RW Forums is moving...

Started by Melbosa, February 01, 2017, 05:03:03 PM

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Stick with SMF Forum as a Solution or change to something new?

SMF FTW
3 (60%)
Something new and exciting
2 (40%)

Total Members Voted: 5

Melbosa

So Lazy and I have been discussing moving RW Forums to another hosting solution and doing some updates at the same time.  One of the items we identified is an option to move to another forum solution (such as Discourse).

We thought we should open it up to discussion, stick with SMF or move to something else?  If something else, what is your suggestion?

Of course if we move we will move as much data from SMF as possible, keeping as much as we can alive with history!
Sometimes I Think Before I Type... Sometimes!

Mr. Analog

A change is as good as a rest, right?
By Grabthar's Hammer

Lazybones

Discourse is one suggestion as it has a strong update engine / faster more active development. It also has a mobile / touch optimized interface, infinite scroll / loading etc (some of this eventually is coming to SMF).

However it might be off putting in the way it uses tags instead of structured sub-forums depending on if you have encountered it before.

Not strongly pushing for a change of SMF as it is easy to maintain, however it isn't exciting and some of the things like spoilers and embedded previews are native to discuss out of the box which would be nice.

Other suggestions are welcome however I think FREE and easy to patch / maintain are key features before others as that is one of the reasons we moved to SMF in the first place.

Down side / up side there is no tap-a-talk plugin for discuss but it is mobile friendly out of the box and has a number of notification options.

Tom

I've never been a huge fan of Discourse, but I can learn to live with it.
<Zapata Prime> I smell Stanley... And he smells good!!!

Thorin

How do we ensure privacy on private forums, like the Edmonton Locals one?  With just tags, it seems awful easy to accidentally post personal and private info into a publicly-accessible thread.
Prayin' for a 20!

gcc thorin.c -pedantic -o Thorin
compile successful

Lazybones

Quote from: Thorin on February 01, 2017, 07:56:17 PM
How do we ensure privacy on private forums, like the Edmonton Locals one?  With just tags, it seems awful easy to accidentally post personal and private info into a publicly-accessible thread.

Category Tags have permissions and can be hidden, as with these forums we actually explicitly NAME the private sub-forums (Private) we can do the same for the Category tags so it is clear where you are posting to.

If there isn't much interested in change the forum software that is fine as well.

Thorin

I'm fine with it staying on SMF then.  Works well enough, and I'm old and cantankerous and don't like change.
Prayin' for a 20!

gcc thorin.c -pedantic -o Thorin
compile successful

Melbosa

Please use the poll to show your interest in change or staying
Sometimes I Think Before I Type... Sometimes!

Darren Dirt

Quote from: Lazybones on February 01, 2017, 08:49:17 PM
Quote from: Thorin on February 01, 2017, 07:56:17 PM
How do we ensure privacy on private forums, like the Edmonton Locals one?  With just tags, it seems awful easy to accidentally post personal and private info into a publicly-accessible thread.

Category Tags have permissions and can be hidden, as with these forums we actually explicitly NAME the private sub-forums (Private) we can do the same for the Category tags so it is clear where you are posting to.

If there isn't much interested in change the forum software that is fine as well.

I offer a STRONG vote against change. It's not like we have some revenue model and have to "keep up" with all the cool kids and competitors in the marketplace or whatever.

I hope you guys know how much appreciate this forum, never wanted a Facebook or Twitter account so really this is where I keep in strong interaction with you guys (for almost 20 years (!)) and I'm find with how "old school" it may look, it functions 100% perfectly in my opinion. There are other forums over the years that changed their backend and lost a lot of enduring users, I fear a dramatic change to RW would not improve anything important and risk adding obstacles to a place of comfort for me. On the other hand, a site like "twoplustwo" the biggest Poker forum, they have used the same software for more than 10 years and have an insanely large user base, no reason to change to something completely different.

/selfish

PS: selflessly speaking, if staying here is practically zero maintenance then stick with what we know :) And it's critical to have full control of "our stuff" instead of letting 3rd parties host anything imo -- if that was even a consideration. Privacy when needed is simple to set up and maintain too right?

Again, I vote
  • No Change.


    LOL -- I posted above in {Grunch Mode}, then I read the others.

    Quote from: Thorin on February 01, 2017, 09:01:01 PM
    I'm fine with it staying on SMF then.  Works well enough, and I'm old and cantankerous and don't like change.

    Yup. Succintly articulated.
_____________________

Strive for progress. Not perfection.
_____________________

Mr. Analog

If maintaining SMF is a pain in the ass for the peeps who maintain this shizz for free on their own time then change it

Otherwise eh
By Grabthar's Hammer

Lazybones

Quote from: Mr. Analog on February 03, 2017, 05:15:18 PM
If maintaining SMF is a pain in the ass for the peeps who maintain this shizz for free on their own time then change it

Otherwise eh

Well SMF still pushes out security updates regularly but the main development of NEW things is really really slow these days, the next release has been in beta a long time.

Moving the hosting means rebuilding the web-server and core components, so it is a good time to consider other software in case it runs on different foundations. SMF is MySQL / PHP.. Discourse is Docker based and uses Ruby and Protgres.

But this is why we put it out there as a post to get feedback.

Darren Dirt

Quote from: Mr. Analog on February 03, 2017, 05:15:18 PM
If maintaining SMF is a pain in the ass for the peeps who maintain this shizz for free on their own time then change it

Otherwise eh

Thank you RW admins for your thankless job. I hope you have never felt under-appreciated.

And I hope you never make such a stupid decision as Amazon now has done re. IMDB Message Boards...

http://www.imdb.com/board/announcement

Quote
IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. As part of our ongoing effort to continually evaluate and enhance the customer experience on IMDb, we have decided to disable IMDb's message boards on February 20, 2017. This includes the Private Message system. After in-depth discussion and examination, we have concluded that IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide. The decision to retire a long-standing feature was made only after careful consideration and was based on data and traffic.

Increasingly, IMDb customers have migrated to IMDb's social media accounts as the primary place they choose to post comments and communicate with IMDb's editors and one another. IMDb's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/imdb) and official Twitter account (https://twitter.com/imdb) have an audience of more than 10 million engaged fans. IMDb also maintains official accounts on Snapchat (https://www.snapchat.com/add/imdblive), Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/imdbofficial/), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/imdb), and Tumblr (http://imdb.tumblr.com/).

Because IMDb's message boards continue to be utilized by a small but passionate community of IMDb users, we announced our decision to disable our message boards on February 3, 2017 but will leave them open for two additional weeks so that users will have ample time to archive any message board content they'd like to keep for personal use. During this two-week transition period, which concludes on February 19, 2017, IMDb message board users can exchange contact information with any other board users they would like to remain in communication with (since once we shut down the IMDb message boards, users will no longer be able to send personal messages to one another). We regret any disappointment or frustration IMDb message board users may experience as a result of this decision.

IMDb is passionately committed to providing innovative ways for our hundreds of millions of users to engage and communicate with one another. We will continue to enhance our current offerings and launch new features in 2017 and beyond that will help our customers communicate and express themselves in meaningful ways while leveraging emerging technologies and opportunities.

SUCH BS.

Half of the VALUE of IMDB when Amazon bought them out WAS the user community within the Message Boards.

And just like how "Jump The Shark" got bought out then its value soon removed, ditto for IMDB (just took a lot more years).

I mean, how much $ does it cost to maintain a working-fine-as-it-is forum community?

"message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience... Increasingly, IMDb customers have migrated to IMDb's social media accounts as the primary place they choose to post comments and communicate with IMDb's editors and one another."

In other words, they are tired of ass-hats spamming within their OWN resources, so will rely on 3rd parties to deal with the crap that will always be present BECAUSE INTERNET.

Oh well, "TWO WEEKS" is plenty of time for decades+ user content to be "archived" in random ways... presuming folks even hear about this. You've got 9 days remaining...

_____________________

Strive for progress. Not perfection.
_____________________

Melbosa

Ok so We'll wrap up the decision here by Friday.  You can change your vote, so if everyone could take a look at alternatives to SMF like Discourse to really help us Admins out with an informed decision, that would be awesome! 
Sometimes I Think Before I Type... Sometimes!

Melbosa

Reminder today is the last day to change your vote.  I hope everyone has taken some time to really look at what is out there.
Sometimes I Think Before I Type... Sometimes!

Tom

A brief search just now leads me to believe I don't know enough about the subject to make a useful suggestion. I would have to try various forums out and do some compare/contrasting.. Which I don't really have the spare (brain) cycles for :(
<Zapata Prime> I smell Stanley... And he smells good!!!