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StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

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Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#3
"Forums are the dark matter of the web, the B-movies of the Internet. But they matter,"

I totally agree with Jeff and do welcome any innovation in this space but it's hard to imagine more efficient comment/forum systems than the Reddit/HN style (I like even more the Reddit style since it offers more features and hides irrelevant or long discussions in a better way). I'm not much a fan of the linear, non-nested, old-fashioned but wide-spread bulletin boards style which Discourse follows.

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#5
We got a basic demo online (w/o API keys for 3rd party auth, and there's some broken stuff): http://discourse.a.pogoapp.com/

We'd like to ultimately contribute back some 12factor-esque code (e.g. ENV vars instead of YAML for config, Procfile to define processes). It was interesting reading the comments on the Metafilter thread about how the app seems promising but difficult to host compared to shared hosting+PHP: http://www.metafilter.com/124658/Not-phpBB

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#6
Welcome to a prettier online discussion. I don't intend to be an active contributor, but so long as the content is indexed by the search engines, then I am sure I'll benefit as an active consumer (much like I have with Stack Overflow).

From my perspective, Discourse is a polished forum; analogous to Stack Overflow in the Answers World (many of the other Answers sites are ugly, ad-filled, and closed to the public). So I welcome this, and look forward to seeing the resulting discussions in my search query listings...

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#9

No nesting. Is this 2004? How are you supposed to follow a conversation more than two posts deep? This is PHPBB with more javascript.

Not to mention the page is so wide that it's completely unreadable. By the time I get done digesting the views or or activity, I've already completely forgotten the headline.

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#10
Nuuton makes this obsolete due to being able to hold conversations (with nesting) about a given topic or website without actually having to be on it. Plus it eases search for information inside those same topics by indexing each post as an independent entity. Good try, though. Nuuton launches in March.
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