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Posted by Christoph
Oct 30, 2020 at 11:28 AM
Chris, that sounds all good and I must admit that it might be actually the right approach for this forum. Switching to Discourse or other standard software, although it would be more sophisticated and user-friendly, could destroy some of the charm that makes out this website.
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Oct 30, 2020 at 05:18 PM
Christoph, for me part of the charm is that this interface has become comfortable over the years. While other software might be more sophisticated, it might not be more user-friendly. Chris’ software has always been easy to use, and while it lacks a few features, such as being able to edit posts after they are sent, these additions can be made without substantively changing the easy and positive experience of communicating with each other in a good way.
Daly
Christoph wrote:
Chris, that sounds all good and I must admit that it might be actually
>the right approach for this forum. Switching to Discourse or other
>standard software, although it would be more sophisticated and
>user-friendly, could destroy some of the charm that makes out this
>website.
Posted by jaslar
Oct 30, 2020 at 07:32 PM
That sounds about right, Chris. A refresh, the ability to edit my own posts, and I’d be good. Muting, hiding a poster is nice but not necessary. I like the idea of a community curated catalog. I often use the site to search for apps to see if it’s been posted before.
Chris Murtland wrote:
Thanks to all for the ideas and feedback.
>
>The look and feel will be very similar, just slightly more contemporary,
>mainly as a result of using a CSS framework to make everything work well
>on mobile. The color scheme and general layout will remain the same. All
>URLs will be the same, and no one will have to register again or
>anything like that.
>
>I think there is something to be said for having a sort of “dated”
>approach on a forum filled with people who do things like install DOS
>outliners in 2020. :-D
>
>Hopefully it will be an improvement while remaining in the original
>spirit. I have a lot of ideas that should be more feasible once the code
>is modernized. For example, I’d love to be able to move toward a
>community curated catalog of all the software we discuss so people can
>browse by platform, features, etc. And then it would be great to also
>show the relevant forum discussions for each application…
Posted by Christoph
Oct 30, 2020 at 08:33 PM
Daly de Gagne wrote:
>Christoph, for me part of the charm is that this interface has become
>comfortable over the years. While other software might be more
>sophisticated, it might not be more user-friendly. Chris’ software has
>always been easy to use, and while it lacks a few features, such as
>being able to edit posts after they are sent, these additions can be
>made without substantively changing the easy and positive experience of
>communicating with each other in a good way.
That may be true. However, the forum should also be attractive to newcomers and maybe younger people. You’re right in that the main problem is lack of features (e.g. editing notes, subscribing, bookmarks, reminders, better search, rich-text formatting etc), not user-friendlyness. But yes, meanwhile I agree that having all these features may not be really necessary for this forum and may come with the drawbacks we already discussed.
Btw, an “edit” feature is not so simple to implement as it looks, because it can compromise the integrity of the online communication. It could be abused in forums where people accuse and troll one another, and then change postings and claim they never said something. That’s why many platforms (like Twitter) don’t allow editing or also store earlier versions for comparison. Luckily, this is not this kind of forum, and I guess nothing bad will happen if we simply allow editing in its simplest form.
Posted by avernet
Oct 30, 2020 at 08:41 PM
Christoph wrote:
>Yes, they have both, and both are very active. Discord is for the quick,
>synchronous chats and ephemeral chatter, while the Discourse forum is
>for the slower, asynchronous exchange of ideas, and for more structured
>and long-living threads. It’s a bit redundant to have both, but they
>serve somewhat different purposes and therefore it works pretty well for
>them. But I think Discord is not what we need here.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. I’m intrigued by this whole Discourse/forum/mailing list vs. Discord/Slack/Gitter. I’m wondering if we’re not going to see a move from the former to the latter, just like many people have moved much of their personal exchanges from email to messaging apps (Messages, WhatsApp, WeChat…). Of maybe this is just a temporary thing, and with time communities will find that low friction is less valuable than exchanges being more organized and searchable. Time will tell; and in the meantime, let’s enjoy our old-style forum!