EDIT: Robert of Pavilion has kindly taken on the project! For those interested in helping to offset this plugin’s funding, please feel free to DM me for details. Thanks!
What would you like done?
Either (1) integrating the now broken Retort features (including multiple reactions per individual user to posts; being able to select from all emojis; and having different emoji groups) and auto-migration of Retort post reactions to Discourse Reactions or (2) reviving Retort and making it compatible with current Discourse and Ember 5.
Details here:
When do you need it done?
ASAP! As soon as Ember 3 support via manual flag in .yml files is removed entirely, which according to the Discourse team will be removed sometime later in this calendar year quarter, Q1 2024. Currently, I am keeping my forum in a frozen state and will not be upgrading to prevent breakage once the other shoe drops and Ember 3 support is removed. So in theory, I could keep my forum software in a static state but the sooner I get the Retort issue resolved, the better!
What is your budget, in $ USD that you can offer for this task?
I personally am willing to put up $2000-$4000 depending on where this lands. For a project of this scale and magnitude, bringing the Retort codebase up to speed or contributing its features to Discourse Reactions I believe would be a four-digit task at least. I have also reached out to my forum’s members to help contribute by way of code bounty or co-contribution, so I can potentially provide in excess of the $2000-$4000 figure. If other Meta users are also willing to help fund this because their forums and users still rely on Retort, I think a crowdfunded code bounty may be in order here.
@staff, what would be the appropriate way to set up a crowdfunding for this? I have the funds personally to commission this and will be paying this out of my pocket. However, I have already tapped on my community with a contribution page and I know this will also undoubtedly benefit others in the Discourse-sphere who still use Retort. Let me know what is appropriate or kosher here in regards to cofunding if allowed at all. Thanks!
Currently, crowdfunding for customisations/dev work is not something we wish to supervise (in a similar way to marketplace payments themselves) so I can’t offer much advice on how to set one up.
Though a small note in the OP asking people to contact you if they wish to contribute would be acceptable as long as there were no campaign-style posts asking people to donate.
Note, this is on our roadmap for discourse-reactions, it would be a bit wasteful to build all of this in a 3rd party plugin just to have us re-implement.
We would like to see multiple new site settings on discourse-reactions
Allow “any reaction” (default off)
Allow multiple reactions on a single post by one user (default off)
That sounds wonderful. If I might inquire further, what of the multiple reactions created by Retort prior to these eventual feature additions in the roadmap? Will those be migrated or imported or would that require a work request like I am now doing?
Understood! Finally, you say no deadline but is it reasonable for me to estimate these plug-in improvements should be completed by end of year? That would be more than double beyond a previous estimate of “6 months or so” from September 2023, which would have been somewhere around end of Q1 2024. Again, I understand, this is an estimate with no guarantees and no commitments:
@sam, pinging regarding my unanswered question. Timeline of said changes impacts a current work request I have ongoing with @merefield at Pavilion. Even the roughest of rough roadmap estimates would be appreciated. Thanks!
