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PhpBB

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Re: PhpBB

#91

Post by tumult »

drannex wrote: post #81
zackees wrote: post #14

I don’t like the flat style comments of sites like PhpBB. Is there an equivalent open source solution that does reddit style hierarchical comments?

[Tildes]( https://tildes.net ) is open source and does something like that. Not a direct 1:1 to phpBB but more like a cross between old school forums and reddit.

Tildes is a popular-kids-club-invite-only thing and therefore not a replacement for phpBB or Reddit. (Before you say it's open source and you should just run your own copy—they provide no instructions for setting up your own instance. It's apparently not meant to be used by anyone else.)

Re: PhpBB

#92

Post by nologic01 »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #18

Such an amazing tool. So much value this single free and open source has given the world. Much more than many vc backed startups combined. We need to get back to people building software instead of vc backed companies building software. I think the last decade has shown us that that is a failed experiment.

It is interesting to ponder what people might come up with given this lost decade and the countless disappointments and anti-patterns discovered.

The fediverse/activitypub design is just a building block, the real difference will be made by inventing more human-centric experiences, protecting people from the online warfare, encourage the generation and preservation of good content and meaningful exchanges.

I don't know if software can be designed to heal people's psyche, but this is what is needed now.

Re: PhpBB

#93

Post by darreninthenet »

deadly_syn wrote: post #75
seydor wrote: post #36

Most people don't want to admit it, but running a subreddit is much more fun than running your own forum. Even if you magically had the users, you also have the FULL responsibility , up to the legal consequnces for the stuff that your users do, plus you have all the technical trouble. Reddit gives that for free to moderators. They can make any community for shits n giggles, break it, fix it, abandon it etc. and none…

I think SomethingAwful actuslly solves this problem eloquently, people are kes slikely to behave poorly when they pay for an account and have their name with site administration. Alternatively i think building an invite only community by way of "web of trust" would also mitigate a lot of these issues.

IIRC LinkedIn started out as a "web of trust"

Re: PhpBB

#94

Post by vault_ »

babypuncher wrote: post #59
hbn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also way easier to build a community when the buy-in is clicking a "subscribe" button with an account you already have and are logged into and knowing you can unsubscribe at any time, as opposed to registering another username, giving a random site admin your email, verifying your email, trusting they're not gonna leak your info or password, etc. Plus everyone already knows how to use all the functionality, and…

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.

Nested replies are definitely better as a way of consuming a post and its comments once and then never thinking about it again. For an asynchronous discussion between several people they get unwieldy after a few rounds of replying. They also make it harder to coherently reference points made cross-tree. That plus algorithmic ranking gives a constant feeling of "gotta refresh to see if there's new stuff" that serves a site like Reddit well, but it makes it much harder to have a longer discussion with more back and forth.

Having recently started participating in a community where most useful discussions are on a PhpBB forum, going back to linear posting was actually refreshing. It's easy to stay on top of because you can check in once a day or so and see just the conversations that have updates since you've last checked them. Threads being sorted by most recently updated means you focus on where there's active discussion. And once you've read those things there's no reason to stick around. "That's it! Get back to doing something useful."

Obviously, this doesn't really scale to a community the size of reddit, but I think it's really pleasant for medium-sized communities.

Re: PhpBB

#95

Post by mlsmith »

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.

Re: PhpBB

#96

Post by oxygen_crisis »

babypuncher wrote: post #59
hbn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also way easier to build a community when the buy-in is clicking a "subscribe" button with an account you already have and are logged into and knowing you can unsubscribe at any time, as opposed to registering another username, giving a random site admin your email, verifying your email, trusting they're not gonna leak your info or password, etc. Plus everyone already knows how to use all the functionality, and…

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 way reddit's threads work with nested replies is also a vastly superior UX over the linear firehose approach of a conventional forum.

I really liked how slashdot's threading defaulted to collapsing low-scoring replies down to one line with a short (expandable) excerpt of the reply. It really helped you take in the interesting parts without the fluff and snark hogging your screen.

Re: PhpBB

#97

Post by m_t »

Ralfp wrote: post #61
junon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every little icon on the right side has a scrollbar on mobile Android chrome.

Thanks. You mean icons in navbar or icons on thread list?

On the thread list. They appear briefly on Firefox android, then disappear.

Re: PhpBB

#98

Post by oxygen_crisis »

deadly_syn wrote: post #75
seydor wrote: post #36

Most people don't want to admit it, but running a subreddit is much more fun than running your own forum. Even if you magically had the users, you also have the FULL responsibility , up to the legal consequnces for the stuff that your users do, plus you have all the technical trouble. Reddit gives that for free to moderators. They can make any community for shits n giggles, break it, fix it, abandon it etc. and none…

I think SomethingAwful actuslly solves this problem eloquently, people are kes slikely to behave poorly when they pay for an account and have their name with site administration. Alternatively i think building an invite only community by way of "web of trust" would also mitigate a lot of these issues.

I liked how SomethingAwful would let you pay to change other users' profile picture and/or title.

People would routinely change other users' titles to a representative quote from one of their earlier posts so every one of their posts was preceded with an excerpt showing how unhinged/biased/reactionary/etc they were.

Re: PhpBB

#99

Post by green-salt »

subblue wrote: post #52
thiscatis wrote: post #4

Modding phpBB and starting new forums using phpBB (and later Invision Community) got me into php dev and basically the job and career I now have. Such a great product for building communities. It would be so good having this feeling again browsing forums on this software. The Subsilver theme was iconic and legendary.

That's made my afternoon! I had good fun making the original subsilver and prosilver themes all those years ago :)

I loved those themes!

Re: PhpBB

#100

Post by rglullis »

hbn wrote: post #46
seydor wrote: post #36

Most people don't want to admit it, but running a subreddit is much more fun than running your own forum. Even if you magically had the users, you also have the FULL responsibility , up to the legal consequnces for the stuff that your users do, plus you have all the technical trouble. Reddit gives that for free to moderators. They can make any community for shits n giggles, break it, fix it, abandon it etc. and none…

It's also way easier to build a community when the buy-in is clicking a "subscribe" button with an account you already have and are logged into and knowing you can unsubscribe at any time, as opposed to registering another username, giving a random site admin your email, verifying your email, trusting they're not gonna leak your info or password, etc. Plus everyone already knows how to use all the functionality, and…

That is not a problem with the Fediverse-based solutions. You can navigate from your instance to the content of the other ones, and subscribing/following a remote actor is seamless.
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