I hear you wraith. One thing I'm really missing in this - and other - SMF "classic" forums is @mentions and "likes" and that sort of thing. I feel like it helps drive engagement, especially for younger users who are more used to (and into) that kind of thing from other social media. SMF 2.1 is in beta (and has been for 9 months or more) and has some of those features, and ElkArte has them too. Many commercial forums do as well, including IPB, Xenforo, and BurningBoard. I just wish there were better implementation of such features for free systems. But maybe it's worth paying in some cases... SMF always seemed "good enough" for me, but it seems to be falling more and more behind...

- Oshyan

I think if you look at storage trends, the increase in size of mechanical HDs has been slower (relatively speaking) than the increase in size of flash-based solid-state storage. That's where much of the research is being focused now too (for good reason), and so naturally innovation is faster there. Mechanical drives have also been knocking on the doors of *physical* limitations for a while now, and although there always seems to be an innovation around the corner that extends things a good bit, it almost certainly gets harder and harder. Meanwhile, if capacity really needs to be increased for SSD, one could always just have a bigger physical package. Current drives are all 2.5" form factor, but you could easily quadruple capacity by making a full-sized form factor (not sure if cooling would become an issue, but probably a fixable one if so). That says nothing of pricing, of course, but that has been falling consistently for years, so it's really only a matter of time before the graph lines of hard drive's slowing capacity increase crosses the line of SSD's decreasing costs and increasing capacity... I think it will be another year or two, but not a ton more time...

- Oshyna

Hmm, I haven't had that problem. Do you know what made it difficult for you? I'm curious, from a usability standpoint. Missing features (e.g. finding own posts when viewing own profile), confusing "watch"/notification functionality, something else?

- Oshyan

I see. So do you feel like that's somehow related to the systems themselves (i.e. they don't encourage discussion), or just the way the particular forums you are a member on have been?

- Oshyan

I don't use the bookmarks feature here. I thought there was built-in functionality for that, but I guess not. There's another existing mod for it, though may not be maintained for 2.1:
http://custom.simple...es.org/mods/?mod=864

- Oshyan

Makes sense. I don't know what hosting you use, but Digital Ocean has $5/mo "droplets" that can host a Docker Discourse instance quite easily, for whatever it's worth...

- Oshyan

Thanks for your thoughts Tux.

When you say "pointless technical restrictions of usability", are you just referring to needing Javascript, or more than that? Because I think it's a very conscious and - to some people, including myself - worthwhile choice that Discourse, nodeBB, and others are making to use modern web development technologies and methods to enable the best "normal" interaction and responsiveness. Without Javascript or some equivalent, many of the valuable (IMO) features of Discourse simply wouldn't work. It's clearly not a forum designed for those who fear Javascript, nor is it one designed for accessibility, but those two problem cases remove only a relatively small minority of the potential user base. That seems to include you, which is understandable, but I don't think it's an indictment of the system(s) as a whole. If there are other, better ways to get the kind of functionality and UI interaction they've created then I'd love to hear more about that. Hell, at least it's not Flash.

As for using Docker, it's not actually a *requirement* of using Discourse as far as I know, it's just the easiest way to deploy. For me use of Linux for hosting is *the* right way to do it anyway, so it's not a concern. But if it's a worry for you (and you're actually still interested in Discourse ), it looks like Docker will be Windows compatible in the future: http://thenewstack.i...ndows-is-on-its-way/

Meanwhile, I'm not quite sure where I stand on the argument that these different systems are for different audiences, different types of communities interacting. Technically it is true right now, but I would be quite surprised if many of the current forum communities had not migrated from newsgroups previously, and surprised as well if the trend I'm seeing in some of my communities - to move onto Facebook (Groups), etc. - is not reflective of a greater overall trend. Which means that *the same users and communities* are migrating from one system to another (and have done so before).

Systems *do* often replace other systems, and the same people who used an older system may switch to a different, newer one for various reasons. The fact that some percentage stays behind and becomes a "hardcore" community still using some older technology may indeed actually mean that for those people the newer system is *not* an adequate replacement, much less upgrade, but they are often in the minority in my experience. The question for me is not "where are the hardcore hanging out?", it's "what is the best system to use to serve a modern community that will best be able to gain and maintain popularity, offer smooth and enjoyable interaction for the users, and be capable of long-term maintainability?".

I never liked IPB myself, but I'll have to take another look at it on your recommendation. I suppose part of what put me off is the cost, hehe. vB is IMO atrocious, which just goes to show that popularity isn't the sole and best metric on which to judge a system.

I'm a bit confused about your comment on "lack of structure". Discourse definitely has categories. The default UI may not do the best job of showing them, but it's easily configurable, and there are themes out there that better mimic (and IMO improve on) more traditional designs. There is a "Material Design" Discourse theme I mentioned above that I quite like, for example.



Final point, consolidation is a sign both of a maturing technology landscape, but also sometimes of one in decline. Again I'd be surprised if it were true that forums are anywhere near as popular now as they were 10 years ago, at least in English speaking countries (I say that because I know e.g. many Asian countries seem to have really different online interaction preferences than those in the US, and I just don't have familiarity with what they're doing or why).

Curious to hear more from those who may have tested any of these systems. But recommendations for more up-to-date and well maintained "traditional" forums (like IPB) are welcome too.

- Oshyan

With the coming upgrades to DC that mouser is working on, I got to thinking about the future, the long view, how to future-proof a community like this. I run a couple of forums myself, all based on SMF (and have administered vBulletin, phpBB, and other forums as well), and while I've found SMF to be my favorite overall of the free options I've tried, its development now seems troubled and its design a bit archaic.

With the current dominance of social media and new methods of interaction that are evolving (short Twitter posts, @mentions, tagging, video and photo posting, coming interactivity/VR, who knows what else), I started to feel like traditional forums might be on their way to becoming antiquated in the way that Newsgroups are now - they still exist, people still use them, but they're relegated to a seldom-used part of the Internet where most people seldom venture. I have seen traffic diminish on the forums I manage and am part of over the past 5+ years, which might support this idea...

So I started to wonder what might be next. If SMF and the traditional forum model are losing popularity and not as appealing to new users, and perhaps younger users, then what is out there to replace these systems? What can you download and run the same way you run SMF, but with more modern features, design, interaction methods, etc? I found a few obvious answers in the most popular of such "next generation" systems, notably Discourse and nodeBB, along with a few hybrids like BurningBoard, and even (just today) some forks of SMF like ElkArte that add some needed features to SMF's base code.

Discourse seemed a bit alien to me at first, but also rather exciting in its potential. Once I found a Material Design theme for it, it looked a lot more appealing too. The others I've looked into a lot less, but from my not-very-well-researched position Discourse still appears to stand-out in features and goals. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to try *any* of these systems yet though.

I'd love to hear thoughts and experiences from anyone who has been looking into similar systems, or better yet, who have tested one or more of these (doesn't have to be ones I mentioned, just a system that is more "modern" and "progressive" than SMF is, and ideally free/open source).

- Oshyan

I guess it's probably too late now but for whatever it's worth I have a couple of anti-spam mods installed on 2 fairly active forums I run and they take care of 99% of spam. We very rarely have a problem with an actual spam post getting through. The most I have to do is check and approve (or delete) a couple of questionable registrations once a week. On DC it'd probably be more like every couple days with the volume, but still the actual work is minimal and done mostly by the plugins.

- Oshyan

Holy shit, snakes are so badass!

- Oshyan

Every time a company changes their ToS to include these kinds of clauses people freak out, and every time it has had the same basic reasoning and meaning. It has happened with Google, Facebook, Flickr, and many more. No company in their right mind would actually try to appropriate your content *and get away with it*. It's way too far reaching, and the actual potential benefit to the company is questionable. We need to be vigilant to make sure no one is trying to do those things merely *because* people expect it to be too audacious, but in reality the actual danger from ToS changes is fairly low.

- Oshyan

ok guys, but the success of a program is not to spend 1 whole year to master it!!!

-kalos (June 07, 2015, 04:36 PM)

Where's the "like" button when you need it?

- Oshyan