This is a running mega-thread detailing the design, implementation and feature process for aspects of the Collectives site. If you’re technical or interested in how the site has been designed by @Saen, do check back here every so often to see new updates, cool features, and behind-the-scenes testing!
12/04/25 We appear to be experiencing an issue where file uploads larger than 10MB don’t work despite the site allowing these. This might require a backend site rebuild … hang tight!
To all users: Please note that the cloud providers are giving us a 25GB limit on file uploads across the whole site. If this limit is reached we may have to start removing stuff from the site. It’s advised to use Google Drive / YouTube for now as they embed natively in to the threads.
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Testing Google Drive uploads!
https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id={id}
well that didn’t work
Testing iframe integration
Okay so this iframe is currently blank. I think we need to whitelist Google Drive iframes for this to work.
<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/ [id] /preview" width="480px"></iframe>
Actual link removed to prevent clutter. But this works! But looks kinda trash. Let’s see what we can do to make the iframes actually look nice on the site.
Here is a test on direct audio uploads…
BlueComet.mp3 - a track I made about seven years ago!
This worked perfectly! We should be able to upload in MP3, FLAC and some video formats too.
DM Chats are now disabled by default.
This feature is mostly redundant on account of “Personal Messages” which can still be sent, and allow greater functionality.
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Admin users can still initiate DM chats and users can reply to these, but users won’t be able to create user-to-user DMs. Existing DMs will not disappear.
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This should make no functional difference as users can still create Personal Messages using the ‘Message’ button next to a user’s profile. Example:
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Personal messages are exactly like the public threads we see here, except they are private and have a slightly different layout. These personal messages can also be converted to public threads and also vice versa.
Important Update 30/04 - Permanent Deletion Enabled
After much soul searching in the rails console, we have changed a flag that allows admins to permanently delete messages from the database.
There are some restrictions on this due to how dangerous this functionality can be; but rest assured that any personally identifiable information can now be permanently purged, should the need arise!
Important Note
(it’s highly unlikely this will ever occur but it’s worth stating anyway!)
If you need any information deleted from the database permanently (such as specific thread messages) - this can now be done.
You are advised to ‘Flag’ the post for moderator attention and then ask for deletion (there should be a ‘Flag’ button below every post).
This will alert the category moderator who can then permanently purge something from our database.
This can also apply to someone else’s post if it contains information about you that needs to be purged.
Adding Dates/Times to Messages
Can be done in the post editor interface. For instance…
2025-05-02T10:00:00Z→2025-05-02T14:00:00Z
Track Requests!
Tracks can now be requested when we are mixing live - without users needing to log in!
After much tinkering and CORS hellfire, I was able to get it working. This is a huge bonus for our site, and required lots of backend tinkering (and some security loopholes we are working on closing!). Safe to say it is working adequately for now though!
Requests will go through the 
@SongRequestBot account.
This allows for not-logged-in users to post requests too.
FOR MODERATORS
In order to prevent API abuse, the “Track Request” feature must be disabled when not in use!
This can be done by deactivating the @SongRequestBot account in the admin panel, as the auth bypass is hard-locked to the bot’s permission levels.
We are working on setting up Meta oEmbed which will allow for direct embedding of Instagram posts - hopefully!
Daily Maths Challenges!
A fun feature for the site! (Well … depending on your definition of fun I guess)
The new AIME Problem Solver Question Bot! See this thread…
Can you write LaTeX / MathJax?
We successfully have \boxed{\text{MathJax}} formatting added as an option on the site!
For the non-nerds, this basically allows me to write mathematical equations directly into posts.
For instance… did you know that
\ln(-1) = i\pi [+ 2\pi i n,\quad n \in \mathbb{Z}] ?
The site cloud providers are scheduling system maintenance in the following time window:
2025-07-23T13:00:00Z→2025-07-23T21:00:00Z.
During the above window, our Engineering team will be performing maintenance on core control plane infrastructure. Please note that the existing infrastructure will continue running without issue. This maintenance may impact create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations in all regions.
This is unlikely to affect any site features, but is worth keeping in mind in case any unexpected errors occur.
1 post was split to a new topic: Site Updates 20/07
Site assets are currently being transitioned to be served entirely over https for added security. As a result, we are currently experiencing an issue whereby some fonts, icons and styling on the site are broken. Hopefully, this shouldn’t take too long to fix.