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Keep the current forum.

4 (21.1%)

Keep the current forum as a subdomain for archival purposes, set up a new forum using a different platform.

15 (78.9%)

Total Members Voted: 19

[Malikial]

I say we make 2014 the year of constantly trying to build a new home. A forum of nomadic architects.

You know, just to test whether or not we really like each other to stick together through several iterations of forum changes or that we're just too lazy to actually leave and find new friends.

Cool, I'll kick us off with an iteration that's intentionally wrong! The last thing we need is a brontoforumus subreddit, but now it exists regardless.

As much fun as it is to make sense of many-tiered quote-boxes charting the winding tendrils of conversations past to provide context to an individual response in one of our megathreads, I do think we'd benefit from some sort of threaded conversation system. What would be better is the option to switch between a threaded view and a sequential view, since the latter makes a lot more sense for LP threads and Werewolf (or other forum games).

Speaking of options, I'd be fine with the option to enable or disable infinite scroll, but if we had to commit to one or the other, I'd prefer no infinite.

I like karma; I'd like the ability to sort threads or posts by rating even better.

What is reddit?

[Lottel]

Sorry.  I tend to forget not everybody has been bounced around shitty forums like I was.

ning is a social networking forum hybrid. Everyone gets a MySpace type page and as for forums, there's a community area and you can kind of make a new forum or subforum as you please and anyone can lock it to only certain people or whatever.

It's bizarre and convoluted and encourages small groups of friends over group discussions.


It's got its perks but I remember it having a giant ass learning curve just to use it.

[Mongrel]

I say we make 2014 the year of constantly trying to build a new home. A forum of nomadic architects.

You know, just to test whether or not we really like each other to stick together through several iterations of forum changes or that we're just too lazy to actually leave and find new friends.

Cool, I'll kick us off with an iteration that's intentionally wrong! The last thing we need is a brontoforumus subreddit, but now it exists regardless.

As much fun as it is to make sense of many-tiered quote-boxes charting the winding tendrils of conversations past to provide context to an individual response in one of our megathreads, I do think we'd benefit from some sort of threaded conversation system. What would be better is the option to switch between a threaded view and a sequential view, since the latter makes a lot more sense for LP threads and Werewolf (or other forum games).

Speaking of options, I'd be fine with the option to enable or disable infinite scroll, but if we had to commit to one or the other, I'd prefer no infinite.

I like karma; I'd like the ability to sort threads or posts by rating even better.

What is reddit?

no greater hive of scum and villainy

_{Well, okay, 4chan is probably worse. But 4chan is also much funnier and more productive.}

[Royal☭]

Looked at some of the BB options that Wikipedia had listed and... man, the field for BB systems is depressing. Whatever we end up going with may involve us bolting on our own additions if we wanted. Things like Tumblr and Facebook killed most of the big forum innovations. I think there's room to grow and new ways to have a discussion community other than just a timeline ordered list of posts. But damned if it exists.

[Caithness]

Karma is like, a huge drama magnet.

Drama is one of my favorite things.

[Ted Belmont]

What is reddit?

If this is sincere, I envy you.

[Malikial]

I looked it up, doesn't seem like a thing Mali's would enjoy.

[Royal☭]

I'd recommend people poke around on Discourse before dismissing it out of hand. After using it for a while, the Infinite Scroll seems to have been more well thought out that previous ones. It does remember exactly where you were last time, as well as update your URL for direct linking to a post. It also allows for replying to a post as a new topic, which is interesting.

I think the thing that keeps me interested in Discourse is just how much all the other free forums are pretty much just versions of Simple Machines, give or take features. I also am gonna have to disregard any aesthetic complaints considering most forum software is pretty damned ugly and this one only looks the way it does because of the tireless efforts of the 'Bage.

There's still stuff that's missing, of course. At the end of the day, the state of open source forum software seems to be pretty dismal. So it doesn't look like there's going to be some great magic bullet. I'm at least in favor of getting rid of the pretty old Simple Machines that does not seem to be doing what we want anymore.

[A²]

Also I mentioned it in chat, but a few of you weirdos don't frequent the better part of the community so I'll say it again here:

Replace the Karma buttons on our new forum with "Cause Drama" buttons.

[Mongrel]

If we buy forums software...

1) What are the costs? How much?

2) Would that be a one-time license or ongoing?

3) Are there significant feature or support advantages over freeware?

Because I don't mind fronting some bucks if shelling out will make a significant qualitative difference.

[Classic]

Replace the Karma buttons on our new forum with "Cause Drama" buttons.

Drama++;

[Mothra]

Also I mentioned it in chat, but a few of you weirdos don't frequent the better part of the community so I'll say it again here:

Replace the Karma buttons on our new forum with "Cause Drama" buttons.

Welp, if we just have positive karma, that solves your problem, right?

[Classic]

IIRC, there was an incident which made it so that we cannot have nice things.
That Karma also eventually broke may also have been a factor.

[Royal☭]

Doing some research, it looks like "Ridiculously Overpriced" is the answer. The cheapest one is $130 for a year before you stop receiving upgrades and support, another one is $175 to install proprietary software which looks like it also wants to charge per month based on the number of users.

Looking at the Comparison of Internet Forum Software page on Wikipedia will give you an idea of the options out there.

[patito]

From wiki:

Discourse     User-selectable themes     No


So yeah, let's not do discourse ever, ok.

[Royal☭]

Because we've been living it up in user selectable theme paradise here.

Is there anybody not using the Bronto theme here? Raise your hand*





*And be banned for life

[patito]

We at least had two colors at one point, what the fuck happened. I guess SMF really is kind of awful.

[Royal☭]

You can change the theme in your profile, but it's all a bunch of baked-in SMF themes. But, honestly, "user-selected" theme has never been something we on the forums have cared too much about. Note that you didn't even seem to notice that the multiple color selection options vanished.

[Brentai]

Having multiple themes seems like it would be more immediately relevant to Discourse than it was to SMF. Unless you can deal with the fact that even if we did adopt your favorite system, the first thing we'd probably do is tear out features from its default UI until it resembled a poor clone of SMF.

Also, I think people haven't missed theme options because they're all resigned to accepting deficiencies in the UI around here. That broken navbar up there has been hanging around for YEARS now. I fully encourage people to be a lot more demanding with this next iteration (just be prepared to deal with my usual crankiness about it).

[Thad]

Is there anybody not using the Bronto theme here? Raise your hand*

I used to work jobs where I had a lot of downtime (mostly waiting for laptops to image).  It's bad enough to be reading this thing at work WITHOUT it being bright pink.

*And be banned for life