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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."
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?
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
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.
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.