Migrating the forum to Discourse

[Heisen]

The niche the EEVblog has cares more about engineering & consequentialism (ie sticking to what is proven to work reliably, don't change if it it's not broken) than whether or not something looks new & trendy.

Oh yes, absolutely, I’m not suggesting this forum should move to Discourse. I’m simply sharing my experience with another long running forum that did, and how that felt to me. This forum is perfectly fine as it is.

Are there any other reasons you prefer Discourse that I've missed? 

I assume there must be more,

In my opinion, yes, quite a few. It’s fast, like, really fast. It almost turns a community into a more conversational, chatty space, but importantly without sacrificing the ability to have deep, technical discussions. It just makes contributing feel effortless. Lots of small improvements do add up.

That said, whether an electronics forum needs this is debatable. Personally, I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work, but I’m not arguing it must change.

The notification system is incredibly powerful and precise for those who want it. The mobile app UI matches the desktop experience exactly, so switching between devices feels natural. Customization is easy via officially supported plugins, and if something new is needed, it’s not hard to find someone to implement it, especially now with AI assistance.

otherwise it sounds like what you are really wanting is Discord?

No, Discord is completely different and unrelated, and frankly, I don’t like it.

The right approach is to begin with the will to unlearn old habits.

What's the benefit to me is what I want to know. Why should I learn something new that isn't doing enough to make life better to make the effort seem worthwhile.

There are many things, one that strikes me the most is, it saves time, you read topics quicker, you are able to reply to them quicker both on desktop or mobile, you stay up to date with forum without too much effort.

Writing long posts are far easier. If you are really interested sign up to one of the sites and do try. 

I have one practical suggestion:

Make a change in SMF - like, add a whitespace character somewhere. This way you have a fresh commit and can say that SMF is modern and maintained in 2026. Then you can say "shut the fuck up" to all the "it's deprecated" idiots.

 


Honestly, it feels like I may have made a mistake reviving this old thread. I don’t wish to continue this discussion, as I’m fairly certain it will just end up annoying people here and I really don't want to be the bad guy. 

Kindly lock this thread, as admin as clearly stated there are no intentions to do any change.

[Siwastaja]

Honestly, it feels like I may have made a mistake reviving this old thread.

Correct. The automagic warning when trying to post in an old thread is there for a very good reason. Nice that you realized your mistake 

[tggzzz]

The right approach is to begin with the will to unlearn old habits.

Translation: the right approach is to forget history, to ignore why things are the way they are, and make things "suboptimal" in a different way.

[tggzzz]

The notification system is incredibly powerful and precise for those who want it.

Translation: the same problems exist now, and I don't understand how people solved or worked around them in the past.

The mobile app UI matches the desktop experience exactly, so switching between devices feels natural.

Translation: let's avoid the benefits of a large screen and proper keyboard; no, I've never read Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron.

I encourage you to read the first dozen paragraphs of https://ia801400.us.archive.org/30/items/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Bergeron.pdf

Customization is easy via officially supported plugins, and if something new is needed, it’s not hard to find someone to implement it, especially now with AI assistance.

Yeah. Right. Vibe code it and get the LLM to generate corresponding unit tests. What could possibly go wrong?

There are many things, one that strikes me the most is, it saves time, you read topics quicker, you are able to reply to them quicker both on desktop or mobile, you stay up to date with forum without too much effort.

Translation: I don't know how to use the features of this forum.

Admittedly they are very well concealed under this GUI anti-pattern. Many people, including myself, have been caught out by it.

Honestly, it feels like I may have made a mistake reviving this old thread. I don’t wish to continue this discussion, as I’m fairly certain it will just end up annoying people here and I really don't want to be the bad guy. 

Kindly lock this thread, as admin as clearly stated there are no intentions to do any change.

You made a mistake, you're not the bad guy, you haven't annoyed people. Acknowledging your mistake does you credit.

There is no need to lock the thread.

[5U4GB]

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

No.  Next!

[SteveThackery]

Isn't this thread overdue for a nice shiny lock?   

You mean, if you don't like it, nobody should be able to discuss it?

[DimitriP]

Isn't this thread overdue for a nice shiny lock?   

You mean, if you don't like it, nobody should be able to discuss it?

To what end?

I'm not confusing forum software choice with some sort of democracy where endless back and forth will result in some sort of change.
Considering the post I responded to, rather than spelling out my support to leave it alone, telling off / calling out/ admonishing  anyone by name, and contributing even more words to an already fourteen ! page thread (at that time) I kept it short, consise and by your comment, open to my comment being reduced to "what I like".

So ..keeping the current forum softare   
Keep discussing it:          
Locking the thread   

 

[SteveThackery]

People chat about all sorts of things without having a "to what end?". Most of the things we talk about on EEVblog are inconsequential.

As regards this particular thread, I have absolutely nothing to say on the subject, and I know full well that EEVblog won't move to Discourse in my lifetime, but I wouldn't call for the thread to be locked. If people enjoy exchanging opinions, where's the harm?

[tggzzz]

Locking the thread   

Have you noticed that you can "ignore thread". That works well, unlike "ignore member".

[SiliconWizard]

If this forum ever switched to Discourse, there would need to be clear onboarding videos explaining how it works and why the traditional model is deprecated.

The "traditional model" is not "deprecated", it still works exactly as intended and will continue to do so for as long as I keep the server running.

Who thought this thread would be necrobumped?

"Discourse" may seem modern and implements a lot of features, but in practice, it's a huge waste of screen estate and makes it hard to follow anything or to actually discuss anything. "Discourse" is as misleading a name here as "AI" is.

There's nothing deprecated about something that works well and is much less bloated.

The only "annoying" thing with this forum is the relative difficulty of inserting inline images in posts, but that may actually be seen as a positive feature. That certainly limits the use of big images everywhere that also make threads harder to read. Illustrative thumbnails to click on are less annoying. And when you really want to inline images, you have to make this little extra effort.

[Whales]

Yeah sorry Heisin, there's lot of polarisation here.  People (including myself) feel genuinely threatened by others wanting to change the forum stack to something else.  A big forum is a bit like a country's infrastructure or government, the fear that someone wants it changed has a lot of parallels to that in terms of discussion & effects.

Re speed: I have always found discourse to be slow to load and do things, and forums like this one to be far faster.  Interesting that you feel the opposite.  I've give the forum you linked a try, see if it differs from what I'm used to.

[Analog Kid]

There's nothing deprecated about something that works well and is much less bloated.

(Referring, of course, to this forum.)

The only "annoying" thing with this forum is the relative difficulty of inserting inline images in posts, but that may actually be seen as a positive feature. That certainly limits the use of big images everywhere that also make threads harder to read. Illustrative thumbnails to click on are less annoying. And when you really want to inline images, you have to make this little extra effort.

And even that is only a miniscule annoyance.
Sure, there are a lot of little bitty broken things here, but so far as I can tell they're all due to Simple Machines' bugs and half-finished features, not EEVBlog itself.

Me, I'd be happy if we could get an "insert HTML link" thingy like the other SMF forum I'm on has, so you don't have to type the stupid '=' and then insert the URL. But somehow I doubt that'll ever be fixed, and besides, it's such a picayune complaint.

[EEVblog]

Re speed: I have always found discourse to be slow to load and do things, and forums like this one to be far faster.  Interesting that you feel the opposite.  I've give the forum you linked a try, see if it differs from what I'm used to.

This forum's server is highly custom optimised for speed.
Dynamically loading pages is near instant.

[shapirus]

Discourse is not a forum engine. It's a guestbook doped with JS.

Entirely different format, encouraging an entirely different style of communication: short responses, "question-answer" style, disposable, usually useful only for the single person who asked the question, discouraging or making impossible/impractical lengthy discussions with long posts, especially with multiple quotes. Much like stackoverflow or similar. Might as well just have a twitter or instagram page.

[PlainName]

Me, I'd be happy if we could get an "insert HTML link" thingy like the other SMF forum I'm on has, so you don't have to type the stupid '=' and then insert the URL. But somehow I doubt that'll ever be fixed, and besides, it's such a picayune complaint.

Is the 'insert hyperlink' thing not that?

[SteveThackery]

This forum's server is highly custom optimised for speed.
Dynamically loading pages is near instant.

Optimised successfully, I would say. It feels faster than the other forums I use regularly.

[Analog Kid]

Me, I'd be happy if we could get an "insert HTML link" thingy like the other SMF forum I'm on has, so you don't have to type the stupid '=' and then insert the URL. But somehow I doubt that'll ever be fixed, and besides, it's such a picayune complaint.

Is the 'insert hyperlink' thing not that?

Not quite.
On the other SMF forum I read, their "insert hyperlink" button pops up a little dialog that asks for both the URL and the text of the link (already there if you highlight some text first), so you don't have to remember to type in a '=' and then paste the URL.

Small thing but it's a nice feature. I asked about adding that to this forum some time ago, but the response was basically "meh".

[EEVblog]

Me, I'd be happy if we could get an "insert HTML link" thingy like the other SMF forum I'm on has, so you don't have to type the stupid '=' and then insert the URL. But somehow I doubt that'll ever be fixed, and besides, it's such a picayune complaint.

Is the 'insert hyperlink' thing not that?

Not quite.
On the other SMF forum I read, their "insert hyperlink" button pops up a little dialog that asks for both the URL and the text of the link (already there if you highlight some text first), so you don't have to remember to type in a '=' and then paste the URL.

Small thing but it's a nice feature. I asked about adding that to this forum some time ago, but the response was basically "meh".

 
You just paste the link and the SMF software converts it to link, for example, I don't need to use the "Insert Hyperlink" button to insert this link:

https://eevblog.store/

Same with Youtube links etc.

[Monkeh]

Me, I'd be happy if we could get an "insert HTML link" thingy like the other SMF forum I'm on has, so you don't have to type the stupid '=' and then insert the URL. But somehow I doubt that'll ever be fixed, and besides, it's such a picayune complaint.

Is the 'insert hyperlink' thing not that?

Not quite.
On the other SMF forum I read, their "insert hyperlink" button pops up a little dialog that asks for both the URL and the text of the link (already there if you highlight some text first), so you don't have to remember to type in a '=' and then paste the URL.

Small thing but it's a nice feature. I asked about adding that to this forum some time ago, but the response was basically "meh".

 
You just paste the link and the SMF software converts it to link, for example, I don't need to use the "Insert Hyperlink" button to insert this link:

https://eevblog.store/

Same with Youtube links etc.

But he wants to do this: EEVBlog Store

Without having to do a tiny bit of touchup.

[Analog Kid]

You just paste the link and the SMF software converts it to link, for example, I don't need to use the "Insert Hyperlink" button to insert this link:

https://eevblog.store/

Same with Youtube links etc.

But he wants to do this: EEVBlog Store

Without having to do a tiny bit of touchup.

Yes, exactly that.

Mind you, it's a teensy-tiny complaint. Nowhere near making me insist it be done or I'm out the door.

My overall advice to you, Dave is this:
Keep on doing what you're doing. It's working fine.

[tautech]

You just paste the link and the SMF software converts it to link, for example, I don't need to use the "Insert Hyperlink" button to insert this link:

https://eevblog.store/

Same with Youtube links etc.

But he wants to do this: EEVBlog Store

Without having to do a tiny bit of touchup.

Yes, exactly that.

Mind you, it's a teensy-tiny complaint. Nowhere near making me insist it be done or I'm out the door.

My overall advice to you, Dave is this:
Keep on doing what you're doing. It's working fine.

And that's why I'll never ever follow such a link !

Show me the real URL and let me make my own choice rather than what someone decides to name a link. 

[EEVblog]

Show me the real URL and let me make my own choice rather than what someone decides to name a link. 

Same here. I much prefer to see the real URL right up front, unless it's massively long of course.

[Analog Kid]

And that's why I'll never ever follow such a link !

Show me the real URL and let me make my own choice rather than what someone decides to name a link. 

So your browser doesn't show you the actual URL when you mouse over the link?
Every browser I've ever used does this.
You must be using something really primitive.

[Ian.M]

And that's why I'll never ever follow such a link !

Show me the real URL and let me make my own choice rather than what someone decides to name a link. 

Its your responsibility to determine where the link goes *before* clicking it.  Decent browsers show you that when you hover over a link.

e.g. https://eevblog.store/ does *NOT* go to the EEVblog  Store.

We can trust that Dave's internal site links wont be deceptive because we trust Dave and Gnif, but blind clicking links in content from J. Random User is at best unwise . . .

[5U4GB]

The right approach is to begin with the will to unlearn old habits.

Translation: the right approach is to forget history, to ignore why things are the way they are, and make things "suboptimal" in a different way.

Isn't this Google's mission statement?