# Can we build better forum software? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [March 14, 2012, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723 "2012-03-14T06:22:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/62 "2012-03-20T04:32:57Z")
Browsing the Pit just now, I had another idea to get round something that I find particularly irritating: give the mods the power to hive off anything that’s just devolved into back-and-forth insults between two (or more) posters. You would have a placeholder post that says something like: “The following X posts have been deemed by a moderator to be a **pissing match** ” with a link to that branch. The pissing match would then be housed in a specific forum for such exchanges, and the thread would begin with a link back to the original debate. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2012, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/63 "2012-04-08T15:10:09Z")
I hate that I missed this back when the guy was here, but i’m still going to address his ideas anyways. While the other suggestions are great features, I think your way of thinking has problems. The biggest problem is that you are still trapped in the Q&A forum mindset. This idea that a community needs badges and points and rankings is completely the wrong approach. This is trying to create an element of competition, and competition divides. It creates a group of have’s and have-not’s. Our site is not entirely a community site, though. It is also a Q&A site. But the way we do Q&A is not like stack overflow, and that is not how we need to go. We don’t want to have to externally motivate people to perform our mission of fighting ignorance. We want to find the people who are already impassioned about this sort of thing, whether it’s teaching or learning. The only thing we would want that portion of the software to do is to make it easy to ask and answer questions. As for your other ideas: Why do we need a group of minimoderators to fight SPAM? Why not just let people mark SPAM? Same thing with trolls. If you must give weights to people, then do it behind the scenes, and let the mods have control over it. And your idea about junk: this is a big thing where you are in the wrong mindset. Posts on a message board are a conversation. They aren’t just answers that you can reorder at will. Conversations need context. The most you can do is some type of subthreading–paying attention to who is talking to whom and keeping things connected. But, honestly, if your conversations are having 2000 posts and people aren’t interested in each one, then that’s the problem you need to address. Finally, I want to address something that doesnt’ really affect our board, but does others. You seem to think avatars and stuff are all cruft. But personalization is a large part of many communities. There’s a reason why all that stuff developed. People wanted it. Again, get out of the Q&A way of thinking: people in communities aren’t necessarily interested in maximizing the amount of content they can see on screen. Those of us that are already don’t use that stuff. The thing is, the reason we are in a design rut is that the current system does so many things right. The lessons we’ve learned is that we want pretty much everything we already are using. We probably want more, but we don’t want less. Finally, one piece of advice for the future: it’s quite clear that this is a form letter that you give to multiple places. There’s nothing really taylored to our message board in your opening. A lot of boards see that as SPAM. Luckily, enough people knew you for that not to be a problem here, but you might not be so lucky elsewhere. You might be better off contacting someone in charge and asking permission. Remember, a forum is a community, and you are on the outside of that community. Tread softly. (I will commend you on using the term rumspringa, which shows you at least picked up on the intellectual bent of this message board.) BTW, I personally would not like notifications anytime someone responds to my post. I hate that on Facebook. It should work like a subscription–you can decide which posts actually need replies before you post it. If not, the sheer number of replies would get unwieldy, fast. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/64 "2012-04-09T01:38:42Z")
If it were costless to modify software, I’ve wondered about the following: 1. Permit the creation of a fork to a discussion for tangents. In other words, permit the creation of a sub-topic, proposed by a poster and subject to approval by the OP. Basically, you could click a link on a parent discussion in order to view a list of sub-discussions. That could turn out badly: I don’t know. 2. If somebody quotes you, you are permitted to attach an icon to various lines of their post. The icon would have 2 flavors: “Agree” and “Nod”, the latter being either a weaker form of agreement or merely indicating that you understand. Sometimes another full post is simply not worth the electrons. I wouldn’t include an icon for disagreement: if such conflict is substantive, it requires elaboration. If it is substantive but unimportant, then no icon is necessary. ---
**Author:** ![srzss05](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/898d66/32.png) [@srzss05](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/srzss05)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/65 "2012-04-09T12:27:05Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > 1. If somebody quotes you, you are permitted to attach an icon to various lines of their post. The icon would have 2 flavors: “Agree” and “Nod”, the latter being either a weaker form of agreement or merely indicating that you understand. Sometimes another full post is simply not worth the electrons. I may be misunderstanding you, but if the reply were just some icons validating a post, then people shouldn’t post at all. If you don’t have anything to add, don’t post. Just my opinion, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2012, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/66 "2012-04-10T05:29:36Z")
I thought of a feature that would be cool, cross-posting threads. In the recent discussion about threads that can go in either the game room or the cafe society, I think it would be cool if I could, somehow, Cross-post in designated “sister forums”, so I could start a thread that says “What works of art have heroines with green eyes” and start it in the Game Room and Cafe Society. This wouldn’t start two different threads, rather, both forums would be a pointer to the same thread, and posting in that thread would bump it in both forums at once in the same way. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2012, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/67 "2012-04-10T05:50:51Z")
> [@srzss05](#): > > I may be misunderstanding you, but if the reply were just some icons validating a post, then people shouldn’t post at all. If you don’t have anything to add, don’t post. Just my opinion, of course. I sort of agree except… This feature would _only_ be available to those who have been quoted. Others can do no validating. Usually when you quote someone, it implies some level of disagreement. If the parent poster wants to grant a subset of responses, but doesn’t think that his response merits an entire post, this feature would might useful. ETA: Of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating… ---
**Author:** ![Sister\_Vigilante](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@Sister\_Vigilante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sister_Vigilante)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2012, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/68 "2012-04-10T15:04:06Z")
I’d just like the board to stop logging me out while I’m in the middle of reading a 2 page thread. Like this one. vBulletin has a feature where it keeps everything bold that you haven’t read, even from day to day. Or you could just stop logging people out so quickly. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2012, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/69 "2012-04-10T15:09:53Z")
Odd, I don’t think I’ve ever been logged out of the board automatically even when leaving a browser window open and unattended. Is there a timeout? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2012, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/70 "2012-04-10T15:11:31Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > Odd, I don’t think I’ve ever been logged out of the board automatically even when leaving a browser window open and unattended. Is there a timeout? Same here. I don’t think it’s happening on the board end. ---
**Author:** ![Sister\_Vigilante](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@Sister\_Vigilante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sister_Vigilante)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2012, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/71 "2012-04-10T15:22:51Z")
Happens to me on two different computers, on every vbulletin I visit (4), except my own (#5), which leaves me logged in until I close the window. ---
**Author:** ![Sister\_Vigilante](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@Sister\_Vigilante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sister_Vigilante)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/72 "2012-04-11T15:14:02Z")
Sorry guys, every time I bring this up I kill the thread without it ever being addressed. ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/73 "2012-04-11T23:26:34Z")
> [@](#): > > You guys should check out what Casey has done over at Ravelry, a knitting/crocheting/spinning site. While there are some things that I wish I could tweak a bit more, it’s a really nifty forum design Indeed, first time I’ve heard of their forums so thanks for pointing it out! My wife has had an account there for quite some time so I can log in as her to check it out. Thanks for that! > [@](#): > > Drama would ensue. Drama always ensues. Posters would want to know average karma scores > [@](#): > > If you must give weights to people, then do it behind the scenes, and let the mods have control over it. > [@](#): > > This is trying to create an element of competition, and competition divides. It creates a group of have’s and have-not’s There’s an element of public reputation, and shadow reputation that we don’t show you on Stack Exchange. Generally the public reputation is for things that are positive (upvotes, badges, etc) and the shadow reputation is for things that are negative (spam, deleted posts, closed posts, etc). The philosophy here is “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative”. I’d also note that on some boards, **displaying post count and join date, as done here, are considered controversial**. So I think it’s relative. I don’t think we would show those by default in the name of minimalism, but such info should be available on mouse hover or profile click of course. There is a lot of value in showing (but NEVER SORTING OR JUDGING) “citizenship numbers” on profiles, IMO which indicate how much this person has _contributed_ to the community, by a variety of measures. What you read into those numbers is up to you, and the rest of the community. > [@](#): > > This wouldn’t start two different threads, rather, both forums would be a pointer to the same thread, and posting in that thread would bump it in both forums at once in the same way. This would end very badly in my opinion. What’s the incentive not to spam your thread in every possible related forum for the “best” response? There isn’t any. > [@](#): > > Even something simple like sub-threading – where you can see who replied to who, and potentially hide some hijack or other by burying a sub-thread – only works if people actually click the right buttons and refrain from making two points in one post. Flat all the way, for sure. Threading is evil, and no 10 year old board communities that I know of use threading, which is pretty damning. However see next point. > [@](#): > > Basically, you could click a link on a parent discussion in order to view a list of sub-discussions. That could turn out badly: I don’t know. I think we could be clever when linking quoted replies backward and forward; under a post you could click “show replies” and it’d dynamically pull all the posts that quote-replied to that post under it. This would be strictly an on demand, on-click affair, but this sort of inline “just in time” quote-threading would give you most of the benefits of pure threading without the many, many headaches. > [@](#): > > If we’re redesigning the whole idea of a message board from scratch we may as well be honest about the need for a way to make money. Definitely; since this will be open source software intended for any use, we want to plan for that as well. The goal is to get it used as many places as possible, so while we’re going to be evangelical about sane defaults that bake in the lessons of these 10 year old forum communities, we won’t stop you if you want to turn all the knobs (and there will be lots and lots of knobs) to 11, or even negative one. We might advise against it, and provide specific reasoning why, but we won’t stop you. ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2012, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/74 "2012-04-12T00:13:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Personally, I think comment engines are a lot more ripe for disruption than forum software. Look at the average comment on YouTube, CNN, TechCrunch, etc. Google Wave, Disqus, and Facebook (among others) have all tried addressing this problem, but in my opinion, have failed miserably. Not sure that’s so; Disqus is doing a pretty good job in bringing crowd moderation and highlighting to comments in my opinion. But it’s a centrally hosted service, so I have a deep problem with that from a ‘free software’ perspective. I want a million forum flowers to bloom – and not become 999,900 abandoned spam weed gardens, too. > [@](#): > > Reading the other comments, It seems like there are “stages” in the life of a forum. On a new forum, even toddler sized barriers can cause it to fail (ie, having to create an account at all). As the forum grows, moderation becomes more important, and as the forum gets supersized dealing with spam, and completely off topic issues that might derail the board entirely. > Can that be dealt with by software ? Could the product automatically start out in something like 4chan mode, where there are no barriers to entry, and automatically push into making new posting harder ? > Edit to add: I’ve also found that splitting forums can sometimes cause them both to die; and initially any subforums at all can cause issues. Is there a way to create virtual subforums using tagging or something similar rather than hard dividing lines, allowing things to split naturally ? Absolutely. The mindless propagation of subforums (er, what bucket does this thread go in? There are only 20/200/2000 posts on the whole forum..) is harmful and something we want to address. In the beginning, your forum will be a single flat simple list, and it should grow subforums only when and as they are necessary. > [@](#): > > It seems to me like some folks are misinterpreting the intent of the OP. I don’t think he’s trying to suggest changes to the SDMB, I think he’s basically decided that most forum software kind of sucks (which is true), and that a dedicated team with a good plan and the resources and a handle on how web applications are actually built in 2012 could build something better (also true, and these are qualifications the OP has), and trying to get ideas from users of various forums. > > Personally, I think it’s a good problem to try to solve, although I’m not real sure how you make money at it if that’s your goal. Maybe you just like the idea of improving the user experience on forums in general because you hope all the forums you read will upgrade to your software or the software they run will have had the bar raised and will need to come out of the 90’s too. Seems alright to me. The goal is not to make money (though I totally support the idea that forums should be able to make money) but to raise the tide for everyone with better software. Forums are actually at risk of _dying out_ because the software has advanced hardly at all. And that’s sad for me, as a guy who loves paragraphs on a page. > [@](#): > > I don’t think vBulletin has a high bar to beat here If we can’t build something that offers an intrinsically better experience than the hideous phpBB and vBulletin status quo, which has been incestuously ctrl+c,ctrl+v’ed non-stop since 1999, then **we’d seriously have to be the most incompetent programmers ever born**. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2012, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/75 "2012-04-12T03:22:02Z")
Maybe this is a bit presumptive of me, **codinghorror** , but the sum total of your participation on this message board is four posts in the same thread, all of which posted for the purpose of “fixing” it. Might I suggest you find out if we even agree on what our problems are before you sweep in and tell us how to fix them? It might be that what you are offering is something we need, but you really can’t know that looking in from the outside. Just my humble opinion. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2012, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/76 "2012-04-12T03:39:17Z")
What I tried to get across earlier is how most forum communities don’t want crowd based moderation. Forums that exist today are not run as democracies. I think you might be able to justify the ability to mark something as spam, and then hide it if enough people agree, ala YouTuge, but not full out moderation. And, BTW, the reason we can show our post count here is because it’s 100% against the rules to post just to increase your post count. I find it hard to believe that we would want a karma system but at the same time make it against the rules to try and increase karma. Some communities like karma, some don’t. So make it an option to shut it off. One thing I meant to mention before is that your software needs to be ultra flexible to meet the needs of the various communities. I don’t think there is a platonic ideal of the perfect forum software, just software that best fits the various communities. You need a lot of options, while at the same time avoiding that option bloat that will intimidate everyone. The solution I am fond of is the ability include addons. I think that’s one reason the clunky vBulletin remained so popular: the ability to hack it to do what you want. And I think forums aren’t dying entirely because of software, but also because they are no longer the only place for socialization. They are dying for the same reason chatrooms died out when instant messenger became available. Places like Facebook allow people to create their own social community, rather than having to try to fit into one that already exists. Something more than good software is going to be necessary to bring people back. Honestly, I think a good thing would be to try and integrate with Facebook. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2012, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/77 "2012-04-12T03:45:38Z")
Finally, let me just say for the last time how much I HATE the points-based gamification, and it’s the reason I don’t participate in Stack Overflow stuff very often. I’ve already had an experience there where someone tried to convince me that I was wrong to pick who I did as the best answer. I refuse to actually log in and participate there. I say the above so maybe you’ll get out of this mindset that you’ve found the perfect solution. I mean, I even hate the idea that the owner and not the community shapes how Stack Overflow is run–I consider that rather fascistic. As I’ve been telling other gamification people: it is not mind control, and if you are trying to use it as such, you will fail eventually. ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2012, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/78 "2012-04-12T08:02:02Z")
> [@](#): > > It might be that what you are offering is something we need, but you really can’t know that looking in from the outside. I humbly submit that the authors of vBulletin also have zero specific insight into this community, and have probably produced exactly _zero_ posts here, yet they produce software that you use daily. Mostly I’m here to listen to what you have to say, as 10 year old community. The task of human discussion is fairly universal, although I think there are about a half-dozen thread archetypes that we plan to support (even after the fact, since not everyone knows what a thread “is” until it gets a bunch of posts) with specific, tailored, semi-custom interfaces. Think polls, Q&A, “chat” threads, debates, and so forth. ---
**Author:** ![Eutychus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Eutychus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eutychus)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2012, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/79 "2012-04-12T09:44:44Z")
> [@codinghorror](#): > > If we can’t build something that offers an intrinsically better experience than the hideous phpBB and vBulletin status quo, which has been incestuously ctrl+c,ctrl+v’ed non-stop since 1999, then **we’d seriously have to be the most incompetent programmers ever born**. Why don’t you just do it, then? ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2012, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/80 "2012-04-12T10:13:00Z")
The problem I see with the proposed software is it’s **too** feature rich. Features are good, I like features, but only when I’m trying to get stuff done, and only when I can ignore them when I don’t like them (for the most part, obviously some features have to be “front page features”). When you have too many in-your-face features on the front-end it becomes overwhelming to the end user. Yes, I’m sure we can point to examples of semi-popular feature-rich products, like GIMP and Photoshop. However, most people really don’t use them that much, and those that do tend to really like photo editing and need something a bit more advanced. I don’t think the majority of end users are going to feel that posting on a forum is important enough that they should take time to learn how to use a feature-rich user interface. Now I’m sure it’s possible to get it to work well, but it will require being very, very careful to make features step out of the way enough that the average user can pick to learn features based on their **own** needs, rather than have endless customization of their threads and posts thrown in their face and have to spend time just trying to figure out how to make a simple thread without worrying about whether they need to know what the “anti-alias quantum singular agglutenative neuropeptide determinants” checkbox does. Or even have to worry about why threads in GQ, GD, and MPSIMS look so different. ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2012, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723/81 "2012-04-12T16:55:04Z")
> [@Eutychus](#): > > Why don’t you just do it, then? We’ve already begun! I’m here to listen to your feedback, not necessarily demand that you guys change the way you’re doing everything right now.\* - but clearly you should! 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-build-better-forum-software/615723.md?page=5)