- vbulletin
- discourse
- smoke signals
0 voters
Which build of messageboard would you like the SDMB to be on?
Do you really think that staying on vBulletin was a viable option?
Yes. Its more about which annoying things each bring are worse.
I’m obviously a sucker for a tech-expert, but if it was a viable option to remain why did an awful lot of dedicated, cluey people donate buckets of their time and expertise for our viewing pleasure?
I’m a guest here, it may not (yet) be to my taste but as sure as eggs my taste isn’t immutable. I’m not pissing in the soup. I think that would be ungracious.
You understand that this is a simple poll, right? Its not a Discourse is the worst thing since pay to post thread. Its just to get a snap shot of the current mood of the community. 
Sure, provided you undertake to post the equivalent poll in months time.
Might it not be better to wait for everyone to, you know, learn the new home? Sheesh.
I’m willing to learn it. It’s gonna be slow for me.
We can all be Discourse Einsteins but we are losing some features. For example, we cant preview posts with our mouse, we lose posting numbers which makes it harder to find individual posts in long threads, no more pages, maximum number of characters in a post etc.
For me its more about features we are losing at vbulletin and the annoying interface here.
We do not actually lose post numbers: the number of the post at the top of you window appears by the slider. And there is an option for you to bookmark and individual post: click the “…” at the bottom of a given post, then click the bookmark icon and proceed thence.
Well, it’s not like they gave us a choice, but there are instances of vBulletin that work fine, and I bet if TPTB had wanted to go that route, it would have been possible. I may be wrong, but I wasn’t consulted, either way.
But I’ve just popped back here from a vBulletin forum, and while might eventually decide this rocks, at the moment I like the vBulletin feature set a lot more.
Thank you for that. I missed it. My 
powers are dire.
I think one concern was that the board seemed to lack the power to attract new people the way it used to. It was hard to stick with that format and not look dated.
I am withholding a vote until I get more than one day’s experience with the new look.
I don’t know all the inside information here but my impression is that VBulletin was not the problem so much as the hosting platform.
So far my favorite board interface is on MrExcel. It looks good, and is intuitive to navigate. One of the coolest things about it is if you are reading a thread, and someone posts to it, the view refreshes and you see the new post in real time. I don’t know what the platform is.
Discourse seems to be a “mobile first” interface. Which is great if you are on your phone or tablet all the time, and kind of sucky if you mostly use a desktop to read the Dope (like me).
You are likely right. For me, its just less fun to follow threads and harder to keep track of them. I do appreciate the immediate notifications however.
I completely agree with the last paragraph. Maybe TPTB can improve things and it will indeed be a better experience.
The Customers Suck forum is still on VBulletin and functions just fine. Lower volume than SDMB, though.
Prediction: When we do this a month from now Discourse will be at 80+%, and it won’t be because of an exodus.
Actually, you can get directly to any post in a thread, with just a little bit of trouble.
First, you have to know the post number you want to find. For example, if somebody posts a remark like “See post #9 above” and you want to go there.
Now, go to the address bar at the top of your browser. It may have an address something like:
“https: // boards . straightdope . com / t / vbulletin-or-discourse / 912161 / 15”
(I’ve added some spaces here so it will show the actual URL.) Notice the 912161 and the 15 at the end. The 912161 is the thread number. The 15 is the post number you are currently looking at. Just modify the address to have the post number you want to go to (e.g., 9 instead of 15) and it will take you to that post. To be sure, would be nicer if this number was displayed with each post as in vB.
If you are looking at a post and want to see its post number and entire URL, click on the links icon at the bottom of the post, and it will pop up a box showing all that. For example, THIS post is #20.