Bitcoin Forum

I like the Simple Machines Forum, but there are definitely some nice features I miss. I wonder whether this is felt by more users.

The main problem I see is that there are far too many links from the outside to the existing forum so that a migration is not really feasible, but adding a second Forum and making the old one read only, or making it read only subforum by subforum.

What do you think?

There are much better ways for people to spend their time improving Bitcoin, instead of switching the forum software to obtain minor (if any) improvement.

Having said that, the one thing I love about vBulletin is the "Thanks" button on every post, as a simple way to allocate and track karma.

Smf has a major problem (or not, I'd love to be wrong) that you can't stop watching threads, or watch threads without posting a comment. I voted phpBB.

I like SMF.


SMF also supports this (through a mod). This forum just doesn't have it enabled.


You can get notifications without posting.

How? I vote keep it the same, maybe make a few mods like the thanks button but it's not worth the effort to change it.

Maybe just upgrade to 2.0, which has a LOT more features?

The feature was enabled again just a few days ago. See http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5664.0

fluxbb would be nicer :).

SMF or vBulletin IMO

Ok, right now we're pretty 50:50 on a possible change.
The things I'm missing the most are (in no particular order and incomplete list):

• Daily/Weekly digest of new posts
• Portal with only my subscribed topics (changes on top)
• Subscribe to subforums (the chinese kids write so much non-sense, and I'm a techie, why should I have to wade through those topics too?)
• Better code highlighting
• More control over the profile page

I'm sure this list will get longer over time. Mainly its stuff for users that are on the forum on a daily basis and makes little things easier.

Edit: Is it true that SMF 2.0 has been under development for 6 (!!!) years? (source: Changelog (http://download.simplemachines.org/index.php?thanks;filename=smf_2-0-rc5_changelog.txt))

voted the first option, but I don't love sfm  :P

Just noticed that I didn't add a neutral answer for "no" or "yes" to the poll, sorry.

If you study the changelog carefully, yes, the first entries come from 2005, but the real development started in 2007 when first betas came out. Still, that's 4 years...

Too much work, I voted "I don't care". The forum is OK.  I agree it's not perfect, and could use those extra features, but I don't see it as a priority for bitcoin right now.

If you're going to work on the site, fix https :)

How about moving to a MODERN forum, like xenForo?

Here's my xenForo forum, for example.  It's cheap, and scores better than overpriced vBulletin or spam-ridden phpBB.  I'm not a big fan of SMF either, after using xenForo.  It's so smooth and slick and beautiful, and it actually works really, really well.

http://www.minecraftcc.com/index.php?forum/

God, I've been trying to get use to this forum software but it's just so dated and clunky.  I really hate SMF, I've decided.

Please switch it to anything else.

It would be really nice to have vBulletins trader plugin that allows rating of deals done through the site, like Heatware or eBay Feedback.  Built right in...  You could also add the auction plugin as well to the site if you were so inclined.

The existing forum is like pulling on a comfortable old pair of alpaca socks and underpants with holes in them. You just wouldn't date a supermodel wearing old socks and holey undies.

 :)

I have always hated SMF. It feels outdated, I seem to remember quite a few security issues way back when (don't quote me,) it's hard, if not impossible to watch / unwatch threads, and again, it just looks gross.

phpBB is beautiful in my opinion, and I frequently steal their template system for my projects. The front-end is beautiful, the code is beautiful, it's powerful, and it's open-source.

vBulletin and IPB for me will always be out of the question.

I prefer an NNTP/Usenet forum to a web forum any day.  Web fora sucks, IMHO.

Cheers,

You can easily start one these days.

I been operating two NNTP servers for nearly a decade now, and I wouldn't mind peering e.g. bitcoin.* with other NNTP peers.  However, I do not want the hazzle of accomodating online users (i.e., NNTP clients).

Cheers,

That's indeed up to you, I meant that it's not dependent on this site its staff, unlike a forum change.

NNTP is distributed, so I guess in some way it's a better match to bitcoin than a centralized forum/mailinglist/web2.0thingy.

You're right.  I guess I'll start a separate thread.  Thanks.


I agree!

Cheers,

Uhhh... an NNTP group makes absolutely no sense in the context we are talking about here.  We'd have our own frigging hierarchy that would require tedious navigation. 

Usenet has it's place, but it's not a replacement for a true forum and a forum is not a replacement for USENET.  They both have their own niche "market," and they only overlap in a cursory manner.

There are many things that need to be done to this forum to bring it into the modern era, but moving it to USENET would be a step in the opposite direction of what's needed.  Couple that with the fact that you'd need additional software to browse and post, because I have yet to see a web interface to USENET that is worth a shit.  We would lose at least 75% of the people here switching to NNTP.

We need the forum software to be updated to a modern feature set and a number of additional plugins to accommodate the features people would like to see.  SMF will never be there and a USENET group would not solve any of the problems the forum is facing right now.

— which is why I have started a separate thread (https://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=8260.0)…

Cheers,

+1 for phpbb ;)

psy, stop posting things! Every time i see your avatar, I have to stare at it for an hour!

Well that's not very nice! It's just a Tesseract (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract)!