IMPORTANT! Considering a 'big change' at WB, new system, etc - POLL ADDED

[CFu]

Open to change, but just taking a look at your #3 example (food talk central) it seems very large in terms of screen presence. I like coming on here, hitting “new posts” and having almost the entire 1st page in view at a glance. Looks like a lot of scrolling with the example site.

Discourse allows you to change text size on your end so when you’re on the forum page there’s more topics visible.

At “smallest” it crams the same amount of topics as WB does.

Just by default it’s larger and clearer.

[Brian_S_t_o_t_t_e_r]

I’m a millennial, though that doesn’t really influence my preference. I’d go with 3. I think we have enough forum activity with many members on at any given time that Discord would work well.

Is there an option to do both? Beer Advocate for example still has their phpbb but a separate Discord.

[JBrochu]

I’m very open to big changes, but I personally find Discourse painful to use, at least on the sites I’ve used it on. The visual design is more modern for sure, but I don’t find the UX to be very well-designed for single conversations that can go on for weeks, months, or years, and people want to be able to keep contributing to them as well as reading back through the history and learning from it. It seems much more optimized for the use case of posting a question or idea, having conversation on that thread for a short period of time, and then moving on. I can’t say whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it would be a big change in the way people participate here.

I think the real value in this site is and always will be the community that is here. It’s good to bring in new folks, but only if it doesn’t come at the expense of driving away the existing people. And by “driving away” I don’t necessarily mean people proclaiming that they hate it and leaving. It’s more about subtle things that add friction or discourage types of interactions that keep people coming back. If a new system discourages or disallows the kinds of things you find in the “Hall of Fame” thread, I worry that it might change the nature of this place irreversibly (and not for the better).

I participate in 600 comment threads on discourse. Not really any different than here other than it doesn’t segment by page.

Yeah I participate on forums using Discourse and we don’t start new threads for a topic until 10,000 replies. Works beautifully.

[CFu]

Cool thing about discourse is it shows the amount of unread posts in a thread you’ve participated in since you’ve last participated in it. It’s just a small highlighted number that takes over the “total post” number on the thread. I find that very useful as it keeps you engaged in topics you have participated in

[CFu]

I’m a millennial, though that doesn’t really influence my preference. I’d go with 3. I think we have enough forum activity with many members on at any given time that Discord would work well.

Is there an option to do both? Beer Advocate for example still has their phpbb but a separate Discord.

Not discord. Discourse. Discord is something else entirely

[Brian_S_t_o_t_t_e_r]

I’m a millennial, though that doesn’t really influence my preference. I’d go with 3. I think we have enough forum activity with many members on at any given time that Discord would work well.

Is there an option to do both? Beer Advocate for example still has their phpbb but a separate Discord.

Not discord. Discourse. Discord is something else entirely

Oops, need to get my eyes checked out.

[Tom_G_l_a_s_g_o_w]

To note - I have been pushing for 3. I use discourse on a number of other forums and it’s a great. It looks fantastic on desktop and mobile. It’s speedy. Media integration is fantastic and link previews are amazing.

No one will ever complain on victor’s blind links ever again

What if Victor complains that his blind links are no longer blind?

I remember Victor.

[Jim_Stewart]

Thanks for the heads up and asking for preferences, Todd, but I trust the judgement of you and your team to make the best decision for the forum. I think I have a few learning curves left in me.

[Dav3_Dyr0ff]

When I hear words like “dated” and “modern” I immediately think form over substance. I have no interest in having a new look just for the sake of the look being “new.”

I’m all for change that makes the site better, though. An initial peek at the food forum on discourse above does not look better to me, though I admit that’s very much a first impression. Them touting that they will send me even more emails letting me know every time anything has happened on the site sounds a lot like a bug rather than a feature, but then I have a job and a life so maybe that’s the problem.

Expanded ability to “like”, etc. doesn’t do much for me. I would not get rid of the “thank” button we have now but don’t see a need for some expanded suite of “reactions.” I don’t see that as a big detriment either, but if the only reason to change is to expand that, then we’re fixing what ain’t broke IMO.

The expanded links, OTOH, are a nice feature and it would be good to have that. YouTube links already do that here, for whatever reason, while links to things like Wikipedia or the NYT don’t.

One feature I wouldn’t want to lose, and I can’t tell if options 2 or 3 preserve this, is the ability to see posts chronologically (rather than sorted by some algorithm - until we get to a FB quantity of daily posts, I don’t see a need for that and we know what the FB algorithm has done to the state of discourse) and to see them either organized by Forum (Wine Talk, Beer, Travel, Asylum) or combined on one page via the “active topics” button. I’m a big fan of that.

Expanded mobile compatibility/functionality is good, too, as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of desktop functionality.

Also, get off my lawn.

[Brian_S_t_o_t_t_e_r]

Yeah, I’m for #3.

[Tom_G_l_a_s_g_o_w]

I’m a millennial, though that doesn’t really influence my preference. I’d go with 3. I think we have enough forum activity with many members on at any given time that Discord would work well.

Is there an option to do both? Beer Advocate for example still has their phpbb but a separate Discord.

Not discord. Discourse. Discord is something else entirely

Oops, need to get my eyes checked out.

But I’m all for discord.

[CFu]

When I hear words like “dated” and “modern” I immediately think form over substance. I have no interest in having a new look just for the sake of the look being “new.”

I’m all for change that makes the site better, though. An initial peek at the food forum on discourse above does not look better to me, though I admit that’s very much a first impression. Them touting that they will send me even more emails letting me know every time anything has happened on the site sounds a lot like a bug rather than a feature, but then I have a job and a life so maybe that’s the problem.

Expanded ability to “like”, etc. doesn’t do much for me. I would not get rid of the “thank” button we have now but don’t see a need for some expanded suite of “reactions.” I don’t see that as a big detriment either, but if the only reason to change is to expand that, then we’re fixing what ain’t broke IMO.

The expanded links, OTOH, are a nice feature and it would be good to have that. YouTube links already do that here, for whatever reason, while links to things like Wikipedia or the NYT don’t.

One feature I wouldn’t want to lose, and I can’t tell if options 2 or 3 preserve this, is the ability to see posts chronologically (rather than sorted by some algorithm - until we get to a FB quantity of daily posts, I don’t see a need for that and we know what the FB algorithm has done to the state of discourse) and to see them either organized by Forum (Wine Talk, Beer, Travel, Asylum) or combined on one page via the “active topics” button. I’m a big fan of that.

Expanded mobile compatibility/functionality is good, too, as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of desktop functionality.

Also, get off my lawn.

Posts are still displayed in the same way.

[Brian_S_t_o_t_t_e_r]

When I hear words like “dated” and “modern” I immediately think form over substance. I have no interest in having a new look just for the sake of the look being “new.”

I’m all for change that makes the site better, though. An initial peek at the food forum on discourse above does not look better to me, though I admit that’s very much a first impression. Them touting that they will send me even more emails letting me know every time anything has happened on the site sounds a lot like a bug rather than a feature, but then I have a job and a life so maybe that’s the problem.

Expanded ability to “like”, etc. doesn’t do much for me. I would not get rid of the “thank” button we have now but don’t see a need for some expanded suite of “reactions.” I don’t see that as a big detriment either, but if the only reason to change is to expand that, then we’re fixing what ain’t broke IMO.

The expanded links, OTOH, are a nice feature and it would be good to have that. YouTube links already do that here, for whatever reason, while links to things like Wikipedia or the NYT don’t.

One feature I wouldn’t want to lose, and I can’t tell if options 2 or 3 preserve this, is the ability to see posts chronologically (rather than sorted by some algorithm - until we get to a FB quantity of daily posts, I don’t see a need for that and we know what the FB algorithm has done to the state of discourse) and to see them either organized by Forum (Wine Talk, Beer, Travel, Asylum) or combined on one page via the “active topics” button. I’m a big fan of that.

Expanded mobile compatibility/functionality is good, too, as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of desktop functionality.

Also, get off my lawn.

Why'd You Like It - SNL

[Dav3_Dyr0ff]

As I mentioned above, a forum is DIFFERENT from social media, its setup differently to allow for contributions current, past, future, etc, as you pointed out - social media has a tendency to be focused on ‘now’, quickly going away.

This is huge. I would really try hard because I love this place and the community we have here, but I think I would hate it if this became a FB or IG style “newsfeed” site. Whatever we do (IMO) we should preserve this as a BB/Forum.

[Dav3_Dyr0ff]

When I hear words like “dated” and “modern” I immediately think form over substance. I have no interest in having a new look just for the sake of the look being “new.”

I’m all for change that makes the site better, though. An initial peek at the food forum on discourse above does not look better to me, though I admit that’s very much a first impression. Them touting that they will send me even more emails letting me know every time anything has happened on the site sounds a lot like a bug rather than a feature, but then I have a job and a life so maybe that’s the problem.

Expanded ability to “like”, etc. doesn’t do much for me. I would not get rid of the “thank” button we have now but don’t see a need for some expanded suite of “reactions.” I don’t see that as a big detriment either, but if the only reason to change is to expand that, then we’re fixing what ain’t broke IMO.

The expanded links, OTOH, are a nice feature and it would be good to have that. YouTube links already do that here, for whatever reason, while links to things like Wikipedia or the NYT don’t.

One feature I wouldn’t want to lose, and I can’t tell if options 2 or 3 preserve this, is the ability to see posts chronologically (rather than sorted by some algorithm - until we get to a FB quantity of daily posts, I don’t see a need for that and we know what the FB algorithm has done to the state of discourse) and to see them either organized by Forum (Wine Talk, Beer, Travel, Asylum) or combined on one page via the “active topics” button. I’m a big fan of that.

Expanded mobile compatibility/functionality is good, too, as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of desktop functionality.

Also, get off my lawn.

Why'd You Like It - SNL - YouTube

You’re a good looking kid, B, and a doctor of course so my parents would be so happy, but that’s honestly not why I “like” any of your posts, here or on IG.

[JBrochu]

Cool thing about discourse is it shows the amount of unread posts in a thread you’ve participated in since you’ve last participated in it. It’s just a small highlighted number that takes over the “total post” number on the thread. I find that very useful as it keeps you engaged in topics you have participated in

It’s handles embedded articles and images very well. I love that I can just take a snip of something, and paste it right into my post. No uploading at a hosting site first. If you hot link, the software will actually save the image and scrap the hotlink seamlessly, so old threads don’t end up littered with broken image links.

We made a change to discourse from a different forum software on a site I belong to, and everybody complained all the way to launch. And then within a couple of days everybody absolutely loved it. And most of us are 40 to 50 y/o and up. The learning curve is not steep at all.

[Max_S1]

Max, that’s precisely why I want to make a design change, at minimum, but if I’m doing that…why not something more? I don’t want people to come on here and ASSUME it’s outdated because the UI is, as the data is absolutely current and on fire daily.

Honestly I’m impartial. The old forum format is comfortable to me and I imagine it will be to many older users who aren’t as interested in the new hot thing. I do also agree with what someone else said about the 3rd option not being as geared to long winded discussions over many pages. There’s a reason social media uses that format - its for giving you a quick fix before you move onto the next thing. The problem is, WB has a lot of content, but not THAT MUCH content.

If I had to choose between the 2, I’d go with option 2 because it’s a similar functionality with a cleaned up look. Option 3 would be cool too, but if I was in your position I’d be concerned about losing some longtime members who just aren’t interested in figuring out a new interface.

For the record, I’m onboard with either of option 2 or 3.

[ToddFrench]

Cool thing about discourse is it shows the amount of unread posts in a thread you’ve participated in since you’ve last participated in it. It’s just a small highlighted number that takes over the “total post” number on the thread. I find that very useful as it keeps you engaged in topics you have participated in

It’s handles embedded articles and images very well. I love that I can just take a snip of something, and paste it right into my post. No uploading at a hosting site first. If you hot link, the software will actually save the image and scrap the hotlink seamlessly, so old threads don’t end up littered with broken image links.

FYI option 2 has that function as well, I’m sure whatever I do that feature will be part of it

[JBrochu]

Honestly I’m impartial. The old forum format is comfortable to me and I imagine it will be to many older users who aren’t as interested in the new hot thing. I do also agree with what someone else said about the 3rd option not being as geared to long winded discussions over many pages. There’s a reason social media uses that format - its for giving you a quick fix before you move onto the next thing. The problem is, WB has a lot of content, but not THAT MUCH content.

Discourse seamlessly handles long winded discussions over thousands of posts and many months/years. Way better than old forum software imo. And I’m an old fart that didn’t want to change to it on another site, and it took me like 2 or 3 days to get used to, and now I would never go back.

[Raciel_Porto]

I would go for #3 as well.

I’m a software developer and I’ve seen many companies that hire us to replace/customize their systems, and their employees/users are initially reluctant to change from what they are used to. Eventually they come around when they start seeing the many added benefits and the learning curve being acceptable most of the time.
Like others have said, if we are going to make changes anyway, at least make them meaningful and more future proof. Otherwise, we’ll be having this same conversation a few years from now.