Discourse by Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.

[pdurbin]

I was chatting with mélodie the other day and mentioned that I'm not a a big fan of forums:

http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2013/03/27/%23ubuntu-women-project.html#t14:51

Since she asked so nicely though, I decided to create an account on this one. 

It looks like the forum software you're using is SMF but I'm curious what people who really like forums think about some new open source forum software called Discourse.

Here's the introductory post about it:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/02/civilized-discourse-construction-kit.html

Its home page is http://discourse.org and the code is at https://github.com/discourse/discourse

I've played a little bit on their "meta" site: http://meta.discourse.org/users/pdurbin

The argument for using Discourse (from the people who wrote it) seems to be that it's much more advanced than traditional forum software such a phpBB (and presumably SMF). Here's some decent discussion about this: http://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-wrong-with-phpbb/3763

Again, I'm curious what regular users of forum software think of Discourse. Is it attractive? Is it compelling? Are you perfectly happy with older solutions?

[konaexpress]

Hi, and welcome to the forums.

umm..........

It is nice but I am not a fan of it. I love Wordpress as a CMS but I have never liked that format as forum software. I know that it is not from Wordpress but it has the same feel of a Wordpress site, much like the Ubuntu forums are a PAIN to get around in. I just stay the heck away from forums with that look and feel.  Guess I am just kind of old school when it comes to things like that.

-John

[pdurbin]

It is nice but I am not a fan of it.

That's fine, of course, but it occurs to me that one feature I like about Discourse is that I can give a small indication that I've read a post by clicking a button rather than replying like I am now. This is similar to +1 on Google+ or "like" on Facebook. I think it helps reduce the amount of noise.

It looks like Ubuntu used vBulletin for its forums. Honestly, all of this older forum software seems the same to me. Discourse feels newer... I just can't decide if it's worth bothering with. Lately I've been leaning toward logged IRC channels as my preferred communication channel: http://wiki.greptilian.com/haunts

I'm also fairly active on Google+ and Twitter. I completely appreciate running one's own forum though, rather than relying on one of these large third-party platforms.

[melodie]

Welcome pdurbin!

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/02/civilized-discourse-construction-kit.html
This makes me laugh a lot:
 

Like I said, I don't get asked for advice too often. But for what it's worth, it is serious advice. And the next question they ask always strikes fear into my heart.

    You're so right! We need a place for online community around our thing. What software should we use?

and next, I click on one of the images of forums to try to get a closer look, but this will not happen...

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb

vBulletin Message
Sorry. The administrator has banned your IP address. To contact the administrator click here

Sooo fun! :-)

the wayback machine is nicer to me:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000815063701/http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/

I can see it.

Well, what happened here, why do we use this one forum type? This is because a buddy on a Jabber salon, who was co-admin to a webhost doing Free open price hosting told me he could install it and make the main configuration for us. I stumbled upon his proposal as I was looking for a new place for our little community. We also were several here who were used to post in forums built with SMF. And well, it's not an old forum really, it was updated very recently, and it is build by a very active community, as you could see visiting their forums

http://www.discourse.org

konaexpress is right, some parts look like Wordpress. Other parts look like what we already have here. When someone submitted a post before you in the same thread you can see it, and quote it to answer to the new post before ending your's and submitting it.

It seems that when too many possibilities are provided it makes it more complicated. And we can't invite people who are not registered : we don't want to use our time fighting the spambots kind of unwanted visitors.
For this reason also it is a good thing to use an "old type" of forum, all the difficult parts have been taken in account, the holes are fixed soon and fast, and the MOD's for all kinds of needs are numerous and well tested.

We have a place which we can rely on.

[konaexpress]

That's fine, of course, but it occurs to me that one feature I like about Discourse is that I can give a small indication that I've read a post by clicking a button rather than replying like I am now. This is similar to +1 on Google+ or "like" on Facebook. I think it helps reduce the amount of noise.

It looks like Ubuntu used vBulletin for its forums. Honestly, all of this older forum software seems the same to me. Discourse feels newer... I just can't decide if it's worth bothering with. Lately I've been leaning toward logged IRC channels as my preferred communication channel: http://wiki.greptilian.com/haunts

I'm also fairly active on Google+ and Twitter. I completely appreciate running one's own forum though, rather than relying on one of these large third-party platforms.

I have never used the IRC groups, hope it is nothing like the mail groups/lists. Hate them with a passion, I belong to a couple of them and I have them going to dummy email accounts so I can  go read them when I need them. I don't need 100 emails a day clogging up my personal account, Yikes!. IMHO that is the absolute worst way to do business.

[pdurbin]

I have never used the IRC groups, hope it is nothing like the mail groups/lists. Hate them with a passion

Rest assured that IRC is nothing like email.

It's a chat room, basically. Here's a chat I had with mélodie about the Anita Borg Institute:

http://irclog.perlgeek.de/crimsonfu/2013-03-28#i_6638794

I dunno, I just posted to http://linuxvillage.net/index.php/topic,241.0 which is already three pages long and I was somewhat annoyed about having to click next a couple times. All I could think was, "this conversation easily could have taken place faster over IRC and would have been easily fit on a single page of logs without people having to click  next to read it."

Also, I do understand that SMF (and other forum software) continues to evolve, as mélodie said. I just don't find the user experience of forums satisfying, usually.

The other thing I think a lot about is data liberation. If you click that crimsonfu link above you'll see a line from GitHub191. That's me grabbing the latest IRC logs and storing them on GitHub. The idea here is that I can (and do) pull down the entire history of the logs and grep through them for some conversation I remember. And the logs available for anyone who wants them. I want people to feel confident that if they contribute to an IRC channel of mine, they can get their words, their data, out of it.

Actually, I recently started another IRC channel dedicated to the topic of data liberation and owning your words: http://spanworm.com

The other problem with forums is that they let me ramble on.

IRC is more like Twitter. You get maybe twice or three times as many characters per line, but that's it. It focuses people.

[melodie]

This thread is trying to run out of topic, and no use for many pages here then.   *

About topics which have been read or not on the forum, you can do it partly here too: at the top of each index... "mark as read" or such "marquer comme lu" for me, exemple here.

For all members who use the classic theme, they can see at the top left several entries related to new topics : the ones appeared since 12, 24, and 72 hours I think. (I use a dark one which was not modified yet... would need someone who codes in php to do it, perhaps).

Then you can also look at "new posts since your last visit", and at the bottom left when you are at the main index, all the posts since the last one. These two have for links:
http://linuxvillage.net/index.php?action=unread
http://linuxvillage.net/index.php?action=recent

and just below the "unread" link which is at top left, you also have "answers to your messges": http://linuxvillage.net/index.php?action=unreadreplies

* I'll open a new related topic right now : IRC versus forums : Forums versus IRC chans

[pdurbin]

I'll open a new related topic right now : IRC versus forums : Forums versus IRC chans

Thanks. I see on that post you talk about forums and I wanted to comment on something you said...

Forums : answers are slower to get, divided in topics relevant to what the people want to communicate about, the types and number of categories is not frozen, we can add more if the people of the forum feel there is a need for that.

I very much appreciate how willing mélodie is to change the categories as needed but to bring this thread back to Discourse, one of the nice features it claims at http://www.discourse.org is"categories that grow with you":

The massive, obligatory list of subcategories that every new forum user is presented with when they visit the forum homepage is an obstacle.

Categories are optional at Discourse; you can either opt to make categories mandatory and the category page the default homepage of your forum, or you can go with the simple, default list of topics and let categories naturally evolve as your forum grows.

Anyway, I'm new here and I'm not trying to disparage the system you're using. I think it's fine. mélodie, I wonder though, if your buddy who set this up has heard of Discourse and what he thinks about it.

[melodie]

I don't know but when we will have our blog ready for several languages, you can register there and post a full article about this subject if you want to.

Taco.22 has already managed to post an article, even if the editor section he wrote in has the menus in French. (LinuxVillage Distribution (en) )