want. They can join multiple usergroups - it's possible in vBulletin. None of this will be compulsory. Those who don't want to be identified as a particular distro user needn't join any of the groups.

Simple, for custom distros, they just don't have to join any of the pre-defined usergroups. They just continue using the current distro profile field as normal.

None of this will affect the current distro profile field. Jeremy can choose to continue using that as well as it's just a profile field and nothing to do with usergroups.

Several people use many distros, will their name show up like a rainbow?

I can't really see what this will add that the distro line in the profile doesn't

They can choose to identify themselves by their main distro.

I'm think that this will allow us to find fellow distro users easier. At present people use different naming conventions for their distro, so search for "Debian - unstable" is not the same as "Debian" or "Debian-unstable" and "Slackware 10" is not the same as "Slackware 10.0"

An interesting idea. If secondary usergroups improve I'd consider doing this in the future.

--jeremy

Thanks Jeremy. By the way I did the upgrade to vB 3.6 today. Went smoothly, but then my forum isn't as modded as LQ.

ahh... is this to do with the social networking features of LQ and finding people with similar interests/distros to you?

titanium_geek