Migrating the forum to Discourse

[Monkeh]

Hmm, what do you mean 'generally'?

Like many projects, they sell support services to fund development. In this context, that means managed hosting. I can't say what the terms of that are but I doubt it amounts to giving them ownership of the content.

[vis1-0n]

.

Also the scaling thing is a non-issue anyway. I have a high resolution monitor because I want to display a lot of things on it at once. If the UI simply scales to make everything bigger then it negates most of the reason of having a high resolution display in the first place.

12 years back I had a 320x240 2" screen on my Nokia phone, and I used the Opera Mini browser which did a decent job of reflow or allowing me to zoom (mobile layout was not everywhere.) Two years later I upgraded to a 640x360 3.2" device and it was great, more screen and pixels! Less reflow, and I could have a desktop style experience with a little zooming and panning. Except mobile design started to take over like a bad virus and after a year many websites were rendering the same amount of information as the 320x240 device did. In 2012 to Android 800x480, and then 2014 to my current Note 4 2560x1440.

Again, initially I could fit in a lot more of the websites and forums in the screen. Some screens forced mobile layout which are impossible to bypass, so  maybe after their website update I got a lot less information on screen (going from 50 lines of text to 20-25 on the same device ) Apps also got updated and instead of listing 30 topics fitted to a screen it could drop to 15 and if they added rounded elements (found in Google's material design) there was even less on screen. (Circle icons don't stack as well as rectangles - wasting more space.)

Where I would have 12 topics visible in Gmail, I now have 6. 10 items displayed onscreen on the shopping website? Now 5. Youtube 5x3 video thumbnails? Now 4x2.5. 12 Beneficiaries visible in my banking app? Now 7. I don't appreciate the larger font in the new update. No matter how much more screen or resolution you have, they find a way to drop the information density to worse that what my initial 320x240 device would display.

My life has become one of endless scrolling and opening links into new tabs.

Modern redesign has grown this montrosity https://css-tricks.com/ - information density designed for mobile. Ironic when nearly all productive work is done on desktops.

Discourse? I tried 6-8 of the sample sites. Fail.

[SilverSolder]

.

Also the scaling thing is a non-issue anyway. I have a high resolution monitor because I want to display a lot of things on it at once. If the UI simply scales to make everything bigger then it negates most of the reason of having a high resolution display in the first place.

12 years back I had a 320x240 2" screen on my Nokia phone, and I used the Opera Mini browser which did a decent job of reflow or allowing me to zoom (mobile layout was not everywhere.) Two years later I upgraded to a 640x360 3.2" device and it was great, more screen and pixels! Less reflow, and I could have a desktop style experience with a little zooming and panning. Except mobile design started to take over like a bad virus and after a year many websites were rendering the same amount of information as the 320x240 device did. In 2012 to Android 800x480, and then 2014 to my current Note 4 2560x1440.

Again, initially I could fit in a lot more of the websites and forums in the screen. Some screens forced mobile layout which are impossible to bypass, so  maybe after their website update I got a lot less information on screen (going from 50 lines of text to 20-25 on the same device ) Apps also got updated and instead of listing 30 topics fitted to a screen it could drop to 15 and if they added rounded elements (found in Google's material design) there was even less on screen. (Circle icons don't stack as well as rectangles - wasting more space.)

Where I would have 12 topics visible in Gmail, I now have 6. 10 items displayed onscreen on the shopping website? Now 5. Youtube 5x3 video thumbnails? Now 4x2.5. 12 Beneficiaries visible in my banking app? Now 7. I don't appreciate the larger font in the new update. No matter how much more screen or resolution you have, they find a way to drop the information density to worse that what my initial 320x240 device would display.

My life has become one of endless scrolling and opening links into new tabs.

Modern redesign has grown this montrosity https://css-tricks.com/ - information density designed for mobile. Ironic when nearly all productive work is done on desktops.

Discourse? I tried 6-8 of the sample sites. Fail.

Couple the low information density with the apparent need to hide all functionality behind obscure swipes and finger gestures, and you get what we have today- phone apps so bad that I prefer to carry a small laptop in my backpack...

[james_s]

  - 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.

There are some guidelines out there on minimum contrast and I think many web designers somehow interpret that as the recommended contrast thus you end up with this light gray on slightly darker gray stuff. It's absolutely horrible on some less than stellar displays.

Night mode I think is a reaction to the blinding sea of white trend, in some ways it's an improvement over that but it still isn't as good as a more sensible design that just doesn't have the massive oceans of useless and ugly whitespace.

[TomS_]

If this thread were the Wild West, there would be dead bodies in the street by now.

Seriously, some people just dont know how to disagree, state their reasons why, and move on.

[I wanted a rude username]

Just one. Undertaker already measuring him up. And a lot of cowboys back at the saloon, loudly agreeing with each other over libations while Sheriff Jones looked on.

[Siwastaja]

If this thread were the Wild West, there would be dead bodies in the street by now.

Seriously, some people just dont know how to disagree, state their reasons why, and move on.

A weird comment, did you post this to a wrong thread? I think I have never seen such unanimous total agreement on this forum, ever.

I think we need to thank the OP for joining everyone together on this. Maybe the idea was just a positive version of trolling? If the OP was serious, though, I kinda feel bad for them.

[TomS_]

A weird comment, did you post this to a wrong thread?

I have definitely posted this in the intended thread.

I think I have never seen such unanimous total agreement on this forum, ever.

I have no problem with unanimous agreement, thats a pretty good outcome really and shows that there is a lot of love for the current format of the forum. But that is not the point Im getting at.

Peoples attitudes stink sometimes, like they have some kind of personal mission to validate their own oppinion over someone elses. I just dont see the need for it. There are ways to disagree "professionally", and wars are started because people lack the ability to do so.

But should I expect more from the Internet? Probably not.

I kinda feel bad for them.

I definitely feel bad for them. No one deserves that kind of assault for proposing an idea. No matter who is right or wrong, a little courtesy never goes astray.

[Siwastaja]

It's the classical group lynching mentality. Happens on this forum time-to-time, like it happens everywhere. Yes, it sucks.

There are psychological reasons for that, too.

In this case, I would theoretize that many of us have, at some point in our professional careers, been abused by incompetent micromanaging bosses with bloated egos. These bosses often work by bringing in the buzzword bingo. As a result, some have developed an allergy-like condition to such business buzzword way of rationalization. It goes like this:

- You NEED to use Docker because it's hot right now.
- Wat, wait, but Docker has absolutely nothing to do with anything? You can't put the microcontroller in Docker!
- We will use Docker, end of discussion...

The OP did show exact same paradigm of discussion, including the part with arrogance, which I think is why it gave such strong reactions to some of us.

Then, when some people react strongly, possibly from understandable reasons, there always are those mindless puppets who join the group lynching when they see it happen. This is when the thing gets ugly, IMHO. I'm OK with a group getting against one if they show the reasons. When the scanvengers join, I'm out.

[TomS_]

Some of that hits a bit close to home. 

A company I have worked at in the past was big on trying to make everything "agile". It was definitely an ideal they aspired to, but didnt quite get there, so it was a little bit of an awkward mix of tradition and "so hot right now" ideas. My team was network engineering, and I dont really know how much of "developer ideologies" can really translate to our line of work. Aspects I can see promise for.

I'm OK with a group getting against one if they show the reasons. When the scanvengers join, I'm out.

Ive always been taught in engineering: you can complain about something and why it sucks, but you better have a solution.

[Karel]

Ive always been taught in engineering: you can complain about something and why it sucks, but you better have a solution.

Yes, and they taught me also that most of the time the solution is not to change anything.

[Siwastaja]

Ive always been taught in engineering: you can complain about something and why it sucks, but you better have a solution.

Even more importantly, you have to be able to properly show that there is a problem to be solved.

If there is no problem, then there can't be a solution. In such cases, any imagined "solution" is likely to make things worse.

[james_s]

I have no problem with unanimous agreement, thats a pretty good outcome really and shows that there is a lot of love for the current format of the forum. But that is not the point Im getting at.

Peoples attitudes stink sometimes, like they have some kind of personal mission to validate their own oppinion over someone elses. I just dont see the need for it. There are ways to disagree "professionally", and wars are started because people lack the ability to do so.

But should I expect more from the Internet? Probably not.

I may have missed something but I'm not really seeing that. I can speak for nobody other than myself but I hold no ill will toward the OP, I do not dislike them on a personal level, I would not be mean to them if I met them, I haven't put them on my ignore list and would not avoid engaging with them in other threads. I disagree with their opinion on forum software and that's about the extent of it, the rest of us here seem to be on the same page. The guy could have backed off and not continued pushing once it because obvious they had an unpopular opinion but even so no real harm done. Text is poor at conveying tone of voice and emotion, people sometimes read more into something than is there.

[james_s]

- You NEED to use Docker because it's hot right now.
- Wat, wait, but Docker has absolutely nothing to do with anything? You can't put the microcontroller in Docker!
- We will use Docker, end of discussion...

 

I wish I could argue that your example is absurd and that nobody could actually be that stupid but... 

[Siwastaja]

- You NEED to use Docker because it's hot right now.
- Wat, wait, but Docker has absolutely nothing to do with anything? You can't put the microcontroller in Docker!
- We will use Docker, end of discussion...

 

I wish I could argue that your example is absurd and that nobody could actually be that stupid but... 

Yes, it seems so absurd that no one can make that up, it can only happen in reality. (Yes, it's based on reality, of course simplified. In the end, I didn't have to use Docker, though.)

[vis1-0n]

Couple the low information density with the apparent need to hide all functionality behind obscure swipes and finger gestures, and you get what we have today- phone apps so bad that I prefer to carry a small laptop in my backpack...

This is so frustrating as well. Flat design where the elements blend away, where there is no text labels, where there is no colourful 3D icons looking like a real world object.

It is fatiguing for me. I cannot recognise flat icons. I can recognise skeuomorphic icons. I have to figure out flat icons. My brain goes through a process at staring at a flat icon and interpreting it. This adds a few 100ms to every process and is fatiguing for me. Functionality is not obvious from the icon. and text labels are not aesthetically pleasing so they are often left out. I have to explore and learn each icons functions in a phone camera, instead of exploiting my past experiences gained from visual cues (which are more apparent in skeuomorphic icons). Or, you know, use of simple text labels.

It may look nice and all, and maybe all that research¹ that the did say otherwise, but it really is physically tiring for me, and I am one who can stare at pages of ads automatically filtering them and picking out just the content.

¹ simple example https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/a-design-with-all-caps/

[tggzzz]

Couple the low information density with the apparent need to hide all functionality behind obscure swipes and finger gestures, and you get what we have today- phone apps so bad that I prefer to carry a small laptop in my backpack...

This is so frustrating as well. Flat design where the elements blend away, where there is no text labels, where there is no colourful 3D icons looking like a real world object.

It is fatiguing for me. I cannot recognise flat icons. I can recognise skeuomorphic icons. I have to figure out flat icons. My brain goes through a process at staring at a flat icon and interpreting it. This adds a few 100ms to every process and is fatiguing for me. Functionality is not obvious from the icon. and text labels are not aesthetically pleasing so they are often left out. I have to explore and learn each icons functions in a phone camera, instead of exploiting my past experiences gained from visual cues (which are more apparent in skeuomorphic icons). Or, you know, use of simple text labels.

It may look nice and all, and maybe all that research¹ that the did say otherwise, but it really is physically tiring for me, and I am one who can stare at pages of ads automatically filtering them and picking out just the content.

¹ simple example https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/a-design-with-all-caps/

I'm not a fan of skeuomorphic design, but flatty design is equally bad in the other direction.

Those of us with a memory can remember when all GUIs were flat, and the significant usability benefits when the "3D" Motif widgets were introduced. Instantly you could see what you could press, and whether or not it was pressed. Nirvana.

[Siwastaja]

Yes, the UIs saw huge advances in late 1980's to early 1990's, and all the user experience problems were largely solved somewhere maybe 1992: instead of drawing a four-line box in a 1-bit color space, draw a filled box plus another filled box as a shadow, on a multi-color (more than two colors!) display. F***ing amazing!

Now we are back to the 1980's.

[SiliconWizard]

Those of us with a memory can remember when all GUIs were flat, and the significant usability benefits when the "3D" Motif widgets were introduced. Instantly you could see what you could press, and whether or not it was pressed. Nirvana.

Yep. Widgets with 3D effects (illusion of depth) increased usability in a tremendous way. Those effects give simple visual cues that almost anyone, even without prior computing experience, can understand.

Flat design bullshit, OTOH, is terribly user-unfriendly. It may look "cleaner" to some (just a matter of taste though), but that's about it. Who fricking cares about some UI looking ultra-clean if you can't figure it out? It's like we've traded usability for pure looks. The computer-friendliness (less resources used?) is a bullshit argument; giving depth effects to widgets doesn't even require using any kind of 3D acceleration. But even if it were a valid argument in some cases, that would just mean ignoring usability just for the sake of technical reasons that weren't even a problem 30 years ago. Dang.

Anyway, this is a fad that will pass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_design

[peter-h]

I am an admin on a European forum (aviation related) which runs on custom software, written in Ruby on Rails. When the other guy, who wrote it, wanted to move on (due to getting busy elsewhere) I was offered the options of

1) having the whole forum moved to a server under my control, or
2) having the database ported to another forum package, and after looking at some, Discourse was evaluated

Discourse had various problems. The main one was poor admin facilities. One of the things I do fairly often is move posts from one thread to another e.g. when somebody starts a duplicate thread. This is a part of trying to create a good long term information resource, without trying to create maximum traffic (we are donation funded; no adverts). Discourse can't do that. Well, it can but they don't appear chronologically at the destination; they just get chucked in at the end of the destination thread.

The plus of Discourse (I see also posted early on here by what appears the site owner) is that it is good for phone users. IOW, it is more "mobile friendly" than the older style (e.g. PHPBB) forums. That is relevant because

- google ranks "mobile friendly" sites higher
- a large % of people live their lives entirely on a phone (on my site it is around 50%, and on non tech sites it might be 90%)

BUT (and this is a huge BUT) the people who make useful contributions are almost never writing on a phone! Why? Because it is so painful. They are using a laptop or a PC, or possibly a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard. And yes they are nowadays a minority, but if you are trying to create and maintain an informative forum (and EEVblog certainly is that) you need to focus on these great contributors. Going for the "live on a phone" community just produces a forum which fills up with banal one-liners (i.e. like most of the internet).

I recently spoke to a guy in the US who runs maybe 100 forums. He bought them up over years, put them on his own platform, stuck some adverts around them, and just runs them as admin. Mostly with the original mods, too... But his business is in a long decline. Traditional web based forums are in a decline. A lot of clicks are being lost to other, more "phone friendly" social media.

This is worrying a lot of people who run forums.

What has changed over the last maybe 5 years is that the “one line tossing” activity (posters who toss in one-liners comprising mostly of drivel, smart-ar*e comments, etc) has moved to the new social media channels, with facebook being the main one for older people (the young are deserting fb and are moving to twitter, instagram, etc). And most forums, across all subjects, are full of that stuff.

This is a real problem for a forum which relies on advertising for funding, because while these people may not have written much worth reading they did generate a lot of advert clicks.

Another real problem for relatively unmoderated forums is that “kicking and beating-up” threads generate way more clicks than polite threads, so they are stuck. If they choose to moderate, they will lose a lot of income, and they are losing income to the other channels anyway. So no forum which suffers from poor content is going to reduce its membership. This is not an issue at EEVblog because personal attacks are not tolerated, which is good (mine is the same).

What can be done? Probably nothing. One should stick with what one is doing really well and build on that. Not go for a phone-friendly forum because that will trash the site as an informative resource.

So I think EEVblog should stay like it is, because it is the present format which keeps the good contributors.

BTW the reason I didn't move my forum to PHPBB was partly because of security issues; PHP is a constant nightmare (open source + PHP!) and needs a full time skilled admin, which I am not and cannot afford to employ one. Ruby is more secure but is very expensive to enhance/change/maintain (it is a language which was all the rage 10-15 years ago and which now generates a nice income for those few who are good at it) whereas there is a lot more PHP expertise around. Discourse is also written in Ruby and the Discourse community is full of people who make a nice living porting existing forum databases to Discourse. I don't suppose a shortage of server admin skills is an issue for EEVblog however, but you have to be aware that going to Ruby is not going to make your life easier. I went for option 1) above because the existing Ruby software was quite solid and if I went to another forum platform - even a proven one - I would be throwing money at people to do mods and such. But all future work (add-ons etc) is being done in PHP.

[magic]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_design

Please post trigger warnings before links to such graphic content. I wasn't prepared for that iOS screenshot. Yuck.

[tggzzz]

I agree with all your points, and would like to highlight these:

BUT (and this is a huge BUT) the people who make useful contributions are almost never writing on a phone! Why? Because it is so painful. They are using a laptop or a PC, or possibly a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard. And yes they are nowadays a minority, but if you are trying to create and maintain an informative forum (and EEVblog certainly is that) you need to focus on these great contributors. Going for the "live on a phone" community just produces a forum which fills up with banal one-liners (i.e. like most of the internet).
...
What has changed over the last maybe 5 years is that the “one line tossing” activity (posters who toss in one-liners comprising mostly of drivel, smart-ar*e comments, etc) has moved to the new social media channels, with facebook being the main one for older people (the young are deserting fb and are moving to twitter, instagram, etc). And most forums, across all subjects, are full of that stuff.

Good. Shame it doesn't completely discourage trolls.

So I think EEVblog should stay like it is, because it is the present format which keeps the good contributors.

[peter-h]

The other thing you need, as an admin, is good functionality for detecting windups and such. You need to be able to detect in an instant if somebody is running multiple characters, for example. We had one guy who created about a dozen, but fortunately he knew nothing about IT so kept making the same basic mistakes. I won't say any more because we want trolls etc to keep making these mistakes

What I find is that a lot of people read the forum while say travelling, on their phone, just to catch up, but those who write stuff worth reading usually do that when in front of a PC (or a Mac, obviously). So the site has to work acceptably on a phone.

Another thing is that roughly 1/3 of new signups are spammers. This really started maybe a couple of years ago. We have gone to a manual approval process, because it got too much. I would get out of bed at 7am and find somebody posted a load of fake passport adverts all over the forum. In the manual approval step various things are checked which I won't discuss openly. Also at this step one checks for duplicate personas...

[tautech]

The other thing you need, as an admin, is good functionality for detecting windups and such. You need to be able to detect in an instant if somebody is running multiple characters, for example. We had one guy who created about a dozen, but fortunately he knew nothing about IT so kept making the same basic mistakes. I won't say any more because we want trolls etc to keep making these mistakes

The mods do a pretty good job of that here and even the recent twit that used a proxy server was able to be squished.

What I find is that a lot of people read the forum while say travelling, on their phone, just to catch up, but those who write stuff worth reading usually do that when in front of a PC (or a Mac, obviously). So the site has to work acceptably on a phone.

Yeah been there when travelling too and one lined replies too  but at least we have a way to mark posts so when next at a PC we can prepare proper indepth replies instead if struggling with phones or iPads.  Mark a post with Thanks and return to it later from the record of Thanks given in one's profile works pretty well. 

[ddavidebor]

It's the classical group lynching mentality. Happens on this forum time-to-time, like it happens everywhere. Yes, it sucks.

There are psychological reasons for that, too.

In this case, I would theoretize that many of us have, at some point in our professional careers, been abused by incompetent micromanaging bosses with bloated egos. These bosses often work by bringing in the buzzword bingo. As a result, some have developed an allergy-like condition to such business buzzword way of rationalization. It goes like this:

- You NEED to use Docker because it's hot right now.
- Wat, wait, but Docker has absolutely nothing to do with anything? You can't put the microcontroller in Docker!
- We will use Docker, end of discussion...

The OP did show exact same paradigm of discussion, including the part with arrogance, which I think is why it gave such strong reactions to some of us.

Then, when some people react strongly, possibly from understandable reasons, there always are those mindless puppets who join the group lynching when they see it happen. This is when the thing gets ugly, IMHO. I'm OK with a group getting against one if they show the reasons. When the scanvengers join, I'm out.

Yep.