Migrating the forum to Discourse

[ruairi]

I haven't read the whole thread but the forum is great as is.  I have zero issues with it either on my laptop or phone.

[Gyro]

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.

Maybe you should have set the thread up as a poll. You would probably have got a very clear view of the membership's opinion of your proposal, without all the hassle.

As Dave often points out though, the forum isn't a democracy. He would have the say, regardless of the outcome.

[james_s]

It would be fun to set up a poll and see if we get 95%+ voting to keep it as-is.

[Bassman59]

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:
* modern features like modern editor, better emojis, social login,

I just read through the ten pages of unanimous response to this proposal, and there was only one thing that was not mentioned as a total fucking no is the "social login."

Facebook and Google login are privacy and security disasters. Nobody needs to link their Facebook account to other websites. Why tell Facebook everything? It's ridiculous.

It's not at all hard to create accounts on the websites you use. Now that every browser has a built-in password manager, you don't even have to remember the passwords.

[james_s]

Oh yeah if single signon was required then screw that, I'd drop the forum like a hot potato. I abandoned Facebook years ago and *never* sign into anything via social anything, nobody in their right mind would. Social media is a cancer on society. It's spam 2.0, engineered from the ground up to harvest data.

[BravoV]

It's not at all hard to create accounts on the websites you use. Now that every browser has a built-in password manager, you don't even have to remember the passwords.

Some people are just not bright enough to be aware of that.

[tggzzz]

There are pretty much only advantages in switching platform, it's pretty much time, but there are risks in the migration also.
Pros:
* modern features like modern editor, better emojis, social login,

I hope by now the OP realises that there are only disadvantages to switching platforms. So say the people that have made this site a success, the long-term users that have contributed the most. Who cares about casual butterflies that flit here for a few posts, then flit elsewhere!

As for "social login", that is a very strong disadvantage for users. It might be an advantage for site owners who want to make a little money at their users' expense.

[MarkMLl]

The only real justification for moving would be if the replacement had the traditional NNTP protocol, which would allow client software considerably more flexibility when it came to handling message threading etc. https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/69701.html

MarkMLl

[PlainName]

Now that every browser has a built-in password manager, you don't even have to remember the passwords.

You're daft if you're going to rely on your browser to manage passwords. Much easier to lose them that way then forgetting them - use a separate password manager at minimum, one that isn't tied to a particular product or - worse - a particular instance of a product.

Oh yeah if single signon was required then screw that

Yes, indeed. But let's not create straw men to knock down. The probably implementation would be to ALLOW single signon, not mandate it. I visit a lot of places and even those that prefer Google/Facebook login don't mandate it. It's not not going to happen like that (at least, not until the rest of the web have already succumbed).

[amyk]

I've never used Facebook, and never will. Any sites that require it are simply not going to be visited.

[EEVblog]

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:
* modern features like modern editor, better emojis, social login,

I just read through the ten pages of unanimous response to this proposal, and there was only one thing that was not mentioned as a total fucking no is the "social login."
Facebook and Google login are privacy and security disasters. Nobody needs to link their Facebook account to other websites. Why tell Facebook everything? It's ridiculous.
It's not at all hard to create accounts on the websites you use. Now that every browser has a built-in password manager, you don't even have to remember the passwords.

I wouldn't even make social login an option here out of principle, I don't like the concept.
Mandatory https and a 2FA option was recently added. OpenID used to be available but had to be dropped for some reason I don't remember.
I'd love to add hardware 2FA but the plugin doesn't support it.

[tggzzz]

I've never used Facebook, and never will. Any sites that require it are simply not going to be visited.

Remarkably, Farcebook still tracks people that don't have an account with them.

The keys are cookies used as UIDs, the Facebook logo on many pages, the referring page contained in the http request, and a little JavaScript.

[tooki]

Now that every browser has a built-in password manager, you don't even have to remember the passwords.

You're daft if you're going to rely on your browser to manage passwords. Much easier to lose them that way then forgetting them - use a separate password manager at minimum, one that isn't tied to a particular product or - worse - a particular instance of a product.

FWIW, in the specific case of Safari (both Mac and iOS), the actual password manager is the OS’s Keychain (a secure storage database the Mac has had since the early 90s). In theory, other browsers could also use it, they just choose to roll their own. What’s fascinating is the iCloud Keychain option: it sounds as though it would save it in the cloud, but it doesn’t. iCloud actually just marshals the individual devices to share their keys peer-to-peer, so they never hit the cloud. The weird consequence of this is that if you did manage to lose the data on all of your devices, your keychain would be well and truly lost.

[SilverSolder]

I've never used Facebook, and never will. Any sites that require it are simply not going to be visited.

Remarkably, Farcebook still tracks people that don't have an account with them.

The keys are cookies used as UIDs, the Facebook logo on many pages, the referring page contained in the http request, and a little JavaScript.

Google obviously does the same...   for example, when you use Captcha they really Gotcha!

[tggzzz]

I've never used Facebook, and never will. Any sites that require it are simply not going to be visited.

Remarkably, Farcebook still tracks people that don't have an account with them.

The keys are cookies used as UIDs, the Facebook logo on many pages, the referring page contained in the http request, and a little JavaScript.

Google obviously does the same...   for example, when you use Captcha they really Gotcha!

And Twitter Verizon/Yahoo/OAuth, and probably the other icons shown at the bottom centre of the page.

[Gyro]

Google obviously does the same...   for example, when you use Captcha they really Gotcha!

Yeah, having Google sticking their nose into human authentications really stings!

[MrMobodies]

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
* faster website
* modern features like modern editor, better emojis, social login,

Risks:

* grumpy users complaining

Grumpy users.
I tend to get a bit grumpy when I have things that I don't wont there shoved in my face, notifications (cookies or offers) that darken the rest of the page and hurt my eyes in the process and toolbars stuck there when I am trying to scroll and widgets that popup. Also I have mess about with extensions to manage these things so I can read the contents without the annoyance that also may break other functionality. I don't see none of that here at the moment.

Modern mobile experience?
I just select desktop site and my screen is filled up with lots of content and as much I can see all made small and I just pinch and zoom where I want.

much better readability for the forum
Users like me, maybe only few left or just me don't want it any more graphically bloated than it already is now and for the reasons above.

Faster website?
This website is perfectly fast even on my old stuff.

modern editor, better emojis
When I post the last thing I would want to think about are emojis or how pretty the editor may look.


It's may not be perfect but I am happy with it.

[amyk]

I've never used Facebook, and never will. Any sites that require it are simply not going to be visited.

Remarkably, Farcebook still tracks people that don't have an account with them.

The keys are cookies used as UIDs, the Facebook logo on many pages, the referring page contained in the http request, and a little JavaScript.

I have cookies and JS off by default, and all of FB's domains resolve to 0.0.0.0.

The Facebook logo on the bottom of this site's pages is actually hosted here, it's just a link to them (and I'm certainly not going to click it either.)

[julianhigginson]

I quite like discourse where I see it used for tech forums, but I don't see how it would work for such a large forum like this with such wide ranging topics. I'm not sure the topic sort tools in discourse would really make it fun to navigate this forum's topics.

Normally it works for single purpose forums - a good example is the things network forum.
https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/
Even though there's a range of different topics to talk about, everything in there relates back to the things network in some way. And the overall volume of messages seems way lower than here.

[james_s]

I just tried again with that site and find it absolutely painful to use. The blinding white causes physical discomfort to my eyes and the navigation is difficult, I can't tell where I am. Everything just blends together and I can't see how far down the list I've scrolled because it just keeps loading more and more as I scroll down. I have the same "WTF is this shit?!?" response that I had the first time I sat down to try Windows 8.

[ehughes]

One improvement in the forum is the ability to cut/paste images into the body without a seperate "upload" or attachment.  phpBB is very old piece of software and there are some useful improvements in web technology.    Simply having cut/paste support would allow me to more quickly (i.e. directly from altium, etc)  paste in examples without creating an intermedate imge or reference an offsite link somewhere else (which is very, very bad style).

There are some little things like that that would make it a bit easier.

Granted,  there are those who will say "get off my lawn with web technology that isn't from 1996" but those are the folks that still think FTP is a secure way of moving files and personal webpages look like something from Geocities with the "under construction" gif.


(Note,   I assume this forum uses phpBB or a derivative as it looks very close and the page source looks like it)

[Monkeh]

phpBB is very old piece of software and there are some useful improvements in web technology.

Juuuust need to say again that this is not phpBB..

Sadly, many of those improvements come bundled with huge steps backwards, from both the user perspective and the operator..

[ehughes]

Juuuust need to say again that this is not phpBB..

Ok.  It really screams phpBB technology with the "FTP" and "Marqee" buttons with the ridiculous emoji.

[Bassman59]

Now that every browser has a built-in password manager, you don't even have to remember the passwords.

You're daft if you're going to rely on your browser to manage passwords. Much easier to lose them that way then forgetting them - use a separate password manager at minimum, one that isn't tied to a particular product or - worse - a particular instance of a product.

As tooki notes above, Safari (which I use) uses the Mac Keychain, so log-in/passwords are available not only to the browser but to any application which takes advantage of the Keychain. And the Keychain synchronizes across all of your devices, linked by an Apple ID. And it works. If I create or change a password for, say, my bank's website, the Keychain on my laptop (what I'm using now) is updated and then that change is pushed to other devices. When I log in using my desktop the new password is there.

That said, my only issue with the Keychain is that it can't be shared. This means that if my wife changes the password for the AMZN account it updates only her keychain, not mine, so she has to tell me the new password. To get around that, we also use 1Password. Having two separate, parallel password managers means that if for some reason one of the databases is lost, the other one still exists. (This is the other "gotcha" mentioned by tooki.)

I understand why Firefox and Opera all have their own password managers and synchronization schemes, but it would be nice if they let you take advantage of operating-system features.

[james_s]

Granted,  there are those who will say "get off my lawn with web technology that isn't from 1996" but those are the folks that still think FTP is a secure way of moving files and personal webpages look like something from Geocities with the "under construction" gif.

I'd prefer a website that looks like something from 1996 any day over one that I have to allow scripts from a dozen different sources to even get it to load properly. I'm interested in content, I want to have as much information as possible with as little effort as possible required to extract it. All that added bloat only gets in my way.

I wouldn't argue that FTP is particularly secure, but it does work perfectly well for moving files around and I can run it on my own hardware without relying on some 3rd party service, and it's secure enough for my purposes.