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Discourse in Practice

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wraith808:
On the site for one of my Guilds, we switched to using Discourse.  I'm a convert now.  It just flows so smoothly, and actually fits how I use DC actually... I never look at the forum look, unless I'm posting, which makes it more involved to post than it needs to be.  I look at things from an unread threads perspective rather than the breakdown that we have here.

Discourse works exactly like that, with the added advantage of the fact that you can just post, and assign it to where it needs to go, without having to go to that area first.  Tags/Categories take the place of the subcategories.

I just know that we'd discussed it, so I just wanted to chime in after practical use.

The site, if you're interested is http://forum.guildm8s.com.

The short of it is, I really dig it now.  Not sure how it is from the admin side, but as the user experience, it works well.

40hz:
@wraith - Other than making a flat-styled forum discussion look more like a chat session, how exactly is it so different?

I'm probably missing something (as I often do) but from reading what's on the Discourse website, it strikes me more as preaching to the choir about fixing a problem that I'm not sure exists. Or at least that the "problem" isn't as significantly problematic as the authors of Discourse seem to feel.

FWIW, the premier discussion site (The Well) has used a frankly antiquated (by choice) system for hosting some of the finest and most well considered discussions you'll find anywhere. So I don't think the "problems" with forums the Discourse team seems to be so concerned about have as much to do with the technology as they do with the more limited attention span some (many?) of their target users seem to have.

That said, it sure does look pretty - even if I do have a little trouble easily seeing where one comment leaves off and another begins because of the minimalist look and my admittedly lousy vision.

Definitely going have to look more closely into this since my grail quest for an ideal online discussion system has been going on for years. ;D

wraith808:
I guess its a matter of use-case.

As I said, when I come to DC, I use one of the following links:
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?action=unread;all
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?action=unread
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?action=rtopicsdense;sort=creation

The problem with those, is that they're a convenience- not the way the forum is meant to be used.  So therefore, when you go to do something, you have to go to a different view to post.  You have to go to a different view to find the post that you were looking at if it's unread.  And that involves a lot of finding/remembering/inferring in my experience.

Discourse is built around that view, instead of it being a convenience.  It also maintains the other view in the form of categories.

That's the largest thing that I really like about it.

There are other conveniences- the ability to mention someone like in twitter or SO.  The fact that it remembers where you were (the smarter most recent post in thread link, IMO).  The ability to reply as a new thread, helping to reduce derailment with tangential topics.  The fact that links act like they do on SO and expand, so there's not a reason to figure out how to add context to a bare link.

I don't think it's as much of a revolution as they tout- but they're coming out with a product, so they have to have the marketing speak.  But it is an evolution IMO.

kyrathaba:
Being a PHP neophyte, I don't know how easy/practical/possible this would be, but one thing I'd like is if, after viewing a particular thread, and then clicking my back button (say, to return to Living Room's listing of thread topics), that just-viewed thread would turn from bold/dark blue to light blue without me having to click Refresh/F5 in my browser. Is this something the rest of you experience, or is it some goof of mine, or a setting I could change within my browser?

wraith808:
^ you mean on this board?  With this thread being about Discourse, you'll probably want to post it in an area about the DoCo board...

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