RFC: new forum software specifications

[Seraphim401]

Another feature that should exist in the forum software: OpenID as an alternative to normal username/password authentication.

+1

[1713913966]

1713913966

[Anonymous]

Built-in bounty and investment functions for projects and ventures would be nice; like meters that show the number of supporters and capital raised.

[Nagle]

Don't change anything. It's not worth the effort, and if you lose all the old posts or make people re-register, they will leave.

[phelix]

A "show new quotes" option would be nice.

[theymos]

A "show new quotes" option would be nice.

What would this do?

[phelix]

A "show new quotes" option would be nice.

What would this do?

show new posts that quote you. ok, something similar can be achieved by searching for the most recent posts with your name in it. still think it would be a nice feature

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Slashdot-like meta-moderation system would be neat. I think it is the best on the web.

They actually eleminated 99,9% of spam & trolling using it.

This could come in handly, as we currently have large trolling, spam and too-many-meaningless-posts problem. Slashdot moderation would probably eleminate them all, mostly at least.

[nefanon]

Slashdot-like meta-moderation system would be neat. I think it is the best on the web.

They actually eleminated 99,9% of spam & trolling using it.

This could come in handly, as we currently have large trolling, spam and too-many-meaningless-posts problem. Slashdot moderation would probably eleminate them all, mostly at least.

+1

[bosschair]

start from scratch? that really should not be necessary.

Absolutely necessary?  Maybe not.  A good way to get the features you want?  Definitely.  If you have hard and very specific requirements, no off-the-shelf software is going to meet them all.  Custom development is the way to go, and there are plenty of people here who have the skill to implement a simple message board system, as well as plenty of people here willing to donate to the cause.

To that end, I have set up this donation address for some of the project costs: 1H43Z8YHwn7bX67T5eNzwbGRcFATExr7am.  If you support this effort, please give whatever you can.  My first order of business will be to commission a logo.  Does anyone want to throw their hat in the ring for CEO?

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

start from scratch? that really should not be necessary.

Absolutely necessary?  Maybe not.  A good way to get the features you want?  Definitely.  

Trust me, advanced board systems such as PHPBB, vBulletin or IPBB offer sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many features that you are never, ever going to catch up with them. Also, it can be really difficult to avoid security holes, unless there are many very very experienced people working on it.

The best idea is to take one of the existing popular ones, add some basic plugins and build on top of them.
Also, they can be optimized to be blazingly fast with advanced caching systems using memcache & ramdisks.

[bosschair]

Trust me, advanced board systems such as PHPBB, vBulletin or IPBB offer sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many features that you are never, ever going to catch up with them.

The point is not to catch up with them, but to implement the specific features you want.  Those systems are behemoths with all manner of silly features and plugins.

Also, it can be really difficult to avoid security holes, unless there are many very very experienced people working on it.

We have many very very experienced people here, as you can see by looking at the development forum.

Also, they can be optimized to be blazingly fast with advanced caching systems using memcache & ramdisks.

If you read the spec in the OP, it explicitly says "well-optimized", so I think that's covered.  And adding memcache to a site for additional performance is trivial.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Trust me, advanced board systems such as PHPBB, vBulletin or IPBB offer sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many features that you are never, ever going to catch up with them.

The point is not to catch up with them, but to implement the specific features you want.  Those systems are behemoths with all manner of silly features and plugins.

1. I am not sure If you comprehend just how many totally BASIC (no ponies & gadgets, just the basics) features modern forum systems (such as PHPBB) have. It is year of work at minimum for 3 experienced people to implement PHPBB's engine in a secure, performant way. And I am not even talking about the plugins - that's different story.

1a. I know it LOOKS easy. But it totally isn't. Building a good piece of discussion software is a tough job, and other teams (PHPBB, MyBB, IPBB, vBulletin) had years and years and years to perfect their engines. You are simply **NOT** going to produce anything better in a short time (unless you are genius or something). Period.

2. Another point is that people coming to the forum will expect certain set of features they encountered on other forums. If we don't have them, the forum will simply suck donkey arse from the point of view of users.

[phelix]

Trust me, advanced board systems such as PHPBB, vBulletin or IPBB offer sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many features that you are never, ever going to catch up with them.

The point is not to catch up with them, but to implement the specific features you want.  Those systems are behemoths with all manner of silly features and plugins.

1. I am not sure If you comprehend just how many totally BASIC (no ponies & gadgets, just the basics) features modern forum systems (such as PHPBB) have. It is year of work at minimum for 3 experienced people to implement PHPBB's engine in a secure, performant way. And I am not even talking about the plugins - that's different story.

1a. I know it LOOKS easy. But it totally isn't. Building a good piece of discussion software is a tough job, and other teams (PHPBB, MyBB, IPBB, vBulletin) had years and years and years to perfect their engines. You are simply **NOT** going to produce anything better in a short time (unless you are genius or something). Period.

2. Another point is that people coming to the forum will expect certain set of features they encountered on other forums. If we don't have them, the forum will simply suck donkey arse from the point of view of users.

+1!

[bosschair]

1. I am not sure If you comprehend just how many totally BASIC (no ponies & gadgets, just the basics) features modern forum systems (such as PHPBB) have. It is year of work at minimum for 3 experienced people to implement PHPBB's engine in a secure, performant way. And I am not even talking about the plugins - that's different story.

1a. I know it LOOKS easy. But it totally isn't. Building a good piece of discussion software is a tough job, and other teams (PHPBB, MyBB, IPBB, vBulletin) had years and years and years to perfect their engines. You are simply **NOT** going to produce anything better in a short time (unless you are genius or something). Period.

No, of course it's not easy.  But this community is made of highly competent people, many of whom are developers, some of which already have experience hacking on forum software.  So I think we have a leg up there.  Nobody said we're going to make something better than vBulletin in a short amount of time.  We'll make something more targeted to the features we want, instead of compromising by using off-the-shelf stuff that lacks certain things (why do you think this thread was started?  because there exists no forum software that has it all).  You start small, with a core set of features, and you make changes incrementally.  You write the code in a way that is extremely easy to modify, just as specified in the OP, so that you can make complex changes without much trouble.

2. Another point is that people coming to the forum will expect certain set of features they encountered on other forums. If we don't have them, the forum will simply suck donkey arse from the point of view of users.

So we should implement those features.

[theymos]

Some more things that I'll add to the final specification:
- The bidder needs to provide code or detailed instructions on how to move current database data to the new database.
- The software needs to be at least as fast and resource-light as SMF.
- I like how the SMF post composition page allows you to highlight text and then click a button to apply certain BBCode. This needs to be replicated.
- I mentioned this a bit in the OP, but to be more clear: There needs to be "weighted time online" and "weighted post count" in addition to the raw values. It should not be possible for a user to increase one of the weighted values by too much without increasing the other value. If you post 200 posts in 1 hour, your weighted post count should be 1. If you post 1 post in 200 hours, your weighted time online should 6 hours. These numbers should be configurable and should apply retroactively when changed (where possible).
- Time online should not increase if you're simply refreshing a page.
- Post counts should not be shown on topic pages, but should be shown on profile pages.

Another point is that people coming to the forum will expect certain set of features they encountered on other forums. If we don't have them, the forum will simply suck donkey arse from the point of view of users.

As I mentioned in the OP, the new software must support all of the popular user-facing SMF features.

I don't care much whether the software will be written from scratch or based on some already-existing software, though the base must be written very cleanly so I can easily modify it.

[error]

This has feature-crept a bit too far for my taste, theymos. Have you considered separating out some of these feature sets into separate projects?

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

So we should implement those features.

No. You just still do not comprehend how many features that is.
Creating your own forum system is a complete waste of time.

Unless you want to spend few years creating it, perfecting it, fixing bugs & cooperating with community (the same as you do with Bitcoin), then forget it.

[Anonymous]

First off, images are very useful. If a company wants to display a screenshot or image of their bitcoin product, how can we do this. What if want to show screen grabs of bitcoin debit, or what if you want to put screen grabs of the block explorer. Images are very useful, but those faces (I think they are called smiles)  are not necessary or useful to anyone. They are just clutter.

[Anonymous]

Also, You should make this code open source.

[payb.tc]

currently we have:

Show unread posts since last visit.
Show new replies to your posts.

i would like to see a combination called:

Show new replies to your posts since last visit.

so basically when you first click on it, it shows you all the new replies to your posts, but then it also CLEARS that list regardless of which ones you view on that visit.

i don't really need to see List of honest traders every single time i visit the forum, but i'm stuck with it being in my 'new replies' list.