Author Topic: Migrating the forum to Discourse (Read 35157 times)

EEVblog · « **Reply #100 on:** March 30, 2020, 03:00:28 am »

Quote from: Brumby on March 30, 2020, 01:21:11 am

It does take a (tiny) bit of effort navigating here and that may require some measure of thought - to understand how to package what you want to say in a post. As has been said above, there is a lot of well thought out material here. What would be absolutely crippling to the value offered here is to make the platform so "engaging" that a flood of useless crap washes in, burying the gems.

Would be interesting to compare the average post length (number of words) here vs the best example of a similar technical Discourse forum.

EEVblog · « **Reply #101 on:** March 30, 2020, 03:06:33 am »

This tells you a lot:
https://www.discourse.org/about

Quote

Discourse is a from-scratch reboot, an attempt to reimagine what a modern Internet discussion forum should be today, in a world of ubiquitous smartphones, tablets, Facebook, and Twitter.

It's been "reimagined" for the Twitter and Facebook generation. Not exactly a trend I'd want to follow.

And the main site blurb:

Quote

Discourse is modern forum software for your community. Use it as a mailing list, discussion forum, long-form chat room, and more!

Jack of all trades and master of none comes to mind.

EEVblog · « **Reply #102 on:** March 30, 2020, 03:07:58 am »

And I agree with others, the continued constantly loading endless scrolling page thing is a ridiculous idea for long threads.

BravoV · « **Reply #103 on:** March 30, 2020, 03:49:09 am »

Quote from: EEVblog on March 29, 2020, 11:40:23 pm

Quote from: ddavidebor on March 29, 2020, 02:59:35 pm
I have had this thought for a few years. Wouldn't it make sense to migrate the forum to the Discourse platform?

I hate discourse, it's garbage, and doesn't seem at all suited to long term community forum type discussion. It's more of a chat platform from what I gather.
So it's not going to happen, not point even discussing it ......

Time to lock the thread ?

amyk · « **Reply #104 on:** March 30, 2020, 03:49:24 am »

I looked at some XenForo examples including their site itself, and was a little turned disappointed when they all complained about no JS and had an advert for Google's ~~spyware~~browser.

Quote

JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.

Maybe it's just the style they use, but in contrast this site works perfectly fine without JS, and I've even used it from one of my 25-year-old Thinkpads. :+1:

I think vBulletin is pretty nice; look at https://www.badcaps.net/forum for an example.

james_s · « **Reply #105 on:** March 30, 2020, 03:53:14 am »

That's definitely a negative. I block javascript by default and only allow it on a rare few sites. It does not seem like something necessary for a forum.

KaneTW · « **Reply #106 on:** March 30, 2020, 05:14:06 am »

From my experience XenForo runs fine without JS. It complains, and some features go directly to the HTML fallback, but everything works.

MyHeadHz · « **Reply #107 on:** March 30, 2020, 06:11:33 am »

Quote from: ddavidebor on March 29, 2020, 02:59:35 pm

Hello,
I have had this thought for a few years. Wouldn't it make sense to migrate the forum to the Discourse platform?

Yes, it's not easy. This is a big forum.

There are pretty much only advantages in switching platform, it's pretty much time, but there are risks in the migration also.

Pros:
* finally modern mobile experience
* much better readability for the forum
* improved engagement with younger audiences (!!!)
* way better search
* Ability to easily leverage managed databases such as digitalocean's ones which I personally recommend
* Lower resources consumption
* faster website
* improved engagement with the many tools discourse provide
* ease of moderation, discourse forums are mostly self-moderating requiring only limited oversight
* modern features like modern editor, better emojis, social login,
* way way way easier management and upgrades
.....

When you first posted this I didn't think you would get anyone as it was so obvious. OK, so congrats you got a few to fall for your silly prank.

I'd really rather you didn't spam up the forum like this though. This place is really a great resource, and this sort of silliness has the potential to drive people away.

daqq · « **Reply #108 on:** March 30, 2020, 06:47:21 am »

Quote

I can't but notice all the users complaining have thousands of posts each. You're just used to PhPbb and complaining cause you don't like the sofa to be moved near the window. This is not really a useful discussion.

1) How is ignoring the advice and requests from people who contribute the most to the forum a good idea? I'm OK with moving the sofa near the window, provided there is a point and it improves the room. Change for the sake of change is foolish.
2) I can't help but notice that all of the users who actually want the change are you and no one else.

Also, I have looked at a few discourse forums, the selfloading monstrosities. Please show me a thread comparable in size to this: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/ in discourse. How well would it scale? When I want to see something on page 562, what do I have to do?

It seems to me that Discourse is great for support 'forums' where someone asks "How do I do X?", there are two replies and that's it. Now for actual discussion and advancement of the problem.

As to the self moderation you explained, WTF? Moderators effectively get to be chosen by popularity contests? Can I be a moderator?

magic · « **Reply #109 on:** March 30, 2020, 07:13:52 am »

Quote from: tooki on March 29, 2020, 11:08:04 pm

They clearly haven't learned about affordances, discoverability, UI stability (as in "things don't move around and appear and disappear", not crash-proofing), etc.

They are learning about AB testing, moving fast and breaking things, eyeball retention, ad impressions, all the usual stuff

Quote from: EEVblog on March 29, 2020, 11:42:33 pm

On bbs style forum's like this people put a lot more thought and effort into a good post. Some posts are so good and technically detailed they become direct go-to pages in the internet.

And this is possible because the forum is a bunch of dynamically generated HTML pages one can link to. Linking to individual content in those user-side-rendered javascript monstrosities is typically either impossible or results in a myriad dumb problems because developers of that junk can't get navigation right. And half of users who browse without JS wouldn't even bother going there.

tom66 · « **Reply #110 on:** March 30, 2020, 07:14:34 am »

Quote from: magic on March 29, 2020, 09:21:31 pm

Quote from: daqq on March 29, 2020, 07:30:10 pm
How does self moderation work?
Probably some kind of voting where the posts most convincing to the largest number of readers end up at the top and others go down or disappear. Ever been to r*ddit?

So, ironically, if this post were on a Discourse forum, it would have been downvoted, therefore the Discourse transition would have never happened...

magic · « **Reply #111 on:** March 30, 2020, 07:18:12 am »

You probably also believe in democracy, don't you?

No transition is happening because Dave thinks it's dumb. And I kinda expected similar reaction from him so I just came here to flame on discourse and "the modern web" for fun

2N3055 · « **Reply #112 on:** March 30, 2020, 07:37:06 am »

ANY type of continuously loading web is simply crap.
It is going against all normal navigation, orientation, linking etc.

Whoever invented it should be criminally prosecuted..

Everybody hates it. My wife hates how in Pinterest you cannot get back to where you were before..
NOBODY likes it.

BU508A · « **Reply #113 on:** March 30, 2020, 08:51:38 am »

Quote from: EEVblog on March 30, 2020, 03:07:58 am

And I agree with others, the continued constantly loading endless scrolling page thing is a ridiculous idea for long threads.

Yes. With this feature you'll kill instantly the TEA thread which would be a real shame. Imho.

EEVblog · « **Reply #114 on:** March 30, 2020, 09:51:31 am »

Quote from: magic on March 30, 2020, 07:13:52 am

Quote from: EEVblog on March 29, 2020, 11:42:33 pm
On bbs style forum's like this people put a lot more thought and effort into a good post. Some posts are so good and technically detailed they become direct go-to pages in the internet.
And this is possible because the forum is a bunch of dynamically generated HTML pages one can link to. Linking to individual content in those user-side-rendered javascript monstrosities is typically either impossible or results in a myriad dumb problems because developers of that junk can't get navigation right. And half of users who browse without JS wouldn't even bother going there.

I do like how the URL tells you what the thread is, e.g.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/migrating-the-forum-to-discourse/
At least Discourse does seem to have that though:
https://forum.kicad.info/t/3d-model-visibility-through-hole-smd-virtual/21998

I wanted a rude username · « **Reply #115 on:** March 30, 2020, 09:59:08 am »

Thanks OP for teaching me the name of that forum software I've seen on a few sites.

It has a design feature that I've never been able to understand: it only loads a handful of comments at a time, and you have to scroll to load more. This would seem to break archiving (Wayback Machine or just saving to a file), search (the forum hijacks Ctrl+F to try to make up for it), and other RESTful functions.

I'm afraid I don't have the > 180 IQ required to comprehend the benefits is of such a design. Could you please explain?

Brumby · « **Reply #116 on:** March 30, 2020, 10:00:56 am »

Quote from: I wanted a rude username on March 30, 2020, 09:59:08 am

I'm afraid I don't have the < 80 IQ required to believe in the benefits is of such a design. Could you please explain?

FTFY

PlainName · « **Reply #117 on:** March 30, 2020, 10:56:33 am »

Quote

to comprehend the benefits is of such a design

Not 100% sure but I would imagine it's to prevent, say, 2000-odd messages loading before you get to see the one you want. I previously referred to Ice-T's score thread - I had to turn off notifications for that because it was just too painful loading up when a page was over half full (and that's with this forum's limited message count in a page). It would probably kill not just my PC but my entire network and the local neighbourhood broadband if I clicked the 'all messages' button

Anyway, on Disco that wouldn't be a problem because you'd only load what you're actually looking at, yet still be able to instantly navigate anywhere in the thread by a drag of the navigation bar.

SiliconWizard · « **Reply #118 on:** March 30, 2020, 04:35:48 pm »

Quote from: james_s on March 30, 2020, 12:28:59 am

I don't know how anyone can tolerate the sea of whitespace thing, I know I have sensitive eyes but it causes me physical discomfort to look at, it's like staring into a spotlight trying to read some text printed on the lens.

Same, so I like that backgrounds in this forum are not plain white.

From my experience, Discourse-based forums also show a lot fewer threads at once, it's annoying as hell when you're browsing topics.

Anyway, I don't see the point. Xenforo looks like a much better alternative, so if Dave decides to switch (and as he said, he'll need help anyway), I'm ok with this one.
Meanwhile, the current solution works. Software just doesn't rust. If it works properly, is stable and can run on any modern hosting service, why change it?

Tom45 · « **Reply #119 on:** March 30, 2020, 04:59:30 pm »

I'd never heard of, or seen, Discourse until this thread.

So I went to their About page and stopped reading as soon as I saw this in their list of "features":

Quote

All the modern amenities you’d expect from a big social website like Twitter or Facebook are present in Discourse

SiliconWizard · « **Reply #120 on:** March 30, 2020, 05:24:32 pm »

One example of a Discourse-based forum, so people can get an idea: https://forum.kicad.info/

Bud · « **Reply #121 on:** March 30, 2020, 06:23:34 pm »

I am going to copyright the words "Disagree, Distrust and Disinform" to prevent idiots from using them for another stupid name forums.

tunk · « **Reply #122 on:** March 30, 2020, 07:45:20 pm »

The OpenWRrt forum is another example: https://forum.openwrt.org/
I did contribute a bit to the old forum, but since they changed to Discourse I've hardly posted anything.

Sal Ammoniac · « **Reply #123 on:** March 30, 2020, 10:35:28 pm »

Quote from: amyk on March 29, 2020, 11:02:27 pm

I work mostly in software and one thing that really stands out over the years is how much more unnecessarily complex things have gotten, and the worst part of it is that it's almost all self-inflicted: all the younger ones are drawn in by the marketing wank and don't take the time to understand and think about things, they just slap a bunch of bloated libraries together.

I work in embedded software and even that world, with its often severe hardware constraints, is heading towards more and more complexity with needless layers upon layers of libraries, abstraction layers, and other crap. Some of the tools that try to manage that crap, like ST's STM32CubeIDE and NXP's MCUXpresso are huge, bloated, and incredibly slow to the point where I don't see how anyone can use them efficiently. Kids just coming into the industry from school haven't a clue how to develop for a machine with less than a few gigabytes of memory and a 4 GHz CPU.

KE5FX · « **Reply #124 on:** March 30, 2020, 10:52:09 pm »

Quote from: SiliconWizard on March 30, 2020, 04:35:48 pm

Anyway, I don't see the point. Xenforo looks like a much better alternative, so if Dave decides to switch (and as he said, he'll need help anyway), I'm ok with this one.

I don't understand all the favorable mentions of Xenforo. It doesn't seem to be any better than Discourse or any number of other Facebook wannabees.

Another forum I'm on just switched to Xenforo for no reason that was apparent to anyone outside the forum's management. I'd say user engagement has dropped at least by 50%, probably more. The sponsors are pissed.

If it's not broke, don't "fix" it.


EEVblog Main Site	EEVblog on Youtube	EEVblog on Twitter	EEVblog on Facebook	EEVblog on Odysee

Author Topic: Migrating the forum to Discourse (Read 35157 times)

Share me