The forum, its present and its future

Jimbro66

monquixote said:

OK, Geek mode ENGAGE!

I was the one responsible for choosing Vanilla and it was without a doubt the best of a bad lot. Forums aren't really the thing these days so most of the software around is old and a bit crap with the exception of Discourse which was still in Beta when TFB launched.

As regards the writing from scratch thing it will be a massive amount of work, but there is one very substantial advantage. Vanilla is an extensible forum framework which means it's full of hooks where you can add additional functionality. This leads to a situation called overgeneralisation where the logic and data flows are so abstracted that you can't easily follow what's happening for example when the page renders you might have any number of "pre render hook" callbacks firing and then the page will render and any number of "post render hook" callbacks will fire. This is made worse by using a dynamic language like PHP where you can't even get the IDE to help you with what's going on. The overgeneralisation problem is made worse because Vanilla is badly architected with "leaky abstractions" meaning the various plugins (which should be isolated) interact in unpredictable ways meaning one plugin will often break another one. 

This situation is so bad that last time I pitched in to fix a bug it took me 3 hours to make a 1 line code change because it was so hard to work out what was getting called when and in what context so I could figure out what was actually causing the problem. The same applies to the Database schema which of full of random extension tables.

A solution written by@digitalscream will not be all things to all men, but simply the functionality for TFB and nothing more.

RoR is also considerably cleaner than PHP, but is unfortunately completely outside of my experience (Node, Java, Go, Elixir) so I won't be able to help out easily

Any chance of subtitles?

DesVegas

I'm only 5 points short of 1,000 wisdoms so hopefully this will do it. Welcome back Drew, hopefully your post op life will treat you well and look forward to your contributions here. TTony did us all proud over the years and I look forward to the DigitalScream era and the progression of the best forum in the land.

I shall raise a glass to you all and thank you for making this place so splendid to peruse.

And never forget my fathers final words on his deathbed. . Phaser after fuzz but before distortion laddy.

bingefeller

digitalscream said:

Emp_Fab said:

I see zero value in a "Hide their posts, but let me see them if I really want to" system.  That's no different from a self-imposed "I'll skip over that post and not read it" approach.  It's human nature to look.  It's more frustrating half the time to fight with your urge to read what they've written than it would be to read it anyway.  I have plenty of experience in this field !

Heh...well, the idea is that - unless it's stuff that plain doesn't work - I don't want to take any functionality away. However, what I may do is just build the "absolute ignore" and see if anybody wants the "kinda ignore" for a later release.

I think the "absolute ignore" is a fantastic idea and would love to see it.  

Freebird

Don't forget to shutter the politics forum while you are at it. Musicians are supposed to be open minded and tolerant free thinkers. It turns out they are nothing like that 

Teetonetal

Bridgehouse said:

You will never get consensus on what functionality to have and what to implement/not implement. You’ll not get consensus on moderation, themes, rules or pretty much anything. 

But, when it’s a free to use forum run by volunteers then it should be down to the people who put the hard hours of graft in to decide what and where and how. I’m sure @digitalscream has more than enough experience of what works/doesn’t work here now to put together an iteration of forum software that is much better than it is now. It will never please everyone all the time.. but as a free to use forum we have the choice to use it and get the most we can out of it, or not use it. Simples.

This is so true. People seem to forget that.

Bridgehouse

Teetonetal said:

Bridgehouse said:

You will never get consensus on what functionality to have and what to implement/not implement. You’ll not get consensus on moderation, themes, rules or pretty much anything. 

But, when it’s a free to use forum run by volunteers then it should be down to the people who put the hard hours of graft in to decide what and where and how. I’m sure @digitalscream has more than enough experience of what works/doesn’t work here now to put together an iteration of forum software that is much better than it is now. It will never please everyone all the time.. but as a free to use forum we have the choice to use it and get the most we can out of it, or not use it. Simples.

This is so true. People seem to forget that.

And in the same way, the Modmins have to put the graft in managing the place free and gratis so it’s only right that they get to say whether a banned member gets to come back or not. 

mcsdan

I think writing forum software from the ground up is nuts! It's going to take a lot of work and need testing/fixing etc. Also concerned that it will be so specific to one individual that should they decide to move on then the forum is buggered. Very commendable that digitalscream is up for the job and have no doubt about him doing a good one, but is it in the interest of theFB community long term.  Also don't feel that one person should have that much workload placed upon them. Even with a team of helpers it's still going to require a lot of effort and coordination. Surely better to see what else is out there that does most things and add some tweaks as needed. Still bespoke coding but limited in scope. Much more maintainable.

As for having a subscriber model for new things I think the classifieds should be included in that. Not a per item payment but if you subscribe you have access to classified to sell. Still leave this open to read so that the reach of the ad is to everyone but if you want to do a new post/ad you have to be a subscriber. This would tie into the added value content already mentioned.

For Drew returning - I never had any interaction with him but feel the modmins and those involved are best placed to decide this. Everyone has tough times and can say/do things out of character or have triggers that others press.  Moving forward it sounds like he will be a good asset to the forum and perhaps having that focus and direction will help move forward.

Handsome_Chris

I'm going to say that writing the forum software is a crazy plan.  In fact it's a plan so crazy...

Sporky

mcsdan said:

I think writing forum software from the ground up is nuts!

Far less nuts than trying to wrangle a bit of software that doesn't do what you need, and wasn't written with what you need in mind. And where every update to the core engine breaks most of your wrangling. 

I did the same thing for our quote template at work. I wrote every line of code and drew every dialogue box, and consequently it all makes sense. Not just to me - the other two people who understand VBA can follow all the code too, because each module does exactly what's needed in a straightforward way, and nothing else. 

Bridgehouse

Handsome_Chris said:

I'm going to say that writing the forum software is a crazy plan.  In fact it's a plan so crazy...

I think we need to refocus this thread on deciding if @digitalscream ‘s new username should be @Macgyver or @Howlin_Mad_Murdock

mcsdan

Sporky said:

mcsdan said:

I think writing forum software from the ground up is nuts!

Far less nuts than trying to wrangle a bit of software that doesn't do what you need, and wasn't written with what you need in mind. And where every update to the core engine breaks most of your wrangling. 

I did the same thing for our quote template at work. I wrote every line of code and drew every dialogue box, and consequently it all makes sense. Not just to me - the other two people who understand VBA can follow all the code too, because each module does exactly what's needed in a straightforward way, and nothing else. 

A forum/bulletin board is not exactly new or that bespoke. Most software has scope to extend it and developers should keep within that scope. If they don't then updates will fail as expected.

digitalscream

mcsdan said:

Surely better to see what else is out there that does most things and add some tweaks as needed. Still bespoke coding but limited in scope. Much more maintainable. 

Dude...have you even read my comments on the subject? It's not a decision I've taken lightly, and I have been through all of the alternatives. Not a single one is appropriate. It's not a case of, "Oh, it's missing a couple of features so I'll ignore it" - all of the forum software out there has either fundamental architectural problems, licence problems or would cost a small fortune to host. I've had to deal with all of those problems in my career over the last 20+ years - including an abundance of the first one for the last five years with this forum in doing precisely what you suggest here, and it's severely hampered our ability to support the forum's existence and plan for the future, not to mention costing more of my time than a sensibly-designed piece of software would just to keep it running.

We've actually had to abandon plans that we had for new ventures with the site because they were impossible to build with the current system within a reasonable timeframe; such things would have been trivial with something like this proposal (although the time for them has been and gone now).

And, lastly (again) - forums are not complicated pieces of software. The complications - and poor architectural decisions - come when you try to make them generalised and invite others to write plugins for them that you have no control over. That will not be happening here.

The relatively difficult parts are data optimisation, spam protection and access control. Even those are pretty easy when you've been doing this for a while (and, for my sins, I've been a web developer for a long while), and they're extremely well-understood problems for which there are an abundance of solutions for every context.

That's not to say that Vanilla was a poor choice back when we started; it really was the best option from a lot of poor/badly-maintained ones. It's simply that we didn't anticipate the growth we'd hit, so that kind of efficiency (and requirement to plan for expansion) wasn't part of our selection criteria.

octatonic

Well, this is going as I expected.

axisus

octatonic said:

Well, this is going as I expected.

Indeed. I have popcorn.

mcsdan

Now I understand why peach left!

Sporky

I don't think Peach left because of a polite reasoned discussion? 

hywelg

I think I understand a little of what @digitalscream is on about. I've built and maintained my own business website for the last 10 years but failed to add the updates to the photo galleries for the last 4 years because of lack of time. Coupled with the requirements of users to have responsive design I decided a complete rewrite was necessary. 

Now the thought of rebuilding the photo galleries with over 1000 pics, all with reference numbers and some with comments was daunting. Everyone had an idea I could use something already available, WordPress, Joomla, various plugins for said CMS's, but nothing came up to scratch. 

So I'm writing my own php to drive some ProjectSeven js plugins. Lots of work to start with, but populating the galleries and updates willbe a breeze. 

Sometimes knowing exactly what you want makes the choice easier.

randella

I completely understand why folk are questioning the wisdom of writing a new forum from scratch - it’s a lot of work.

But - and I don’t expect DS to give tuppence about what I think, I’m just pondering out loud - if it was me I’d be doing exactly what he’s doing.  I’ve wrangled a web CMS for several years now and it’s infuriating.  I’m not Bill Gates but I am a time-served web developer and the time I’ve wasted in monquixote’s “three hours for a line of code” scenario is phenomenal.  I’ve extended it this way and that because nothing ever does what you want out of the box.  But even extending it has brought its own hassles and I pity the poor sod who will one day inherit the big pile of source that underpins it all.

Something like a forum is going to have had its design patterns and problems discussed to death and that’s the wealth of information I’d be mining in order to code something that did exactly what I want.  Code it properly in the first place, away from corporate day-job “do you want it done properly, or done by Friday?” pressures and I see no reason why it wouldn’t work.  I’ve been involved in tech discussions with DS and the other coders on here and I’ve no doubt he knows what he’s talking about.

Chalky

Roland said:

Handsome_Chris said:

@Chalky has a point.  

No he hasn’t. He’s just mis-portraying what @digitalscream has said. We all make mistakes at times, for which there is a path back. However people who intentionally cause trouble may find that path somewhat longer.

I was just light-heartedly pointing out that the Law of Unintended Consequences will intervene to bite yer bum   So whilst the objective may be to tighten the rules, the Unintended Consequence is that folks now have a measure of how Olympic Gold Medal-level Dickish they can act and still be 'not as dickish as Drew'.

Bridgehouse

Chalky said:

Roland said:

Handsome_Chris said:

@Chalky has a point.  

No he hasn’t. He’s just mis-portraying what @digitalscream has said. We all make mistakes at times, for which there is a path back. However people who intentionally cause trouble may find that path somewhat longer.

I was just light-heartedly pointing out that the Law of Unintended Consequences will intervene to bite yer bum   So whilst the objective may be to tighten the rules, the Unintended Consequence is that folks now have a measure of how Olympic Gold Medal-level Dickish they can act and still be 'not as dickish as Drew'.

Or, we could all look forward and stop debating how dickish x or y is compared to z, and actually talk about guitars, making music and sharing a common passion, no?