Want to learn something from you guys.

forum.dlang.org is by far the biggest gathering point for Dlang users. So, even though I wanted to get away with using stackoverflow.com, I have to come back here. However, to me it easier for me, I would like to know how you guys get comfortable with using the forum?

From my experience with forum platforms like vBulletin, phpBB, Invision Power, and even interfaces of Google group, and Github Issues, I still find it very difficult to understand the logics of using dlang's forum. FYI, I am not a new user of internet, I'd rather consider myself someone can take pain to learn new useful things. And I've administered some forums myself. Yet I would like to name a few things below. They may irritate some hard-working contributors of dlang community. But I by no means want to make this a discussion of hate. So, how do you guys overcome these problems:

=====
1. No post editting. After clicking send, and found out that you made mistakes in the post, but you can't edit the post anymore.

2. Old-day quoting presentation. I always feel reluctant to read texts that stays after two levels of quotes, like this:
 >First post quoted
 >>Second post quoted
 >>>Third post quoted
 >>Second post quoted
....

3. No Rich-text format support. No minimal bold/italic support.  Some tools to emphasize important points will make it easier to let the readers know what the posters want to say.

4.  No code formatting. Same feeling here. I am reluctant to post more than 5 lines of code.

5. No image support. In many cases a screenshots will be helpful to communicate problems.

6. Last but not least, a trendy feature: tags, keywords for threads so we can locate related threads easily.

=====

If I may say it honestly, and despite the useful 'save unsent draft' feature, the forum is by far the most user-unfriendly forum platform ever (by appearance). But I may be totally wrong, because users here are using the forum in totally different ways, and it may even has some nice perks that I haven't heard of.  I would like to enjoy a full joy of using the forum, like you are having.

Don't think of it as a forum.

Think of it as just a bunch of public email chains.
Because that is what it is under the hood.

On Friday, February 23, 2018 13:47:16 biocyberman via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> If I may say it honestly, and despite the useful 'save unsent draft' feature, the forum is by far the most user-unfriendly forum platform ever (by appearance). But I may be totally wrong, because users here are using the forum in totally different ways, and it may even has some nice perks that I haven't heard of.  I would like to enjoy a full joy of using the forum, like you are having.

dlang's "forum" is really a newsgroup. It's accessible via NNTP, mailing list, and the web interface. Many of us never use the web interface, and the functionality in the web interface is limited, because all it's doing is posting to the NNTP server and fetching the messages from there to display in the web interface.

And none of the features that you're talking about really make sense when you're dealing with NNTP or a mailing list. It's all just plain text.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:
>
> If I may say it honestly, and despite the useful 'save unsent draft' feature, the forum is by far the most user-unfriendly forum platform ever ....

So, to your question: "How do you get comfortable with Dlang.org's Forum?"

by lowering your expectations ;-)

I don't mean that to be too crtical .. cause I actually find the forum works very well for what I expect from it - which is not alot ;-)

again.. not trying to be critical here, just pointing out the obvious.

The forum is eternally in NNTP compatability mode, which is why it doesn't have all those fancy features. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

(btw. if you were born after 1990 or so.. so might have to google what NNTP is ;-)

If there is one change that I would really like, it's dark theme - cause I mostly do stuff at night, with a low lamp, and bright white backgrounds are really..really...really...really...really.......annoying.

On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:
> Want to learn something from you guys.

> I would like to know how you guys get comfortable with using the forum?

Dlang forum in my opinion, is one of the most tolerant and friendly programming language forums

So the experience is not really just how you edit a post
it is also how friendly, responsive and friendly everyone else is

I think it is too late to migrate to a new platform,
plus if they ever introduce, say a discourse based forum like rust or ocaml
the community (already small) might end up divided

On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:55:44 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> And none of the features that you're talking about really make sense when you're dealing with NNTP or a mailing list. It's all just plain text.

Well, nntp actually supports basically all that stuff: you can do multipart/alternative for rich text and mime attachments for inline images, all kinds of stuff. I think it might even allow editing in the protocol, though propagating that to email users might be bizarre (still doable though).

So it isn't *actually* a technical limitation... though a lot of us might never use those features because we do interface with it as a plain text thing.

On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:
> =====
> 1. No post editting. After clicking send, and found out that you made mistakes in the post, but you can't edit the post anymore.
>
> 2. Old-day quoting presentation. I always feel reluctant to read texts that stays after two levels of quotes, like this:
>  >First post quoted
>  >>Second post quoted
>  >>>Third post quoted
>  >>Second post quoted
> ....

Could the problem be caused by the fact that emails (which are underneath the forum) are threaded, but this forum is linear? It also causes a lot of offtopic discussions derailing the threads, while it'd be hidden in a subbranch when threaded. Perhaps that is something that could be considered (or there is a hidden threaded mode I am not aware of?).

On 02/23/2018 03:52 PM, JN wrote:
> (or there is a hidden threaded mode I am not aware of?).

Click on "Settings" in the upper right corner. There you can change the "view mode" to threaded.

On Friday, February 23, 2018 14:52:33 JN via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:
> > =====
> > 1. No post editting. After clicking send, and found out that
> > you made mistakes in the post, but you can't edit the post
> > anymore.
> >
> > 2. Old-day quoting presentation. I always feel reluctant to
> >
> > read texts that stays after two levels of quotes, like this:
> >  >First post quoted
> >  >
> >  >>Second post quoted
> >  >>
> >  >>>Third post quoted
> >  >>
> >  >>Second post quoted
> >
> > ....
>
> Could the problem be caused by the fact that emails (which are underneath the forum) are threaded, but this forum is linear? It also causes a lot of offtopic discussions derailing the threads, while it'd be hidden in a subbranch when threaded. Perhaps that is something that could be considered (or there is a hidden threaded mode I am not aware of?).

Both e-mail clients and the web interface can display the e-mails as either linear or threaded. Regardless, It's typical for quoted sections to be marked with >, and as stuff gets quoted multiple times, the >'s get deeper. Regardless, having quoted text can help considerably in both following what's being said as well as seeing what someone is responding do (especially if something goes wrong with the threading, which does happen from time to time).

- Jonathan M Davis

On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:55:44 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>
> dlang's "forum" is really a newsgroup. It's accessible via NNTP, mailing list, and the web interface. Many of us never use the web interface, and the functionality in the web interface is limited, because all it's doing is posting to the NNTP server and fetching the messages from there to display in the web interface.
>
> And none of the features that you're talking about really make sense when you're dealing with NNTP or a mailing list. It's all just plain text.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

With the recent grumbling about receiving newsgroup posts in gmail, it occurs to me that I have no idea how to even do that. I imagine I could figure out Thunderbird if I bothered, but I primarily use the forum.

Maybe the forum could add a read me at the top that gives instructions on others ways to access it with a note that most of the regular users interact that way (and how this functionality leads to things like not being able to edit forum posts). This would probably reduce the number of threads like this.