[DENIED] Discourse! (Ruby Open Source Forum)

[whiskers75]

I've seen a few people liking the idea of the Discourse forum software...
It would surely beat SMF, and be easier to write extensions for (uses Ruby).
Also, this forum looks pants.   (well, that is, compared to Discourse)

The Problem
The state of forums has been unchanged for so long that forums are considered unworkable and undesirable; few sites want forums any more because the software is so poor. The idea of free, unfettered online forums that anyone can “fork” and install is actually under threat. The dystopian future of company towns for all human discussion is all too real, because forum software is its own worst enemy at this point.

Most people, if pressured, can name at least one blog platform. But can they name even one single forum platform? Forums have had no champion that we know of. Even the better forum software is almost exclusively 100% for-pay closed source (although a rare few offer crippled open source versions), and all based on ancient, legacy PHP/MySQL code bases. (see, theymos? )

The freedom to easily one-click install and run a decent forum software for a topic you love is an essential part of the wild, chaotic, vibrant “let your freak flag fly” formula of the Internet that we've always known and loved.

Forums may not be sexy, but they are a fundamental building block of all online community, and they reliably produce useful search artifacts even today. It is a testament to the power of these communities that they are thriving despite the primitive state of forum software.

Today's forums are smart people trapped in bad software.

ADVANTAGES:

- Working search  
- Flowing discussion
- Looks great!

Please add any and all comments/+1's/criticisms, and hopefully we can replace this old dinosaur and get some easier, prettier forum software for a better future.   Oh, and DON'T QUOTE THIS - that picture will clog the postlog (another reason to get Discourse )

-whiskers75

[tysat]

Here's the real question:

Does it have a built in porting feature that can pull from SMF?  Without that it would be a lot harder to switch.

[whiskers75]

Here's the real question:

Does it have a built in porting feature that can pull from SMF?  Without that it would be a lot harder to switch.

Sure coding one would work!

[pekv2]

Problem? IMO, this SMF 1.1.18 is just fine. Don't need java, don't need cookies. It works just fine. Had anybody else run into any problems with SMF 1.1.18?

I know of a forum that switched forum software from smf to huddler, and it is still a disaster.

All I see is a huge disaster.

Why fix anything if it ain't broke?

Leave it alone.

[theymos]

DISADVANTAGES:
- Annoying interface.
- Categories, not tags. (Any forum I switch to must have hierarchical tags instead of categories.)
- Non-threaded discussions. (Ditto.)
- I'm not a fan of Ruby.
- Uses Gravatar, which never works correctly.
- No watchlist?
- "User-controlled" moderation, which is terrible for free discussion because people censor each other.
- Probably very limited mod tools. It's probably worse than Stack Exchange, and Stack Exchange is pretty bad -- I see spam there all the time. Can Discourse split threads, merge them, send PMs for deleted posts, automatically ban proxies, smartly detect spam text, subject new/suspicious users to additional proof-of-work to prevent spam, have self-moderated topics, nuke users with automatic smart IP bans, track all of a user's IPs with proxy detection, etc.?
- Doesn't seem to support OpenID.
- No polls
- Limited user stats, etc.
- Can't ignore users.
- Can't ignore categories.
- No categories that only some users can see (?)
- Doesn't print nicely.

I'm not going to use Discourse.

[vampire]

Ruby is damn slow.

[stevegee58]

Ruby is damn slow.

Yes but it's what he learned in school and he thinks his prof is da shizznit.

[whiskers75]

Me? Oh, I don't use Ruby, just putting it forward. Locked thread.