I clicked on the link but the majority of the content appears to be some sort of picture show which can’t be viewed in Lynx, my browser of choice. Can you provide a textual description for those of us who don’t need all those fancy bells and whistles?
Audio/visual presentation (i.e. visual of Jeff talking)
Slideshow
It’s a 30 minute presentation, followed by 25 mins of q&a.
The bulk of the presentation is running down the 5 major problems he sees with forum software as it currently exists, and the ways current forum software doesn’t work to provide a good experience to the users. It doesn’t so much provide answers as highlight the problems.
The Straight Dope is mentioned heavily as an example of “bad” forum software - not that the board content is bad, but the user experience is hampered by the structure of the software itself.
He starts out by showing (like in this thread) how the SD board forum look has not changed since 2000. Same structure, layout, appearance. Yes, though what is not mentioned is that this is largely by choice. We don’t want a super-rad high-tech fancy flashing site.
He shows that finding threads that you’ve posted in is not simple, and demonstrates that to find the thread he started, he essentially had to run a search on his own username. It overlooks the “subscribe” feature that puts all subscribed threads in the CP listing, but that is something the newbie would not know.
He talks about quoting and posting, and how you select the post to respond, and then it opens a new edit window. First, the window takes you out of the flow of the conversation, and second, the edit window itself is not the easiest to use. The format isn’t wysiwyg - even the so-called wysisyg version doesn’t do coding. To get a preview, you have to hit another button.
His comment is that he loves the communities and conversations, hates the software that impedes the conversations.
Now we get to the five major issues.
- Change the Homepage. What’s the first thing a viewer sees? A category list. He likens it to the Dewey Decimal System, of going to a library and the first thing you do is go to the Card Catelog, rather than going and looking at books on shelves. His point is that forum software should be less about categorizations and more about conversations.
My comment is that one one goes to the library or a bookstore, one doesn’t go to the card catelog (unless there’s a specific item you’re looking for), but one does look at the signs that show which types of books are where. Children’s books over here, biographies over there, new adult fiction upstairs, mysteries in one section and science fiction in another and westerns in another. The homepage of a website is more like those categories than the card catalog.
- Build Tools for Civility into the Forum. He mentions flamewars and the notion of the death of civility, and the common experience of the unpleasant exchanges that happen because of the nature of board communication, of the way people interact. Most sites have some description of behavior and want people to treat each other well. “The priority for participating on this forum is not the quality of the content… The priority is on how you treat each other.”
When engaged in a discussion of ultimately opinions, what dominates the experience is not the truth of the response, but how people treat each other. Essentially, civility is crucial to making an experience where people enjoy participating. But most forum software does not do anything to emphasize that.
“On a new install of the forum software, what is said about civility? What is said about making text bold?”
He shows an example of reporting a comment. First, the “report this post” button is some obscure icon off to the side that doesn’t really identify what it is for, and then the report window is a text box with little guidance on what kinds of things to report and why.
I would dispute this. Even the example he shows in his slide says
“This forum is for reporting anything you believe would benefit from immediate attention of the SDMB staff, such as spam, advertising messages, and potential violations of forum and/or board rules.”
But in general, his point has validity. How does a new member know what to report, and how to report it? Is it easy to see and identify the report button? Is it clear what to report?
- Optimize for Reading. Forums are conversations, posting is talking. Forum sites track number of posts, but is anyone listening? A more relevant metric is useful posts, posts people read. Reading a lot of the content is crucial. Drive-bys and skimmers end up rehashing what others have already said or being off-topic, or just not being helpful because they don’t know what is actually being discussed.
My example: think of being involved in a conversation, someone new walks up, overhears the topic is Chicago, and mentions that it’s called “The Windy City”, then wanders off, when your conversation was discussing the World’s Columbian Festival of 1893 and the events of Henry Holmes.
So one major thing that impedes reading is the “page” list. You have to flip through pages. The forum doesn’t remember where you were, what is new since you last read. He also suggests the software tracking what you like (spend time reading) and offering suggestions on other topics for you to read.
- Empower regular users to moderate. His premise is that moderators are going to be absentee. Will they be active all the time? Will they be reading every post as it’s made?
So he suggests the forum software learn to trust users and give them authority to take actions. He suggests there be a way that the forum can push out trolls without moderators being present. He likens it to an immune system to push out trolls, and spammers, and cruelty.
- Provide tools to stay on topic. What happens if you see a thread topic on funny pictures of dogs, open the link, and get a funny picture of a cat? Well, it’s funny, and it’s a picture, but it isn’t what the thread promised.
“The cardinal sin of the Internet is to click on a link expecting one thing, but get something else entirely.”
You have to tell the difference between a meandering conversation and a hijack, a diversion. What tools does the software provide to create related conversations. If you realize you are posting off the main topic, can you easily make a side conversation that is linked back but doesn’t interrupt the main flow?
How many trick link titles is your forum creating? Titles like “help” or “something interesting here” that don’t actually provide a useful guide to what to expect? Titles that say one topic but something else is discussed? How can it be fixed?
He suggests making regular users (again with the earning authority) the ability to change titles, so the older users can change titles and teach the newbies how to be more informative. His perspective is that thread titles are more like metadata, and are not “precious”.
My quibble is that many posters won’t agree with that.
His presentation is primarily to highlight the major concerns he has with forum software. It does not really pimp Discourse (though he does mention it), and does not really offer full solutions.
Thank you for the summation, Irishman.
Me too, but could you email it to me? I am running a HTML-blocker and can’t see replies to this thread.
If you get it in email format shoot me a copy as well… but I’d like it translated into Latin please. It’s my language of choice. Thanks.
Do you know what other page doesn’t go to the thing you’d expect it to?
Hey, fantastic summary. Thanks for taking the time to write all that, and thanks for listening along! It was an entirely fair summation.
My only caveat, about the card catalog homepage – when you walk into a bookstore what you see is a lot of books, and relatively small category markers adorning the large section of books. I do not think the traditional forum homepage is at all analogous to that. It’d be like walking into a bookstore and seeing 10 foot high billboards screaming HISTORY (2032 BOOKS, LAST BY SMITH), TRAVEL (492 BOOKS, LAST BY DAVIS), etc with nary an actual book in sight.
Haven’t seen the presentation yet but going by Irishman’s description what is being held up as the optimal experience for message board users is … Facebook.
I haven’t really listened to your ideas, but I have a snarky comment about them! The true sign of an open mind.
Codinghorror said that Irishman’s summary, the same one TubaDiva was referring to, was fantastic.
She thinks it would be a facebook knockoff so either she didn’t read the summary or she didn’t understand it. If there’s one thing facebook really sucks at, it’s approximating a conversation.
If the content of our board is so irrelevant, just the software, then why the fuck do you keep using our messageboard as an example? We are far from the only website that uses vBulletin.
And why the fuck do you keep coming here and posting about how you reference us when all you ever say about our board is how fucking horrible it is?
And why the fuck aren’t the moderators on this board moderating him for this? He’s fucking flaming us elsewhere and then linking here. He started this whole thing by fucking spamming us, without getting permission ahead of time. Why is he still allowed to post on this messageboard?
And, yes, I probably used fuck one too many times in that post. But the point stands, and complaints about moderation go in this forum. I pointed out what the guy was doing and why I think he should be moderated.
I still don’t get why this thread was allowed in the first place, let alone why we keep letting the guy come in and tell us how horrible we are.
Because we’re big boys and girls here, and can take criticism. And because it’s a useful discussion (even though most of his complaints I personally don’t agree with). The part about empowering users to help handle spammers would be useful, for example.
It’s certainly a better analogy than a card catalog is, though. The homepage isn’t alphabetically listing Authors (A-As, At-Ba, … ) Titles, or Subjects. ETA: I never actually go there myself. I link directly to individual forums, for example General Questions. Hey look! Books!
Assume the worst about something you read. A true sign of an open mind. 
You misunderstand. Not being snarky at all.
Social media has changed a lot since the start of the SDMB – the term “social media” wasn’t even in use when we started. Much has changed in the time since then.
I grant you, mostly the message board software has not changed. And I appreciate that there’s some thought and discussion towards making the experience a better one. That’s not a bad thing. There’s also good reason why the software has not changed overmuch – because mostly it works.
Whatever next thing happens needs not only to work but work better.
These conversations will continue.
To be honest with you, I 'm kind of surprised we’re still here all these years later. The SDMB has been here since 1999, which in internet years is eternity. Kind of cool when you think about it.
What is this “email?” Some new computer thing?
Many of us would prefer to receive a thread summary via singing telegram at our doorsteps. I am waiting patiently for my telegram. Thank you.
Should we change our slogan BigT?
SDMB
Fighting Ignorance Since 1973
(It’s tough when there are so many fucking idiots that don’t agree with us)
Yes…yes, it IS terrible when someone says how horrible Dopers are.
By the way, are you still stalking him off-board, sending him e-mails demanding he respond to you and so forth?
As an aside to anyone else who’s not freaked out by the idea of discussing different forum paradigms, I think the discussion’s fascinating. I like that Coding Horror is looking at other ideas for how message-boards could function. I think that the front page of his site is fugly beyond words (although, it’d be 50% less fugly if you got rid of the “participants” column. Man, that’s useless AND horrible looking). But some of the ideas are good…or at least worth talking about. Using Irishman’s great summary, #s 3 and 5 are great ideas for discussion.
I’m sure I’m in the minority here, but he has a LOT of good points. The SDMB interface does suck. Terribly so.
We’re not the only ones that use vBulletin, but we are quite a few versions behind. The thread subscription functionality is deeply hidden and hit-or-miss in accuracy. There’s no username tagging and no notifications. Multiquote is a bitch to use, and you have to lose your reading place to reply to anything. Search still sucks. There’s no way to find the best replies in long threads because we refuse to believe that upvotes can make sense. 30% of my reply time is spent correcting misplaced vbcode brackets when it really shouldn’t be. Etc.
I’ve been here since 2001. I love this place. And I’ll keep using it despite the craptacular interface, certainly not because of it. I understand we’re proud of being the most change-averse community outside of #lynx on DALnet, but hell, we’ve seen numerous old-timers come and go and one day the rest of us will pass on too and the next generation of SDMBers certainly isn’t going to put up with this shit forever. If there’s any chance of having a better future for them, this is a discussion that eventually had to happen, and because this is the SDMB, starting it in 2013 will mean we might actually consider some of his points in 2020 and maybe implement one or two in 2035. Vive le (slow) revolution!
Is this conversation also taking place on, say, Home - vBulletin Community Forum
I would think if there was any place where input would be solicited and welcome, that would be the place.
We don’t write the software, we don’t develop it. We use it. Is there better software out there for our purposes? Maybe, we don’t know.
There’s a lot of considerations that come into play when companies purchase software. You seem to have touched on a few of them but by no means not all. It’s more than just how it looks or how users perceive it (though those are important also); cost of purchase, cost of applying, cost of maintaining, client support, return on investment, functionality to the techs, to the administrators and moderators … the list goes on and on.
A whole bunch of things to consider.