Author Topic: Migrating the forum to Discourse (Read 35045 times)

PlainName · « **Reply #150 on:** April 01, 2020, 04:26:24 pm »

Quote

If it doesn't have easy multi-level quoting, then the context of a conversation will be lost.

Not if it has a properly threaded display. Quotes are a bandaid because there is no threading. A typical web forum is pants in this context, and conversations here are rubbish. By contrast, with a threaded display a quote is pretty rare and only used to isolate a particular part of the post being commented on.

Here, a topic with 1000 posts is a huge beast, worthy of comment and boasting. On a threaded forum it would be nothing, yet every post would be relatable to the one it is a comment to and quoting wouldn't be needed.

SiliconWizard · « **Reply #151 on:** April 01, 2020, 04:30:35 pm »

I hate this auto-loading thing with a passion. Holy crap.

tggzzz · « **Reply #152 on:** April 01, 2020, 04:37:15 pm »

Quote from: dunkemhigh on April 01, 2020, 04:26:24 pm

Quote
If it doesn't have easy multi-level quoting, then the context of a conversation will be lost.

Not if it has a properly threaded display. Quotes are a bandaid because there is no threading. A typical web forum is pants in this context, and conversations here are rubbish. By contrast, with a threaded display a quote is pretty rare and only used to isolate a particular part of the post being commented on.

I really like threaded displays, and use them extensively when reading my mail and usenet feeds. Their allow different sub-threads to be kept separate.

But even within a distinct sub-thread it is necessary to include the context of that sub-thread.

Hence threading and quoting have different purposes; one is not a substitue for the other. Both are beneficial

magic · « **Reply #153 on:** April 01, 2020, 05:01:49 pm »

Threading fanboys rejoice, rumor has it that the forum is moving to Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/EEVblog/

PlainName · « **Reply #154 on:** April 01, 2020, 06:45:08 pm »

Eeek!

artag · « **Reply #155 on:** April 01, 2020, 07:53:31 pm »

Don't worry. It's All Fool's Day.

Back2Volts · « **Reply #156 on:** April 01, 2020, 08:27:03 pm »

Quote from: ddavidebor on March 29, 2020, 10:40:35 pm

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.

Here. I do not have thousands of posts! I'LL SAY, NOT ONLY NO!!! BUT NO!!! HELL NO!!!

SiliconWizard · « **Reply #157 on:** April 01, 2020, 10:10:13 pm »

Electro Detective · « **Reply #158 on:** April 01, 2020, 11:19:57 pm »

Quote from: Back2Volts on April 01, 2020, 08:27:03 pm

Quote from: ddavidebor on March 29, 2020, 10:40:35 pm
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.

Here. I do not have thousands of posts! I'LL SAY, NOT ONLY NO!!! BUT NO!!! HELL NO!!!

I'm with Back2Volts on this one

moving the sofa near the window will get it exposed to the sun and fade and crack sooner,

or if it's a big dollar leather job, some thieving wankers will force open the window
and toss it in their van while you're busy in the dunny

and no, I'm not putting up bars or (more) outside cameras
or blow money on window tinting, just to move the sofa/couch

and who knows what's gathered and lived/died under there over the years, no thanks!

james_s · « **Reply #159 on:** April 02, 2020, 04:16:01 am »

Quote from: dunkemhigh on April 01, 2020, 04:26:24 pm

Not if it has a properly threaded display. Quotes are a bandaid because there is no threading. A typical web forum is pants in this context, and conversations here are rubbish. By contrast, with a threaded display a quote is pretty rare and only used to isolate a particular part of the post being commented on.

Here, a topic with 1000 posts is a huge beast, worthy of comment and boasting. On a threaded forum it would be nothing, yet every post would be relatable to the one it is a comment to and quoting wouldn't be needed.

I've never liked threaded displays, it turns the a topic into a maze of little subtopics, it's one of the reasons I don't use reddit unless I happen to end up there from a search for something.

magic · « **Reply #160 on:** April 02, 2020, 06:25:39 am »

Quote from: james_s on April 02, 2020, 04:16:01 am

I've never liked threaded displays, it turns the a topic into a maze of little subtopics, it's one of the reasons I don't use reddit unless I happen to end up there from a search for something.

Or it becomes close to linear because everybody rushes to attach his post to the currently most-upvoted thread for visibility

tggzzz · « **Reply #161 on:** April 02, 2020, 08:26:06 am »

Quote from: james_s on April 02, 2020, 04:16:01 am

Quote from: dunkemhigh on April 01, 2020, 04:26:24 pm
Not if it has a properly threaded display. Quotes are a bandaid because there is no threading. A typical web forum is pants in this context, and conversations here are rubbish. By contrast, with a threaded display a quote is pretty rare and only used to isolate a particular part of the post being commented on.

Here, a topic with 1000 posts is a huge beast, worthy of comment and boasting. On a threaded forum it would be nothing, yet every post would be relatable to the one it is a comment to and quoting wouldn't be needed.

I've never liked threaded displays, it turns the a topic into a maze of little subtopics, it's one of the reasons I don't use reddit unless I happen to end up there from a search for something.

I agree about reddit, but there are alternative displays that I prefer. I also like to be able to flick between linear and threaded with one click.

For example, here's a usenet topic started by Win Hill of AoE fame. It shows both threading and multilevel quoting, why they are orthogonal and both valuable

Nominal Animal · « **Reply #162 on:** April 02, 2020, 11:58:39 am »

Threading creates trees, but human communication is linear.

The result is that message threading encourages bifurcation from the original topic, whereas a linear/paged message listing only encourages divergence from the original topic. In both cases, quoting has an orthogonal purpose, and can even be used to collect various posts back to the original topic.

In an ongoing discussion threading is extremely useful, exactly because of the bifurcation: each sub-discussion can concentrate on the details, and the communication is not restricted to a linear format. However, reading those afterwards is slow, as it can be difficult to reconstruct the complete flow; you often have to read the entire related discussion linearly in posted order, to understand it all.

Thus, in my opinion, threading works best for email, and linear message listing (in posting order) for discussions read afterwards.

I personally avoid Discourse; it does not seem to work well the way I use my browser. Granted, I particularly dislike web sites that insist on using async Javascript to load content, because I want the page to actually show the contents I want when I load it, and not sometime later on. I don't mind if the images take some time to load, as long as the text is there from the get go.

tooki · « **Reply #163 on:** April 02, 2020, 12:27:12 pm »

Quote from: amyk on March 30, 2020, 03:49:24 am

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

I can vouch for vBulletin being a great platform. For many years, I was a (user, not server) admin on what was at the time the biggest Mac forum outside of Apple’s own. (As of today, despite it being a graveyard these days, with very little activity over the past decade, that forum has over twice as many total posts as the eevblog forums, and three times as many registered users, just to give some scale). We ran it with a totally custom skin we commissioned, with various custom mods. Feature wise, it’s a bit dated now, but the skin still looks great, far better than any default skin I’ve ever seen on any forum software. The forum skin was introduced in 2007, for context. If anyone cares, it’s still up, at http://forums.macnn.com, years after the MacNN news site shut down.)

I wasn’t a server admin, but my understanding is that the vBulletin company was very helpful in implementing the custom stuff, and with any server issues that came up. For sure, I can vouch for it being eminently capable of running a forum of this scale, both in terms of scalability and features. (PhpBB, for example, is far, far, far too feature-poor for larger communities.)

tggzzz · « **Reply #164 on:** April 02, 2020, 03:34:00 pm »

Quote from: Nominal Animal on April 02, 2020, 11:58:39 am

Threading creates trees, but human communication is linear.

The result is that message threading encourages bifurcation from the original topic, whereas a linear/paged message listing only encourages divergence from the original topic. In both cases, quoting has an orthogonal purpose, and can even be used to collect various posts back to the original topic.

In an ongoing discussion threading is extremely useful, exactly because of the bifurcation: each sub-discussion can concentrate on the details, and the communication is not restricted to a linear format. However, reading those afterwards is slow, as it can be difficult to reconstruct the complete flow; you often have to read the entire related discussion linearly in posted order, to understand it all.

It need not be slow, if multilevel quotes are used. Having the tree explicitly visible is a great help as well, as it visually separates subthreads.

It is all old technology known to the greybeards back in the mid 80s. Youngsters forget history.

Nominal Animal · « **Reply #165 on:** April 02, 2020, 04:24:06 pm »

Quote from: tggzzz on April 02, 2020, 03:34:00 pm

Quote from: Nominal Animal on April 02, 2020, 11:58:39 am
In an ongoing discussion threading is extremely useful, exactly because of the bifurcation: each sub-discussion can concentrate on the details, and the communication is not restricted to a linear format. However, reading those afterwards is slow, as it can be difficult to reconstruct the complete flow; you often have to read the entire related discussion linearly in posted order, to understand it all.
It need not be slow, if multilevel quotes are used. Having the tree explicitly visible is a great help as well, as it visually separates subthreads.

I meant that the nature of following a bifurcating discussion afterwards is hard, because of the bifurcation itself. If you examine each discussion from the root (or initially quoted message) to each leaf message, you end up going back to the bifurcation-causing messages, and the overall timeline across all sub-threads gets smudged. A human problem, not a technical one per se.

As a practical example, I prefer to use the marc.info interface over the LKML one, when following the Linux Kernel Mailing List. The marc.info interface shows the messages in time order, with the number of messages in each thread in brackets just before the subject. When I see a relevant subject, I check the thread view, and read the initial post of the thread. Depending on it, I may skip the thread, read the "key posts" (from subsystem maintainers and such, that I recognize), or read all posts thus far in the thread. Essentially, I treat the linux-kernel mailing list the same way this forum works: subjects sorted by time, with posts under each subject/thread in their posted order. It just works best for me.

Quote from: tggzzz on April 02, 2020, 03:34:00 pm

It is all old technology known to the greybeards back in the mid 80s. Youngsters forget history.

For sure. This stuff hasn't changed in the last 30 years at all, except for some not so important technical details (like more bandwidth and CPU power available to do things that used to be too slow to be useful; and text formatting and image support when web forums became available a bit over 20 years ago).

nardev · « **Reply #166 on:** April 02, 2020, 04:48:48 pm »

IMHO It's great, nice looking, very light interface but not good for all types of content. I don't think it's great for EEVBlog Forum either.

james_s · « **Reply #167 on:** April 02, 2020, 07:54:07 pm »

I'm actually surprised at the amount of agreement we've seen here. Usually if someone posts a terrible idea at least 10% of the population will jump on board if only to be contrarian but so far this seems to be unanimous aside from the OP.

Electro Detective · « **Reply #168 on:** April 02, 2020, 10:34:08 pm »

Quote from: james_s on April 02, 2020, 07:54:07 pm

I'm actually surprised at the amount of agreement we've seen here.

Usually if someone posts a terrible idea at least 10% of the population will jump on board if only to be contrarian but so far this seems to be unanimous aside from the OP.

amazing!

DJ has eevblog.com forum purring perfectly, for a long while now,

why mess with another forum format and invite unpaid work getting familiar and or chasing and stomping on reported bugs ?

I believe the winning forum format is one that works across all browser platforms, old and new

If the forum 'works' every time, people will rock up here, be it with the latest slick gaming/AV rig or a Pentium 111 clunker running Win2000/XP

and FWIW many people have lives to get on with, including web surfing and communicating to do,
not waste time on browser updates to use added website features, or cater to the plethora of questionable security updates/patches/bandaids/opioids etc,
praying some malware, adware or bugware hasn't crawled in, or not caught at the Beta release stage,

'latest' features that should be an option to load, not a forced necessity just to 'view the content' or to tick some Checkout boxes,

The Finger to all that, no more!

tautech · « **Reply #169 on:** April 02, 2020, 10:54:35 pm »

Quote from: Electro Detective on April 02, 2020, 10:34:08 pm

Quote from: james_s on April 02, 2020, 07:54:07 pm

I'm actually surprised at the amount of agreement we've seen here.

Usually if someone posts a terrible idea at least 10% of the population will jump on board if only to be contrarian but so far this seems to be unanimous aside from the OP.

amazing!

DJ has eevblog.com forum purring perfectly, for a long while now,

why mess with another forum format and invite unpaid work getting familiar and or chasing and stomping on reported bugs ?

Yet the one annoying thing with SMF unlike other platforms is the Reply button in each post where if you hit it a reply is generated with no reference to the post where the Reply button was.
We all know to use the Quote button instead where other forums maintain the reference to the post from where you generated the reply.
Confusing yes, especially for the newbie and a SMF patch for this would be a great improvement for EEVblog.

MrMobodies · « **Reply #170 on:** April 02, 2020, 11:45:51 pm »

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 · « **Reply #171 on:** April 03, 2020, 01:18:58 am »

White space belongs here:

TerraHertz · « **Reply #172 on:** April 03, 2020, 02:44:35 am »

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 · « **Reply #173 on:** April 03, 2020, 02:52:11 am »

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.

Discourse is a generally self-hosted piece of open source software..

TerraHertz · « **Reply #174 on:** April 03, 2020, 03:13:03 am »

Quote from: Monkeh on April 03, 2020, 02:52:11 am

Discourse is a generally self-hosted piece of open source software..

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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Author Topic: Migrating the forum to Discourse (Read 35045 times)

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