He’s not trying to fix this message board. He’s gathering ideas for building a completely new piece of forum software. Don’t worry. You’ll still be free to avoid any and all change on this board.
I’m not sure why that matters. His point is accurate: he’s clearly come in here with ideas he already has, and is disregarding anything that doesn’t fit his preexisting narrative. It’s kinda frustrating that he comes in here and asks us for help but then only implements the things he’s already thought of anyways. Have you not noticed that he only responds to things to say that either that’s what he’s already doing, or to try to argue people out of their position?
He doesn’t know this or any other messageboard he is soliciting for advice. Because of that, it would behoove him to pay attention to what the people who have participated are saying. Czarcasm in my opinion brought up the elephant in the room.
So my part is still getting ignored. Okay. I will permanently login at home and see if it helps.
But I can login to another vB and every single post since I was logged out, was not marked as read as it is here since I didn’t actually click into the thread. Randi.org, okay? They’re all still bold, since I haven’t actually read them. It’s only if you have actually clicked it and gone inside. In fact I have to check the date to see how far back it was that I didn’t read the “unread post”.
Here, I’ve gotten myself logged out while reading an article posted here but offsite. Another site I got to with vbulletin is worse, they just say there are no new posts if I do the same thing. And then they ignore me completely, letting their members snark on me before removing the thread from sight, if I complain. There is no mod or admin jurisdiction there. Well there are, but their rules are to remove or delete. Not actually to comment.
This isn’t my software but I own it on my own site and I know how you can fix it. And I don’t appreciate it being ignored for like the 4th time now for this issue, when I know exactly how it can be fixed.
I really don’t understand the irrational responses in this thread. (meaning the ones that are irrational, not meaning that all are)
If you read the OP, he is just looking for suggestions based on our experiences that may help him create better forum software.
Responses like this one I quoted sound defensive. About what I can’t figure out.
Just a guess, but it might be getting ignored because it’s not on-topic.
It wasn’t really ignored either. At least two said it probably wasn’t a board problem, but on the client side.
To which I responded that I visit 5 vbulletin boards daily. Only on the board I run am I able to stay logged in until I close my browser. Because I set it that way as an admin. It is a feature of the software that lets admins decide how long we are logged in, if we don’t use the “permanent” thing.
On one of them (Randi.org) I can still go back days later and the posts I haven’t read, are still marked unread. Here, and all of the other boards (except mine), everything is marked read and removed when you come back, even if you were reading something linked from this very board. And even if you haven’t read everything you wanted to read that was formerly marked unread, until you’re logged out of course.
It’s frustrating, especially since I know how vbulletin works and how to fix it.
It’s on topic because I’ve questioned it many times and no mod would respond (except to say doesn’t happen to me), and once, when I came back the next day my post was gone.
As you yourself noted, it is badly off-topic and a derailment of this thread. I suggest moving it to your own thread.
Well, I am listening, but not all feedback is actionable. If we followed all the feedback, we’d end up with a 27-button mouse. Mostly I’m identifying common patterns in the feedback across multiple 10 year old forum communities.
Speaking of which, one thing I have noticed is that if you don’t explicitly respond to every line of every single post then invariably someone is offended that “you didn’t listen to me”. You’ll just have to trust that indeed, I read all the feedback and processed it all, and just because I didn’t explicitly respond doesn’t mean I do not agree with what you said, or that I’m not listening. It all gets read. It all gets processed. In fact, I typically read these threads multiple times, actually, and come back to them over time for reference.
But let me be frank with you. In general you can only hope to attract the Young Turks who are dissatisfied with the status quo to the new improved things. Anyway, it’s not my intent to actually migrate this, or any other established vBulletin/phpBB community because that’s not at all realistic – both for technical and sociological reasons.
I solicited plenty of advice when building Stack Overflow, too. That’s now a top 300 US website. Does that mean it works for every single human being on the planet? Of course not.
I think a general reputation system is open for abuse, but we do have at least a few legitimate experts on various topics here, and it would be nice to have some way that the community could recognize them.
I took a looksee at stackoverflow.com. I’m not seeing much there that would look inviting to the type of people that frequent this message board. Could you maybe do a mock-up of what might work here?
Stack Overflow’s layout would make a lot of sense for General Questions, but really none of our other forums.
I don’t think he’s saying stackoverflow is the way to go here. In fact, it seems like that was his point up front. He’s just mentioning it because it is a project where he has had previous success revolutioning some functionality.
So can he point us to a project he has done that is closer to what we may want?
No one else is having this issue, though. That’s probably why people are a bit 
at your posts.
I don’t think you are understanding, this is what is going on:
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CodingHorror wants to create ForumSoftware version 2
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He asked a bunch of different communities for thoughts and opinions, including the SDMB thinking he might get some good ideas
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Then he’s going to use that info however he pleases and create what he thinks is good forum software (as open source or for sale, I don’t know which)
That’s all.
That’s it.
He is NOT trying to create forum software specifically for the SDMB.
He is NOT claiming he knows what works for our community.
RE: "just because I didn’t explicitly respond doesn’t mean I do not agree with what you said, or that I’m not listening. It all gets read. It all gets processed."
This has always been a nagging aspect of MBs for me. Is there an easy system for a user, especially the OP, to mark it as “read” which could serve a few things. A bookmark as to where you left off. And if it included a list of members that affirmed reading your post, you could rate it on something akin to a 1-10 scale of agree/disagree. This data might drive up a reputation in the member’s profile, based simply on veracity and content of their posts, over time accrued and averaged; mitigating abuse.
You want him to show you a project he hasn’t done yet?
This is still the information gathering phase. He may be coding, but not to the extent there’s anything functional to demo. Nothing that will look like the final product, because he still doesn’t know what the final product will be.
He’s given some clear examples of things he thinks current MB software does poorly. He’s stated a few things that he thinks would improve things. He’s asked for feedback on tools and features that we want and why (and we’ve also given don’t wants).
The big question is why this thread is in ATMB rather than IMHO or something.
Agreed that SDMB-related queries in terms of operations, administrations and member business go in ATMB.
If this thread is about better board software not related to SDMB then the thread really does belong in either GQ or IMHO. Given the opinion/taste nature of the queries and answers, probably IMHO.
The thread started in IMHO, and got moved to ATMB (I believe because that mod interpreted the OP as applying to this forum instead of as a general forum software discussion).