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PhpBB 3.3.10

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Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#121

Post by POPOSYS »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #2

Forum software of phpBB's era got so many things right that we get wrong today. I'm glad it's still chugging along. It's valuable software, even if that value is contained to small islands outside of the continents that are the mega-platforms of social media.

But people using forums also got so many things wrong.

One thing that really went wrong: people using forums as issue trackers.

Just look at the mega topics that exist for one $thing with never-ending addition of posts that are a nightmare to search and extract knowledge from. Instead of using an issue tracker, they post more and more messages to the one forum topic dedicated to $thing. Some hardware related forums still do that. Ultra long topics with hundreds of posts, somewhere between page 157-178 there are some nuggets you will never find.

Also the extremely annoying UIs - as an example look at the minimal navigation / pagination buttons in many forums. Well, OK, that started to change slowly, but still we have horrible UIs everywhere. Annoyances like most space on a forum page still wasted for unimportant side information do exist - some designs are so bad that the most important information has the smallest font size.

But while the good old slick and dirty PHP forums still delivered with all that warts, mostly because these people still knew how to program fast software, then came the ruby programmers and brought us a vision of forum software that should get a premium lifetime award for coding horrors. JS heavy frontend with grotesque front-end anti-patterns and a monstrous bloated backend that breaks when your forum actually has some attention. The time of "internet software as a satirical art form" has not stopped until today.

So hopefully the old-school PHP devs can easily iron out the annoyances of the past and still deliver internet software that is fast and usable.

Happy release party, PhpBB!

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#123

Post by pixl97 »

kijin wrote: post #54
Gigachad wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also got flooded with spam and were regularly hacked.

Which really didn't matter back then. People just deleted the spam, recovered from backup, patched whatever flaw they found, and changed passwords. It wasn't the end of the world.

Spam did matter when it didnt stop. No one wanted to engage in a full time job of deleting bullshit. This is one of the reasons forums disappeared and people went to larger sites that tended to have much larger moderation staff

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#124

Post by nstart »

masenf wrote: post #43

In the last month, I’ve been experimentally replacing my use of Trello, stickies, and todo lists with a phpBB instance. So far I’m the only user, but it’s a surprisingly nice system for keeping track of notes and regular status updates on my projects. And when I need to collaborate with someone, the permission system is quite nice as well. The fact that it’s free, mature, and relatively easy to install and maintain a…

Do you think you'd feel comfortable sharing some images with redacted information to show how you are using it? Would love to peek into how a forum tool is being used in a non conventional way. Thanks!

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#125

Post by mschuster91 »

lolinder wrote: post #9

Every time I see hype about Mastodon and the fediverse I miss the phpBB days. There was something special about the interlocking network of forums that didn't need to "federate" in any formal capacity. We just joined communities we liked and formed overlapping networks like normal people do and always have done. No one at the time felt any need to try to accommodate the whole world in one venue. As someone who never…

On the other hand, administrating even a moderately sized forum (or a mailing list) was a shitshow in itself. You'd deal with constant attempts of people trying to 0wn your server, to DDoS it, or to spam - and phpBB being a constant exploit source didn't help either. And then on top of that you'd have to deal with people attempting to use your server for illicit stuff - CSAM, warez, porn, you name it someone tried to abuse your system to spread it. And on top of that you'd have normal moderation duties: trolls, hate speech, flame wars.

And if you'd get really unlucky, the pigs or MAFIAA would come sending nasty C&D letters, subpoenas or a court-issued search order for some shit some of your users did.

So many communities switched over to Reddit simply because Reddit would take care of anything but "normal" moderation duties.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#126

Post by japanman425 »

POPOSYS wrote: post #111
lolinder wrote: post #9

Every time I see hype about Mastodon and the fediverse I miss the phpBB days. There was something special about the interlocking network of forums that didn't need to "federate" in any formal capacity. We just joined communities we liked and formed overlapping networks like normal people do and always have done. No one at the time felt any need to try to accommodate the whole world in one venue. As someone who never…

I do not understand what do you mean by "interlocking" and "overlapping" networks. The word "federate" you use very near to these words make me believe that you are talking about some technical feature - but I do not know that. What kind of "interlocking" and "overlapping" are you writing about here?

Affiliate links.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#128

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

lolinder wrote: post #9

Every time I see hype about Mastodon and the fediverse I miss the phpBB days. There was something special about the interlocking network of forums that didn't need to "federate" in any formal capacity. We just joined communities we liked and formed overlapping networks like normal people do and always have done. No one at the time felt any need to try to accommodate the whole world in one venue. As someone who never…

I love forums, still use them regularly and prefer them to social networks for many communication needs (specialized communities, focused questions, sharing semi-private things semi-anonymously, or sharing posts that take some work and I'd like to be preserved, for example). But I do understand the appeal of social networks like Twitter.

Twitter has millions of users and you have a direct connection to each of them. You can look for something and instantly view conversations about that topic and participate in them. An event happens and you can see what people are saying about it, in real time. Forums don't give you any of that.

The problem with Mastodon is that it doesn't quite get there. Federation (or at least, the way Mastodon implements it) has a lot of friction, and search is very limited. I really wanted to like it but I find it to be the worse of both worlds: neither the universality and immediacy of Twitter, nor the more intimate and archival nature of forums.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#129

Post by unixhero »

I jumped ship from phpbb as their develoment stalled. Then I switched to Simple Machines Forum, then development if that project stalled. Then I moved to VanillaForums, then development kind of slowed there. Now I am considering Discourse or NodeBB, which both are in an entirely different league of technology and sleekness. But now none of my friends wants to hang put in forums anymore. Oh well.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#130

Post by iinnPP »

ThatMedicIsASpy wrote: post #72
tiffanyh wrote: post #30

HN, the most popular forum for hackers. Long-live forum software :)

until you try to comment/post on a few week old post. HN is not a forum

I never used PHPBB, but I did use the feature-strict PunBB(and then fork FluxBB). Both of those software allowed you to order threads by date, where posts were no longer able to be used to "BUMP."

Several categories had this feature enables, including any news discussion areas and the designated shitpost area.

HN and PunBB look quite similar. Even more so when using the orange skin.

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