I just stumbled upon http://sublimetext.userecho.com/ which hosts a forum (integrating ideas, discussions, questions, news, feature requests etc) for a text/code editor (sublimetext, which seems nice btw, and supports D :-) ). It is powered by userecho.

(disclaimer: I am NOT affiliated in any way with either userecho or sublimetext).

I was wondering whether there would be any interest in migrating towards something more feature rich than the current dlang forum, possibly userecho, or at least enhancing a bit the features of the current forum.

Here are some things that it provides, compared to the dlang forum:

integrated bug report, feature request etc (dlang has 2 separate websites for bugs (http://d.puremagic.com/issues) and other posts (http://forum.dlang.org/)

1 click upvote/downvote for ideas/questions/feature requests (dlang only has it for http://d.puremagic.com/issues/enter_bug.cgi and it's not as easy therefore sparsely used, and one has only 10 votes)
We actually want to encourage easy voting to pop up interesting questions/bugs/requests, and vote down spammers or dumb questions. Currently it's easy to get lost for popular posts.

1 click to report as spam or duplicate (especially the latter would be very useful for bug requests)

ability to post videos which could be useful for tutorials etc (eg : http://sublimetext.userecho.com/topic/59029-code-folding-doesnt-work-if-code-isnt-indented/)

ability to sort posts by top rated/newest/most commented etc.

good searching, and statistics functions
etc.


Another nice feature would be to allow forum users to enter editable/runnable code sections as in the http://dlang.org/ front page. That would be very useful to report bugs or answer usage questions. That would encourage users to post working code.

On Saturday, July 28, 2012 07:31:49 timotheecour wrote:
> I was wondering whether there would be any interest in migrating towards something more feature rich than the current dlang forum, possibly userecho, or at least enhancing a bit the features of the current forum.

Is it built on top of NNTP? If not, then it's a no-go right off the bat. forum.dlang.org isn't really a forum in the normal sense. It's merely a web interface for a newsgroup, and many of us access it either through newsreaders or as a mailing list and never use the web interface at all.

Also, it's a big deal for us that forum.dlang.org is written in D. It's actually attracted a fair bit of attention for D as well -  due primarily to its speed.

Maybe some other features can and should be added to it, but we're going to want to continue to use a web interface written in D. It would just plain look bad to switch to something else now, especially when what we have has been getting such positive attention.

Also, I'm not sure that there's much point in adding much in the way of features that would have no effect on anyone accessing the newsgroup through a newsreader or the mailing list. For instance, voting of any kind would only happen from those using the web interface, so that would skew things considerably and might make them useless, depending on what they're used for.

Any features suggested for forum.dlang.org should take into account the fact that it's only an interface for a set of NNTP newsgroups, and that only a portion of the posters use that interface.

> integrated bug report, feature request etc (dlang has 2 separate websites for bugs (http://d.puremagic.com/issues) and other posts (http://forum.dlang.org/)

There's only one place for bug reports: http://d.puremagic.com/issues

Bugs merely reported in the forum are likely to be ignored. It's not the place for reporting bugs.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Sat, 28 Jul 2012 07:31:49 +0200
"timotheecour" <thelastmammoth@gmail.com> wrote:

> I just stumbled upon http://sublimetext.userecho.com/ which hosts a forum (integrating ideas, discussions, questions, news, feature requests etc) for a text/code editor (sublimetext, which seems nice btw, and supports D :-) ). It is powered by userecho.
> 
> (disclaimer: I am NOT affiliated in any way with either userecho or sublimetext).
> 
> I was wondering whether there would be any interest in migrating towards something more feature rich than the current dlang forum, possibly userecho, or at least enhancing a bit the features of the current forum.
> 
> Here are some things that it provides, compared to the dlang forum:
> 
> integrated bug report, feature request etc (dlang has 2 separate websites for bugs (http://d.puremagic.com/issues) and other posts (http://forum.dlang.org/)
> 

A few additional notes, beyond what Jonathan said:

> 1 click to report as spam

The few spams we get end up getting deleted quickly anyway. We wouldn't really gain much from this.

> 1 click upvote/downvote for ideas/questions[...]
> 
> 1 click to report as duplicate
>
> ability to sort posts by top rated/newest/most commented etc.
> 
> and statistics functions

These are just "bells and whistles" frills. I really don't see much need for them. And yea, voting on posts is the "in" thing these days, but that doesn't mean we need it.

Of course, if Vadimir added this stuff to DFeed then fine, even great, but they're far too trivial to be reasons to switch.

> good searching,

startpage.com
Query: site:forum.dlang.org foo

(Or use google directly if you like Big Brother watching)

> 
> ability to post videos which could be useful for tutorials etc (eg : http://sublimetext.userecho.com/topic/59029-code-folding-doesnt-work-if-code-isnt-indented/)
> 

There's already a way to post videos. It's called the Internet ;)

Off the top of my head:

- Attach file
- Torrent
- Post URL from:
   - HTTP/FTP server
   - Filesharing service
   - YouPoop or YouPoop competitor

> 
> Another nice feature would be to allow forum users to enter editable/runnable code sections as in the http://dlang.org/ front page. That would be very useful to report bugs or answer usage questions. That would encourage users to post working code.
> 

There's already a couple sites that do that for D. Like with the videos, I don't see any point in it being integrated into a forum. That'd be like duct-taping a screwdriver to a phone.

On Fri, 2012-07-27 at 22:53 -0700, Jonathan M Davis wrote: […]
> Is it built on top of NNTP? If not, then it's a no-go right off the bat. forum.dlang.org isn't really a forum in the normal sense. It's merely a web interface for a newsgroup, and many of us access it either through newsreaders or as a mailing list and never use the web interface at all.
[…]

Another activity I am involved with (which shall remain unnamed to protect the guilty) moved from a pure mailing list (which annoyed those who think forums are great and that email is so last millenium) to a pure forum with no email list capability (which really pissed of those of who are mail oriented and think forums are spawn of the devil and should be nuked).

To preserve an online community you have to have a system that services those who like forums and those who like email.

Sadly most of the new cloudy forum systems think email is something people had to do in 1980 but no longer need. This arrogant disdain of personal work flow is just as bad as saying forums have no place in the world.

Newsreaders are a different issue ;-)

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On 7/28/2012 2:53 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

> Is it built on top of NNTP? If not, then it's a no-go right off the bat.
> forum.dlang.org isn't really a forum in the normal sense. It's merely a web
> interface for a newsgroup, and many of us access it either through newsreaders
> or as a mailing list and never use the web interface at all.
>

This is why I've never liked the 'forum' moniker being used here. Regardless of what it means in the real world, the word means a very specific thing in web parlance. And I'm sure that many newcomers aren't going to realize that the web interface actually is a web interface to an NNTP server. That inevitably is going to lead to comparisons with existing web forum packages, which really aren't relevant. Of course, it's possible to implement such features on top of what already exists, but given that those sort of things can't propagate to the NG or the mailing list interface, it's rather pointless.

I would have been happier to see a real forum in the first place (way back when). For several years now, the D newsgroups have been the only reason I keep a newsgroup client installed. But we really shouldn't be calling the web interface a forum, because in internet terms it really isn't.

On Sat, 28 Jul 2012 16:44:36 +0900
Mike Parker <aldacron@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/28/2012 2:53 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> 
> > Is it built on top of NNTP? If not, then it's a no-go right off the bat. forum.dlang.org isn't really a forum in the normal sense. It's merely a web interface for a newsgroup, and many of us access it either through newsreaders or as a mailing list and never use the web interface at all.
> >
> 
> This is why I've never liked the 'forum' moniker being used here. Regardless of what it means in the real world, the word means a very specific thing in web parlance. And I'm sure that many newcomers aren't going to realize that the web interface actually is a web interface to an NNTP server. That inevitably is going to lead to comparisons with existing web forum packages, which really aren't relevant. Of course, it's possible to implement such features on top of what already exists, but given that those sort of things can't propagate to the NG or the mailing list interface, it's rather pointless.
> 
> I would have been happier to see a real forum in the first place (way back when). For several years now, the D newsgroups have been the only reason I keep a newsgroup client installed. But we really shouldn't be calling the web interface a forum, because in internet terms it really isn't.

I see it as being the same thing, the only real key difference is whether the backend happens to be through SQL or NNTP, and that's just an implementation detail.