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Re: PhpBB

#131

Post by edgyquant »

mortenjorck wrote: post #72

The old PhpBB/VBulletin format has a certain familiar charm to it, but I find it hard to go back after using modern forum systems like Discourse that fix a lot of the old paradigm's UX shortcomings. Anyone have experience with Flarum ( https://flarum.org )? I've been peripherally aware of it for years (it it looks like it's still quite active on GitHub) and it looks like a nice lighter-weight alternative to Discourse…

I tried flarum before but iirc it was just a single “board” and not a forum of boards like I was used to. It has a feed of threads etc and IMO these are not the “modern” things that we should use to try and actually improve forum software. Just my opinion though

Re: PhpBB

#132

Post by edgyquant »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #10
lockhouse wrote: post #8

Honestly, at this point I think the post Reddit internet very well could be a return to lots of independent PhpBB powered forums and Discord groups. Unlike when Digg destroyed itself there just really isn’t a single heir apparent.

If a bunch of independent traditional forums was such a compelling experience, you have to ask yourself why Reddit was so successful despite them. The hay day of even large forums like Neogaf and SomethingAwful has also passed. The reality is that registering to N forums to discuss M topics isn't very compelling. And even a large forum with a diverse off-topic section can't compete with the long tails of Reddit subre…

> you have to ask yourself why Reddit was so successful despite them

No you don’t. The answer is that Reddit started out more as a topsite system than a forum; then was subsidized by billionaire VCs to capture the old forum ecosystem. Per usual as soon as they captured the market they began to transform from what made them their name. It wasn’t like people left old forums for modern Reddit because it was a better system.

Re: PhpBB

#133

Post by snird »

A forum is not an alternative to Reddit.

In forums, exposure of topics depends only on recency. While Reddit and the likes combine recency with community upvotes.

Upvotes are important and allow for automatic quality control as well as keeping important things up for more exposure, even if they are not the most recent.

Forums alone are no longer the best way to go.

Re: PhpBB

#134

Post by carlosjobim »

lockhouse wrote: post #8

Honestly, at this point I think the post Reddit internet very well could be a return to lots of independent PhpBB powered forums and Discord groups. Unlike when Digg destroyed itself there just really isn’t a single heir apparent.

A humongous message board like reddit creates interesting discussion just because of the diverse perspectives and experiences of the users, and once a place becomes a general forum it invites for weird, abstract or ephemeral topics. Stuff that will never be discussed in a smaller forum, but have great value.

Without a huge "town square" place like reddit, those topics simply won't be discussed in a meaningful way. The internet used to be only for geeks and academics, so forums were a mostly for hobbyist stuff. We moved past that long before reddit arrived, so it makes no sense to go back to it.

While smaller forums have higher average quality, there is much that will be lost - including very high quality material. I'd rather have a town square where I can get everything from the best to the worst, than just a small shop with a limited offer of fine quality stuff.

Re: PhpBB

#135

Post by TeMPOraL »

pjerem wrote: post #124
johannes1234321 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most forums I know the long running threads are mostly the "tell a joke" threads, which collect some off topic posts. Most other discussions are short lived as elsewhere. The main difference to me is that most forums are harder to find, thus more intimate groups where reddit invites others to stumble in.

It’s more complicated. Topics in a forum are ordered by last answer. So, if usually most discussion are short lived, any topic can also can be revived at any time.

Which is usually called "necroposting" and is universally frowned on for... some reason. I never really got why, but on-line communities are strange beasts, and most tend to have a culture actively opposing accumulation and surfacing of knowledge.

Re: PhpBB

#136

Post by TeMPOraL »

zozbot234 wrote: post #68
babypuncher wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way reddit's threads work with nested replies is also a vastly superior UX over the linear firehose approach of a conventional forum. So much so that pretty much everyone has resorted to copying it over the last 15 years. There's a reason phpbb went the way of the dinosaur and won't be making a comeback. The future is going to be something that learns from Reddit's mistakes without regressing to 2001 usability.

The flat sequential thread was a reaction to threaded messages as seen on Usenet and mailing lists. It works reasonably well if users are careful to quote the messages they're responding to.

Usenet and mailing lists had different UX problems, unrelated to tree vs. linear model - starting with all the little friction associated with browsing threads and replying to messages. Web forums improved on that. I suspect that back then, the linear model got popular incidentally, because of aforementioned UX improvements. Later on, however, people ported the tree model to the web, which gains all the same UX improvements while still not having the drawback of linear threads.

> It works reasonably well if users are careful to quote the messages they're responding to.

Unsurprisingly, they mostly weren't. Linear threads worked reasonably well when you were participating in or following a discussion as it unfolded; otherwise, they quickly became impenetrable.

Re: PhpBB

#137

Post by epolanski »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #120
epolanski wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forums and social news media are radically different experiences, I'm not understanding why are we even comparing the two. A forum is made of long-lasting discussions, spanning months or years. You login and you see whether there's new messages in the discussions you have been part of. Reddit/Hackernews promotes a very different style of short lived (1/2 days at most discussion). There's just no way a subreddit out t…

In most forums I know the long running threads are mostly the "tell a joke" threads, which collect some off topic posts. Most other discussions are short lived as elsewhere. The main difference to me is that most forums are harder to find, thus more intimate groups where reddit invites others to stumble in.

I literally posted forums with years-long discussions (or threads), and those are mostly topic-specific.

Re: PhpBB

#138

Post by jacooper »

mlsmith wrote: post #95
jacooper wrote: post #77

Honestly no body should use PhpBB when Discourse exists.

I never understood the appeal of Discourse. It feels heavy with an overutilization of negative space. The D programming language forum is a good example of a well-designed forum in my opinion.

If you want to use something lighter, Flarum exists, modern but lightweight built using PHP. The grapheneOS forum uses, but I like discord because its more advanced with many features and integrations.
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