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Thoughts on "next generation" forum systems? (Discourse, nodeBB, etc.)

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JavaJones:
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

ewemoa:
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.
-JavaJones (July 19, 2015, 08:17 PM)
--- End quote ---

As a side note, I've come to value mailing lists and newsgroups (and forums) much more than before -- (untargetted -- i.e. not using things like site:) search results via search engines really haven't been working well for me for some time, whereas the aforementioned 3 types of things often give much better results.

rgdot:
The move towards short and quick like twitter and snapchat or places where you know everybody is there like facebook. There are certainly big forums still around but the average user is less inclined. Not forgetting media is not really a forum's strength. Users create galleries and post videos in a much personal way using more web 2.0 tools than a thread or a reply on a forum.

Target:
isn't the difference in the attention span of the respective audiences? (and consequently the content)

Tuxman:
Oops, I missed this thread. To quote myself:

Discourse is an annoying try to do everything differently even if there was no actual need for that before. The UI requires Javascript which sucks for  security reasons; but, even worse, the whole thing grew so fat that the only supported installation method is a pre-configured Docker container (!) which limits Discourse to Linux although it does not require any other Linux-only package.

Their so-called community does not seem to care about people doing things in a different way.
--- End quote ---

Pointless technical restrictions of usability just because it's more modern is not something anyone should want to achieve; although I must admit that I really like the Misago board because it's outstanding in some ways.

The Usenet and mailing lists (mentioned above) are different things than web forums, they also target a different audience. I use newsgroups on my Android device, so I'm probably out of the picture. -- That said, today's board systems make it easier to stay trendy. I fell in love with the Invision Power Board a while ago because its user interface is one of the greatest I've ever seen - even on my smartphone.  :-* (A pity that DonationCoder doesn't have a responsive UI yet; but maybe mouser will use the new opportunity...)

Board systems like Discourse and Vanilla have a different target audience again. The first time I've read about Discourse was when I set up my first Pelican blog, it seems to be a nice Disqus replacement. Such boards may work nicely for commenting stuff or as software support forums, but the lack of structure (like immediately visible subforums/categories) makes it really hard to think of them as viable replacements for real forums™.

The world's biggest (regular) board (ConceptArt.org) uses the "classic" vBulletin software, its inofficial "successor" (after vBulletin 5 was FUBAR) XenForo already gained much traction and market share. Don't even dare to assume forums are dying. They're consolidating.

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