Aesthetically, I think the Whiskey Media sites have attractive forum design. I like Screened.com’s color scheme the best.
Functionally, I’m not a big fan of rep, like or promotion systems on a forum. I think they’re most useful in cases where the noise/signal ratio is so high that I’m unlikely to want to participate in that community anyway.
I’ve also found tapatalk compatibility to be indispensable since I got my TouchPad. The Communities software on WebOS is one of my favorite ways to read the forums I follow. So, whether its actual tapatalk support, a tablet/mobile friendly design or a planned companion app (with WebOS support!), I think that’s pretty clutch.
You could have 2 “viewing modes”; one which showed everything and one which just showed the most liked posts or those above a certain threshold or… something.
A word on Vanilla … it can be made to look exactly like other(well vBulletin-like ones) forum software. Just check the PennyArcade forums, they have moved recently to Vanilla and seem to have stop a bit of their load problems.
Probably because of recent changes to Youtube, I don’t understand why website software doesn’t allow the user to click and drag entire elements around, not to mention change any and all colors, and so on.
It occurs to me that maybe I’d like “Everything Else” at the top of the page, while other people might not. So why can’t I drag it up there so that only I see that as the first section?
So I guess I’m saying the perfoct forum software for me would be one that gives me as much control over how it appears to me as possible. Stuff like promoting ‘liked’ posts are alright but I’d get more value out of being able to sort out the forum to function the way I want.
Youtube is a good example. Having recommended for you videos, recently discussed, etc is all well and good, but if my homepage is arranged in a way that I can’t work with very well and there is no way for me to fix it then the other stuff is pointless.
edit: I know it can be done because I’ve downloaded scripts to change elements of Youtube around the way I want them. If users can write scripts for this, why doesn’t the site just include it by default?
You’re drawing a false correlation. Forums tend not to utilize user-moderation because they’re intended to promote the flow of conversations between users. The people responding are just as important as person who made the first post, unlike blog or slashdot/reddit-type comments.
Also, every johnny-come-lately “web 2.0” site with user-moderation drew its inspiration from slashdot, because they came up with the idea and did it first.
The big thing for me about Xenforo is alerts - knowing when someone has quoted you is useful.
That’s a great idea! Also the easy one-click obvious subscribe/unsubscribe, both at the post level and possibly at the subforum level as Tim indicated.
You want software that allows for the sorting of completely subjective things like the worth of people’s posts, which just sounds complicated and weird.
I don’t think it is “complicated and weird” to note that a post like “This45” is of less interest than an impassioned, insightful 10 paragraph post. Anyway, both views will be available, it’s not like we’ll do away with plain vanilla chronological mode entirely.
Forums tend not to utilize user-moderation because they’re intended to promote the flow of conversations between users
That’s ironic, considering that the flat chronological view is terrible for following back and forth discussions. Quoting makes it tolerable for a little bit, but the worst threads are 2 or 3 users constantly replying to each other. Forums are really about response diversity, not necessarily intense “conversations” between a couple users. That kind of stuff is more harmful than useful most of the time, and I would actually describe that as arguing the way I see it typically play out.
Note that none of the above should be construed as support for threaded layouts, which as Machfive noted here a long time ago, are like “droppings from satan’s ass.”
Here’s the penny arcade forum layout (vanilla based)
Ease of ignoring people is good on XenForo, much better than on Qt3, but I really wish that if you ignored someone, it would ignore their posts when assessing whether a thread has been bumped. So if someone I have on ignore posts in a thread, it doesn’t put it in the “Threads with New Posts” category or whatever.
StackOverflow/Exchange is becoming quickly my #1 source of information. About as important to me now as Wikipedia, probably more.
You gains infinite internet points. And then more.
I love you, and everyone that has helped created these sites, specially the posters (both posting questions and answering).
So let’s brainstorm a bit: what should next-gen forum software look like? Let’s start with some shared research and due diligence on what’s already out there, first.
What forum software do you think currently works best – and why? Provide specific URLs with some rationale behind your choice.
What are the essential features of forum software? What do you use every day?
I can’t help here. I am a more a “change trought evolution” than “change from revolution” type of programmer. All Ideas that I can think are about how to make existing things better, not create new things.
Anyway heres my 2 cents… 3 cents:
If I remember correctly, software like phpBB popularized forums. I remember that with horror, with ABSOLUTE HORROR, because it was horrible software and popularized very bad ideas.
First: the need to register in a forum to post. This idea is terrible, and adds a energy barrier that make participating in random communities dificult.
So heres a patch: propose a method where anonymous people may participate in a forum, I will not say what methods will make this possible and at the same time stop it from being explotable by spammers. Probably some system where anonymous messages are hidden until get enough “votes” or similar.
Subforums / Forums / Taxonomy. Internet has proben that the idea of taxonomy is flawed, and folksonomy is superior. With forums, wen you are creating a forum, you have no idea what subforums create or not, and it pretty much depends how much people will contribute. Perhaps this is not a real problem, because sometimes you just copy existing configurations ( like Brokenforum copying (at first) the subforum division of QT3).
What you never see, is forums around people. Except perhaps Facebook walls, but that are lossy forums, and the information place there is “lost” in the stream. Why QT3 don’t have a “Teiman Subforum” where people can discuss with me, about me, and talk all day about me?
Are you really sure forum software is bad? I am happy with the current implementations, but maybe is me adapting me to the flaws of the software. We can’t know!. If you pick a non-internet dude and make him use a forum, he will try to apply real world limitations to the internet. Like these media players that look like a BoomBox that people used to install in the 90’s ( ex: Winamp ). We don’t know, and we can’t know how to know how a “naked forum” look, one that is just a forum, and has not weird restrictions applied on people, forcing people to adapt to the forum.
What if this way to communicate is soo well stablished now that people dont want to change? A forum is a “home on the internet” …
Subforums / Forums / Taxonomy. Internet has proben that the idea of taxonomy is flawed, and folksonomy is superior. With forums, wen you are creating a forum, you have no idea what subforums create or not, and it pretty much depends how much people will contribute. Perhaps this is not a real problem, because sometimes you just copy existing configurations ( like Brokenforum copying (at first) the subforum division of QT3).
What you never see, is forums around people. Except perhaps Facebook walls, but that are lossy forums, and the information place there is “lost” in the stream. Why QT3 don’t have a “Teiman Subforum” where people can discuss with me, about me, and talk all day about me?
Teiman subforum aside, a cloud of tags is a very good idea and would avoid the taxonomy issues you mention. Users could browse tags, do Boolean searches, and so forth.
I’d like the ability to hide threads that don’t interest me.
Avatars and sigs - some people like them and some don’t (I don’t). Each user should be able to set whether he sees them or not.
I like the idea of being able to sift ‘valuable’ and ‘related to OP’ posts from large threads. How to do that without turning the forum into Stack Overflow (which I dearly love) is beyond me.
QT3 type of layout is ideal for me. Its clean and the text gets most of the room. I don’t like the idea of user’s name and / or details at the bottom of the post because it break the flow of reading a thread.
Probably some system where anonymous messages are hidden until get enough “votes” or similar.
Uh, if messages from anonymous users are hidden by default, how can anyone “vote” on them, exactly?
I’m not a fan of anonymous user access on forums, though I think it works on Q&A when you have that one-in-a-million Google user who happens on the question and knows just the right answer.
On a discussion forum, you’ll get everyone and their brother offering their opinion about some random discussion topic. Not good.
Anonymous posting is interesting. I can see how it is easily abused, but still think the ability to post this way has some usefulness. Sometimes I might want to say something to the group, but not be held accountable to what I say in Google searches. Maybe I want to talk about some aspect of my job or personal life, but not in an official capacity (job) or have family members Google up my comments. I wish there were a way for registered users to post comments anonymously. The admin could know who posted which comments anonymously, but no one else would. Of course, you would have to trust the admin not to reveal your posts, but as we’re seeing in the brave new world of Qt3, a little trust isn’t always a bad thing.
I like phpBB, if only because someone’s already written the hack I’m looking for.
(It can also be scaled ridiculously well, with a few hacks)
For example, there’s a nifty “secondary username” hack I used a few years ago, which let you create a number of secondary posting names. Only mods/admins could see the connection. (That was primarily for RP purposes on that particular forum, as it was PnP-RPG related, but…)
The ability to set +n threshold for the site. You can read +2 if you’d like, but I’d rather read +5. Once a thread hits +5, then as long as it remains above that threshold, it’s always visible in my view.
Following on the previous point: vote posts up/down. Any thread that has 2+ posts voted up in any given 24 hr period will bubble to the top (or to an alternate view) as “today’s best topics.” Again, I want to have a personalized threshold with a +2 default.
I see a lot of buy/sell/trading going on in forums, frequently tied to a reputation count. It’s almost always a craptacular mess. I’d rather see that coded in from day one so that it makes sense and isn’t such a mess.
User customizable key words for content bubbling up or down. Let’s say that I never ever want to read a forum that has the word “NFL” in it more than 3 times. I’d like to “ban” that term from my view. On the other hand, perhaps I want NFL threads to appear at the top (or on a hot content page)…
Count me in as somebody who really likes clean looking forum software. The less chrome, the better.
I like the simple “Latest >> Participated” tab on Tapatalk. In fact, other than some gripes with spoiler tags, etc… I prefer reading this on Tapatalk on the iPad than here – it’s simply cleaner.
The administrative parts of most forum software is AWFUL. phpBB is a freaking nightmare to administer. SMF is better, but not great.
