Discourse: Next-Generation Discussion/Web Forum Software

An anonymous reader writes "Jeff Atwood has a post on his Coding Horror weblog about his latest project, Discourse, 'a next-generation, 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.' Along with Coding Horror, Jeff is most well-known for his work on Stack Exchange and its family of related sites. In the same way that he tried to improve Q&A sites, he hopes to make forum/discussion software better with a team of folks he's pulled together for the task. They're using the 'Wordpress model' of offering both open source software and commercial offerings. The software interface is an in-browser app via Ember.js, with a Ruby on Rails and Postgres backend. I wonder if it will ever have an NNTP gateway."

Comments

Interesting idea

[meburke]

I just found the link to Discourse on Coding Horror by accident about 20 minutes ago. Then I see it mentioned on /.

Well, Discourse should get rid of some of my favorite annoyances about forums like /.

For instance, today there were four good articles that I'd like to comment on, but by the time I get my arguments together, the people who could contribute the most to a meaning ful discussion will have moved on and been drowned out in a flood of idiocy. continuing a thread or an interest ove longer periods of time would acutally contibute to our mutual benefit.

A couple of things are missing:

Technical articles and opinions should have a level of proof and logic behind them. Incomplete arguments should be noted, and invalid arguments should be immediately identifiable. Furthermore, authors should be forced to stand on the merits of their arguments rather than some alleged claim to authority such as, "I've been a teacher at a major University for 15 years..." And they should be forced to create psudonyms that don't imply and opinion. (For instance, no one named "Alexander Hamilton" should be allowed on the forum, and certainly not to comment on the Federal Budget.)

Any other ideas?

Re:Interesting idea

[meburke]

Another thing about forums like /. that tick me off: I have seen some references to articles and links that have interested me, and even though I've bookmarked lots of them, the bookmarks have sometimes disappeared due to computer crashes, software changes or updates or other reasons, and then I can't find the original article again. Marking it "Interested" on the forum host itself would be great, an adequate search engine behind the forum is better, and both would be terrific! I can go to Microsofts tech forums and find out which topics I researched 10 years ago. (Comes in handy when an old fart like me starts thinking, "Didn't I have to solve a similar problem back in...")

Re:Interesting idea

[stephanruby]

Well, Discourse should get rid of some of my favorite annoyances about forums like /.

Do you really think so? Did you take a look at it? What's the point of putting all those avatar pictures on each row? Each forum row looks too busy as it is. And why are they trying to do everything with Javascript? In my opinion, they're just repeating the mistake of Slashdot in that area.

Hopefully, they'll listen to user feedback, and iterate away from what they have now. Their forum is not bad, but for now it's not that great either.

A couple of things are missing:

Technical articles and opinions should have a level of proof and logic behind them. Incomplete arguments should be noted, and invalid arguments should be immediately identifiable. Furthermore, authors should be forced to stand on the merits of their arguments rather than some alleged claim to authority such as, "I've been a teacher at a major University for 15 years..." And they should be forced to create psudonyms that don't imply and opinion. (For instance, no one named "Alexander Hamilton" should be allowed on the forum, and certainly not to comment on the Federal Budget.)

Do you think your advice would also apply to a forum on Legos or Barbie dolls?

Re:Interesting idea

[Ostracus]

How about putting close at hand the tools to make a better, more educated post? Note Spellcheckers, and Wikipedia are close by. Wolfram Alpha for another, although none are integrated. Grammar and math checkers next.

Re:Interesting idea

[MikeBabcock]

It looks horrifyingly bad. Just looking at their test forum makes me want to run away screaming.

FidoNet was better.

Re:Interesting idea

[MikeBabcock]

... none of those are the reasons that stackexchange has so many good answers to questions. I don't believe they'd contribute greatly to a discussion forum either.

Re:Interesting idea

[Jane Q. Public]

"Technical articles and opinions should have a level of proof and logic behind them. Incomplete arguments should be noted, and invalid arguments should be immediately identifiable..."

Good luck with that. There are forums at actual scientific journal websites that that don't always meet those qualifications. Half the time when I've tried to have a logical discussion on /. someone causes it to devolve into meaningless bickering over inconsequential details, or derisive ad-hominem attacks; even from people who should know better.

I would love to see that change. But as I stated earlier: good luck with that.

Re:Interesting idea

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yup. Only let the Council of Alphas have a voice. It's been tried. It didn't work out quite as well as you might have imagined. Funny how it's the well-spoken people who think that only well-spoken people's opinions should be heard?

Re:Interesting idea

[xenobyte]

It looks horrifyingly bad. Just looking at their test forum makes me want to run away screaming.

FidoNet was better.

Agree. FidoNet was amazingly functional given the technical limitations of the day.

Re:Interesting idea

[Dr_Barnowl]

If you want to be democratic about it, have a platform where you can lend weight to peoples opinion ; in the context of Slashdot, your post is already weighted according to your karma when you initially post it, and later on, by people reviewing it.

Being well-spoken is essential to having a democratic debate. If you cannot express your opinion in a way which the other party can understand, you have no chance of having any discussion about it at all.

If you are well spoken, then those of us who are not well-spoken should be able to recognise someone who shares their opinion, but manages to express it more clearly, and lend their support to your ability to have it heard.

Re:Interesting idea

[Dr_Barnowl]

I always think a PGP style web-of-trust would be useful in the sphere of trading opinions, whether that be reviews on academic papers or posts on a forum.

One such form of trust would be that, yes, you are Alexander Hamilton, and these 2,000 people have signed your public key to acknowledge this.

Re:Interesting idea

[stephanruby]

Don't let the name, nor their tag line, confuse you.

Here is the list of actual forums he gives as examples:

There's an amazing depth of information on forums.

* A 12 year old girl who finds a forum community of rabid enthusiasts willing to help her rebuild a Fiero from scratch? Check.
* The most obsessive breakdown of Lego collectible minifig kits you'll find anywhere on the Internet? Check.
* Some of the most practical information on stunt kiting in the world? Check.
* The only place I could find with scarily powerful squirt gun instructions and advice? Check.
* The underlying research for a New Yorker article outing a potential serial marathon cheater? Check.

Re:Interesting idea

[SomePgmr]

Something about slashdot makes it really combative. I don't know if it's the karma system, us, or something else. But if you say something people see, no matter how rational, someone is going to disagree just to disagree, and it's probably going to be a little nasty.

Like you said, that usually starts with someone tilting at some inconsequential and opportunistic BS taken out of context. A couple mod points later the whole thread is off the rails. It's pretty irritating and I doubt most of us actually converse like this in the real world. We'd get laughed at or punched.

Re:Interesting idea

[dkf]

Did you take a look at it?

The discussion threading is terrible, and there's no keyboard navigation, not even as good as on slashdot (which is not good either). It's also got a very noisy design, with lots of colors and complexity. In short, Jeff appears to be learning all the wrong lessons from other sites.

I think I'll stick with other systems for now. There's no value proposition in being involved yet.

Re:Interesting idea

[dkf]

Half the time when I've tried to have a logical discussion on /. someone causes it to devolve into meaningless bickering over inconsequential details, or derisive ad-hominem attacks

So learn to ignore the parts that are value-free. There's no point in mud-wrestling a pig into submission as you just get covered in mud and the pig loves it.

Re:Interesting idea

[drinkypoo]

It's pretty irritating and I doubt most of us actually converse like this in the real world. We'd get laughed at or punched.

I personally become combative when people say things that they clearly would not even fucking begin to say to me in meatspace. I do in fact talk like this, outside of business situations where it's inappropriate. (I've been in workplaces where everyone cussed and I've been in workplaces where no one cussed, and fit in fine in both cases. I admit to enjoying the former more, but he who has the gold makes the rules.) When someone says something that makes no sense I'll tell them it makes no sense and if they persist I will escalate my terminology until I'm telling them they're a dumbshit. Again, based on social context. I wouldn't do that at a job, but I will do that at a coffeeshop. Merely disagreeing with someone who at least has a consistent logic about what I see as wrongness doesn't provoke that kind of response there, but it doesn't here, either.

The difference online is trolls. In "real life" the trolls have to be more subtle so they don't get their asses kicked on a regular basis. They find their outlet here online, where there are no penalties for their pathetic behavior which covers for their emotional injuries.

Re:Interesting idea

[mortonda]

!I can go to Microsofts tech forums and find out which topics I researched 10 years ago. (Comes in handy when an old fart like me starts thinking, "Didn't I have to solve a similar problem back in...")

What gets me is when I google a particular problem and the first result is a post I made 5 years ago asking the same question. Even worse is when it went unanswered 5 years ago. :(

Re:Interesting idea

[Martin Blank]

I dont know that that would work. People on the fringes like Ralph Nader and Rush Limbaugh would be pushed rapidly up to very high levels. If you added negative points to balance this, it would quickly become a political war where technically correct but unpopular people could get buried as untrustworthy while a politician who says all the right things could become the most trusted person.

Re:Interesting idea

[NevarMore]

Oblig XKCD

i want to see

[Anonymous Coward]

more anonymity
more encryption
more control over my data

Re:i want to see

[absurdhero]

I see what you did there, Anonymous Coward!

Re:i want to see

[GrahamCox]

And some effectual hardening against spam.

Build a better person? They will come.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're asking for technology to solve what is essentially social problems. A common mistake amongst geeks.

Re:Build a better person? They will come.

[Anonymous Coward]

> You're asking for technology to solve what is essentially social problems. A common mistake amongst geeks.

I don't think that's entirely true. Sure, you will not solve the social problems via technology, but are these really social problems?

Just to give an example: If a platform like ./ offered a moderation system in which posts aren't simply upvoted or downvoted, but the platform remembers *who* voted, and lets me "connect" to other users who I think contribute in a meaningful way, and applies a higher factor to their posts *and votes* than to some random poster's votes. Plus points if the system works in a transitive way, i.e. if I "connect" to someone and he connects to someone else, then *that* person's posts/votes are still more important than the masses' votes to me, but not as much as the votes of somebody I directly "connected" to.

The above is a technical solution, but still sensible (I think) because what it addresses *is* a technical problem -- filtering information. It sure wouldn't stop random people from posting useless brain farts on ./, but it would help me ignore them.

Re:Build a better person? They will come.

[TuringTest]

Why the "if"? /. allows you to do just that.

Re:Build a better person? They will come.

[ka9dgx]

Having other people who uniformly agree with you would enable such a system to work, but reality is more fine grained than that.

What you really want is to be able to flag/score things according to some specific dimension, like "truth", "humor", "spam", "creationism", "logic", "propaganda", etc.

If those dimensions were chosen by all of us, and consistently scored/flagged/applied, /. would be a lot more powerful.

Poor UI design. javascript required = nothankyou

[Anonymous Coward]

No. just... no.

IO loaded the example forum with NoScript enabled. Absolutely no formatting present, the only way to differentiate individual posts was by the "#1" "#2" numbering each one individually, inlined with the body text of the comments.

We don't need more client side code, we need less. Formatting should be in CSS, the content should degrade sanely for text only and mobile browsers / screen readers. I shouldn't have to allow javascript through in order to format the page content.

Worse - when I did enable javascript to see what it actually is intended to look like, they've got one of those "fixed position" menus at the top of the page that doesn't scroll away, and I absolutely detest webpages that use those. I prefer being able to see more of the content, and can navigate my way to the top of the screen for a seldom used menu with one keystroke, or a short drag of a scrollbar handle. The site also has a maximum width for the content section, on a 16:9 1080p screen, 2/3 of the page is blank when my browser window is full screen. If this is the future of webforums, I don't want it.

Wordpress

[SilenceBE]

Wordpress is popular because of the lamp stack. Regardless of personal feelings against a lamp setup, but if the goal is to be the "wordpress" of discussion software I will say good luck wit that ! I think the fact that it is written in ROR, will make this a very hard goal to reach.

Forum software has changed.

[pclinger]

disclosure: I'm the President and CEO of ProBoards, my company creates forum software.

From TFA: "When I looked at forum software again after leaving Stack Exchange, I was appalled to discover that after four years virtually nothing had changed."

This is a great sound bite, but unfortuantely is just not true. There is a lot of innovation in the forum space going on. A few recent software releases come to mind that offer new, unique functionality. XenForo, vBulletin 5, and my company's new forum software ProBoards v5 that launches on April 29th.

I can't speak in depth to our competitor's products, but I can tell you how we have taken forums to the next level:

-Live Search. Most pages have a search box you can type in, and the threads/posts update live on screen.
-AJAX pagination - switch between pages without needing to load a full new page.
-Integrated Notifications. We push content to you, you shouldn't have to seek it out.
-Integrated mobile site
-Clean, simple UI (while keeping all functionality available)
-Enhanced privacy. More control over what you see and who can see you.
-Activity feeds for staying up to date with your friends on the forum
-Single signon for all ProBoards forums with the ability to easily switch between forums
-WYSIWYG editor
-"Conversations" instead of PMs -- you can have multiple people in a discussion
-Better moderator tools that make it easier than ever for mods to get stuff done with fewer clicks.
-We launched a new section on our homepage that shows you all forums you are a member of and information such as how many new messages you have, notifications, if any of your participated topics were updated, and more -- many forums, all on one single page.
-and a whole lot more.

You can test these features in our new software yourself at http://support.proboards.com./

My main point is this: There is plenty of innovation going on. Go look for it.

Re:Forum software has changed.

[nblender]

Disclosure: I have no familiarity with your software.
Disclosure2: I am predisposed to hating forums.

I'm from the days of the internet where discussions were had on mailing lists and usenet. Forums didn't exist.

The problem with forums is:

- In order to read a discussion, I must endure N page loads.
- Each page load has a bazillion assets (smileys, avatars, buttons, menus)
- Each asset that is not cached is a TCP session. Laggy or poor network connections make for a slow forum experience.
- I can't read forums offline.
- Forums are almost universally impossible to participate in on a smart-phone.
- No easy way to read only what's new since the last time I visited (for a half dozen or so forums that I have no choice but to visit)
- With email, I can choose the user agent of my desires. With a forum, I am stuck with some other idiots idea of how I should sort through information.
- I can sort through a few hundred mailing list posts in a few minutes and easily drill down to what I'm interested in. With a forum, I can't sort through a few hundred new posts in under an hour.
- I can file away e-mails that are of long-term interest to me, in my own filing system. It is futile to bookmark interesting forum posts because forum software changes and hence, URLs change over time.

Forums are a scourge on the intarwebs...

And I believe you're standing on my lawn.

Re:Poor UI design. javascript required = nothankyo

[xenobyte]

No. just... no.

IO loaded the example forum with NoScript enabled. Absolutely no formatting present, the only way to differentiate individual posts was by the "#1" "#2" numbering each one individually, inlined with the body text of the comments.

We don't need more client side code, we need less. Formatting should be in CSS, the content should degrade sanely for text only and mobile browsers / screen readers. I shouldn't have to allow javascript through in order to format the page content.

Worse - when I did enable javascript to see what it actually is intended to look like, they've got one of those "fixed position" menus at the top of the page that doesn't scroll away, and I absolutely detest webpages that use those. I prefer being able to see more of the content, and can navigate my way to the top of the screen for a seldom used menu with one keystroke, or a short drag of a scrollbar handle. The site also has a maximum width for the content section, on a 16:9 1080p screen, 2/3 of the page is blank when my browser window is full screen. If this is the future of webforums, I don't want it.

Agree 100% - I use NoScript for this exact reason: JavaScript is heavily abused by hackers and advertisers alike - evil people hell-bent on destroying our online experience.

Re:Next gen meet the old gen

[marcello_dl]

Why you need usenet?
Because it is better to focus on a tree of subjects instead of roaming a hundred forums with different logins about the same subjects.

Usenet needed improvement, not death. The big problems were efficient distribution of articles among servers, and moderation. Both solvable (i'd have left to server/discussion admins to kill articles based on readers feedback, and the option to accept the kill recommendations from other servers with some degrees of trust). It obviously was too free for the interests driving the development of the net, namely advertising, the telcos and media companies.

One group I used to follow was polluted by very persistent trolls without fantasy, the most prominent one was found to be linked to the telco running the server, YMMV.

If somebody thinks about reviving a low bandwidth web 1.0 instead of js sites on a handful of bloated browsers, please tell me where do I sign up.

It's shit

[thetoadwarrior]

Too much JS but more importantly their demo is ugly as sin. I'm not seeing how it's that different other than making everything feel crammed together and with far too many Web 2.0 features and not enough good design to not make it feel like one big blind poo.

It does nothing to improve on the message board design and its fucking ugly. Good job, jeff!

What's new?

[DerPflanz]

Okay, I only looked at it for a few minutes, but I can't see the difference with classic boards. Yes, it is more fancy, more JavaScripty, but functional, I couldn't get any differences. Just a list of topics, when clicked go to a list of replies.

No voting system, no "highest votes on top", no threading, ...

Roll your own.

[Seumas]

I have never felt that packaged forum systems were robust enough or integrateable enough to be worth it. In every situation, I have rolled my own. Including when deploying it for a community of 100k+ users. I'd also much rather roll my own functionality as a project grows into the individual application of the forum rather than go out and grab someone's plugin/module to stick into it and hope it answers my needs.

Also, what the hell ever happened to nested-threaded discussions? Why is EVERY god damn forum out there in the last decade just this obnoxious flat-thread full of quotes of quotes of quotes of quotes of quotes? Is it because the developers are too lazy to add a minimal amount of recursion in their engine or . . . what?!

Re:Roll your own.

[jez9999]

Amen to nested discussions. I guess having a single flat thread for everything is easier for beginners... you just click on the thread and the posts are all meant to be "to do with the title" rather than perhaps some tangent the thread has gone off on. That said, threads do and will go off on tangents, so nested-threading is a great way to acknowledge that.

Re:Roll your own.

[Lazy Jones]

Is it because the developers are too lazy to add a minimal amount of recursion in their engine or . . . what?!

In this particular case it is because Jeff Atwood hates threading. I think it's a huge mistake and he never manages to argue this choice in a compelling way, but I guess it's an emotional thing after all.

As long as it doesn't use javascript

[evanh]

I'll be happy.

Hopefully...

[thejynxed]

It will be built with security in mind, and won't use Javascript or PHP in any fashion, or allow modules that involve them to interact with the software in question.

Some of the biggest problems I've seen over the years involving compromised forums have almost always involved issues with those two (with the 3rd most common being they were run on Microsoft's web services).

Hate to double post but...

[thejynxed]

...after reading through the comments on this shiny turd, I vote Atwood should rebrand this new Discourse software to "Coding Horror".

It relies on Javascript, so it's nothing but a security nightmare for anyone to implement.

Re:Wow, it's completely barren with JS disabled.

[Ash Vince]

I just loaded the example site, and it looks like just several lines of text with JavaScript disabled on the site. After enabling JavaScript, the site looks like it's supposed to, but is it really necessary to write a web forum that relies entirely on JavaScript to work? What ever happened to server-side processing spitting out dumb HTML pages and CSS styles?
Most popular message board systems I've seen work perfectly without JS enabled, but others are very ugly (I'm looking at you, Disqus).

The problem is that the vast majority of real web users do not actually care what a site looks like with JS disabled, as they keep it enabled.

You guys with your insistence on no JS completely excludes jquery use and means everything has to work on completely refreshing the page every time you interact with it. Jquery and ajax creates an experience that is much quicker for most users since they only have to wait for very small amounts of JSON data to be sent to and from the server, and don't have to wait for the entire DOM to be reloaded from the server even though only a small part of it changed. Most users prefer this experience.

I actually agree that all decent websites should degrade gracefully when JS is absent as this is how most screen readers (for blind people) render sites. The thing is though that most developers do not care what the blind person view of their website looks like providing it is at least half way usable (often that usability is a mandatory requirement as all government funded stuff has to tick the accessibility box).

The number of real world users who insist on disabling JS seems to be a very low minority so don't be too surprised you are neglected by us web developers more and more. That way of creating websites is dead, and it simply is not coming back no matter how loudly you piss and moan as most people prefer the more modern Ajax feel.

Re:Why Ruby on Rails?

[bill_mcgonigle]

I don't know why more projects aren't database agnostic.

Some apps are postgresql apps, not just CRUD apps. That is, much of the work is done in the database, for speed and efficiency.

Since the two main options are postgresql and mysql, and postgresql is a much nicer programming environment and it scales much more easily, it's not surprising that the developers chose it. The consequences are merely that there are several thousand hosting companies available to choose from rather than tens of thousands.

Yes, portability is constrained, but for running any real-sized forum this won't be an issue, especially because postgresql is open source software.