Bitcoin Forum

We have waited for epochtalk, and the sad reality seems to be that it will never happen. Why a software project that took a lot of Bitcoins to have it developed and has never materialized to this date after so many years is beyond my understanding  :D

Now, I have a question regarding SMF, the current version of it is SMF 2.1.1 (https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?P=thrtlr7pcla074i1rh7vc5sdj1&topic=580657.0)
Why are we still stuck with the old SMF 1.1.19 which we can always see at the bottom of the pages?

https://i.imgur.com/powskUz.png

AFAIK a big reason is that forum's SMF is heavily customized with various enhancements (trust/merit/security fixes/etc), which makes the upgrade unfeasible.

I would leave it as is. Surely this version throws off younger people when they see the forum for the first time, but it is functional, and we also don't know if we would like the new forum once it is implemented. I've seen quite a few times people complain on other forums after a change.

On the other hand, if we look at Bershire Hataway's website, for example, we see an example of a company with a crappy website, which does not prevent it from succeeding.

https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

I've seen people complain after literally every forum change. OP's link (https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?P=thrtlr7pcla074i1rh7vc5sdj1&topic=580657.0) for instance shows more whitespace, which is something many websites do nowadays. I don't buy a bigger screen to see more whitespace, I want to see more information.

Other than the version number: would there be anything in it that we could really use?

To be fair, there's a big difference between a forum that's being used by a lot of people(masses), versus a static website that only has articles and filings that's only being used by actual investors(not crypto/WSB gamblers) and institutional people.

As @suchmoon pointed out, the forum’s software has a lot of customizations, not only by modifications made over recent years, but even as far back in 2014 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=484259.msg5396298#msg5396298) the same consideration and assertion was made.

What might have happened, and this is mere speculation, is that besides there being a bunch of customizations and a logically heavy focus on security (see concerns on SMF 2.x here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=306878.msg3295932#msg3295932)), the more the idea grew to move on to a new forum software (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=523070.0), the less the said compendium of factors pushed for a forum software version upgrade, keeping things stable and under control in the (now long) interim.

Of course, as time goes by, it becomes more difficult to carry out and upgrade, even if one intends to. There may easily be incompatibility issues, usage of mods that are now defunct, depreciated code sentences, and so forth. Not saying it’s not doable, but it’s likely quite a hell of a project itself.

Dude saved up enough from putting out a decent website. Perhaps, that could be a reason WB is that rich 🤔

Well, OP I would say if it's not broken don't fix it. If the forum has been running smoothly the way it's, I don't think there should be any need to complicate it with a change in order to sound or look trendy.