I’d read through the links provided on this thread on
general history of the bitcoin forum and build-up from there, using forum’s inner information to get a better composition of the history (see how
xtraelv used to create topics to depict historical events rather thoroughly).
Mentioning SMF as the forum’s base software is a lateral point, but I’d expand to finding out more on the matter: why was it chosen?, why are we stalled on an ancient version?, why is there a request on Meta (created a long time ago) for developers to create a new forum software?, what were the requirements?, what that lead to, what is Epochtalk?, were are we now?, etc.
I’m not asking these questions now, but rather questions that help conceptualize the lateral subtopic of the forum’s software.