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| Migrating the forum to Discourse |
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| MrMobodies:
I am perfectly happy with the way it is. I can find what I am looking for. Lot of detail, minimal sizing of graphics, small text I can see many things in sight and no scrolling too much to to obtain little bits of information. I don't post much but I enjoy looking around and reading stuff. One thing I really hate on many modern websites and I hope it doesn't happen here. Fixed elements such as navigation/toolbars and widgets that get in the way. Sometimes they are put up carefully so they are not in the way or distracting and you can hide them (which I think should be a must) when not needed but in many places they just stick them there. Also a trend with making the graphics large and lots of white spaces so I have to scroll more but with stuff stuck there as well to me it interferes and bloats my viewing experience of the page where I am trying to pay attention reading the contents. |
| Brumby:
White space belongs here: |
| TerraHertz:
Add me to the 'no thanks, it's just fine as it is' side. A few reasons: * Using a platform like Discourse, cedes control of the entire forum to the owners of that platform. There are many instances where platforms have killed off sub-forums, changed business model, or just gone out of business, thus erasing entire community histories. * The owner of a platform ALWAYS has ultimate control of content. And usually will use it to some extent to censor as they see fit. I may have some disagreements with Dave's policy regarding what is allowed, but I do think he's far better than world-average on this, and I can live with it. With any other platform it's a wildcard and probably far worse. * Visual styling - I love it the way it is. So many other forums are programmed by people with bizarre ideas of ergonomics and function. Some real examples: - Tiny light gray text on slightly darker gray background. No really, one I have to read is like this. Hate it. Would like to shoot everyone responsible. 'Night mode', please go die in a fire. - 'Folding' entries in threads. Having to click each individual post to see it. Arrgh! - Stupid 'markup' schemes, that for instance don't understand simple newlines. So everything has to be double-spaced if you want any space at all. - No option to load _ALL_ pages of a thread, to save/archive. - No or very restricted photo inclusions. WTF, this is the age of Terabyte drives and a net that handles billions of video streams simultaneously, so what is their problem? * Structure: Here we have straight linear threads, paged, with explicit copy-quoting. Not much in the way of ratings and other 'social media' claptrap. No adverts embedded in threads. It's pretty much ideal. Adding almost any further structural complexity allows for distortions and brigading. For instance on sites like Reddit, where post hiding by sliding, downvoting, branch clipping, and so on is a refined censorship art. * Searching - linear threads without post hiding is also beneficial for searchability, since it allows major search engines to see and index all of it. When the built-in site search fails, this is important. Another factor is that eevblog isn't just a social forum, it's more like a valuable technical reference source in the form of a forum. Hence file and photo inclusions, 'show/save all', linear structure and reliable long term stability are essential. Eevblog stands out for its practical common sense, good taste and great utility. Thanks Dave! Edit to add: I do wish the 'photo inclusions out of sequence bug' could be fixed. |
| Monkeh:
--- Quote from: TerraHertz on April 03, 2020, 02:44:35 am ---* Using a platform like Discourse, cedes control of the entire forum to the owners of that platform. There are many instances where platforms have killed off sub-forums, changed business model, or just gone out of business, thus erasing entire community histories. * The owner of a platform ALWAYS has ultimate control of content. And usually will use it to some extent to censor as they see fit. I may have some disagreements with Dave's policy regarding what is allowed, but I do think he's far better than world-average on this, and I can live with it. With any other platform it's a wildcard and probably far worse. --- End quote --- Discourse is a generally self-hosted piece of open source software.. |
| TerraHertz:
--- Quote from: Monkeh on April 03, 2020, 02:52:11 am ---Discourse is a generally self-hosted piece of open source software.. --- End quote --- Oh is it? OK, my mistake. I had assume it was something like Disqus or WordPress. Since why on Earth go to the effort of porting the site to some other codebase? Just to get format support for tiny-screen mobile devices? But that's a wild goose chase, since fundamentally content intended for large screens _can't_ be auto-reformatted to appear sensibly on tiny screens. Other than by making it tiny, and letting the user zoom/pan as required. If someone is designing a commercial web site, then sure, make a parallel version for phone users. But eevblog consists of user posts. No one has time for that. Hmm, what do you mean 'generally'? |
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