Discourse.org

  • Looking for comments on the Discourse.org framework. It's potentially a direction we could move the forums from SSC in. Not articles, scripts, QoTD, stairways, etc., just the forum discussions.

    http://www.discourse.org/

  • I like the UI of Discourse, it's certainly more updated than the 90's forum look most forum sites have.

    It looks like it has a lot of potential, but it certainly is a great shift away from what we have here.

    I hope people are not too frightened when they have to "learn" a whole new UI.

    The one thing I'm immediatelly missing at Discourse (or I'm just too stupid to notice) is some sort of bread crumbs to go back to the categories.

    You can only click on Discourse at the top, which brings me to the main page in the popular section, which just shows everything.

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  • I think they've moved to tags instead of categories, which I like. That's one thing I'd liket o have here.

  • I really like the UI! I had never seen it before, thanks for sharing.

    That said, the forum sw here needs some improvements and probably it's more convenient adopting a ready-mad piece of sw rather than updating the existing one.

    -- Gianluca Sartori

  • Discourse apparently does not like me. I can't seem to get it loaded.

    I'll try again later.

    Brandie Tarvin, MCITP Database AdministratorLiveJournal Blog: http://brandietarvin.livejournal.com/[/url]On LinkedIn!, Google+, and Twitter.Freelance Writer: ShadowrunLatchkeys: Nevermore, Latchkeys: The Bootleg War, and Latchkeys: Roscoes in the Night are now available on Nook and Kindle.

  • We are looking at replacing our current Telligent installation with either a custom built, or another 3rd party forum group community system. So thanks for this, will be one to add to the pile to investigate.

  • Brandie Tarvin (2/7/2013)


    Discourse apparently does not like me. I can't seem to get it loaded.

    I'll try again later.

    They reimage the system regularly, and I've had some flakiness. My guess is Chrome will work best as a browser.

  • Personally, I use the "Recent Posts-->Posts since my last visit" and"Recent Posts - Posts from last week" a lot. With that and maybe having the "Categories" shown on all pages, I would be pretty happy.

  • I just ran across this post, as I've been looking to consolidate where I interact with sql discussions. Lots of different places, but this site seems to house some of the best material and responders.

    I actually just joined sqlteams site because I wanted to find one that used the discourse framework. I know it has some quirks, but I'll throw out there that I like the move to the more modern discussion platform. I'd love to see that integrated here.

  • We've debated it.It's still under consideration.

  • count my vote!

    Thought I've heard it said...

    All opinions will be duly weighed, not counted, since some opinions have a lot more substance than others. 😀

  • SqlBarbarian (9/18/2015)


    I actually just joined sqlteams site because I wanted to find one that used the discourse framework. I know it has some quirks, but I'll throw out there that I like the move to the more modern discussion platform. I'd love to see that integrated here.

    I've been a member of SQLTeams for years, can't remember how many posts I had on the original forum, 20,000 at least. I've been an on/off poster on the new Discourse there. I hate it.

    My thoughts on Discourse:

    No newbies ever manage to figure out how to format their code, worse: the bits that they cut & paste that contain some indented line are taken to be using 4-space markdown that causes, just those bits of code, to be formatted as CODE blocks. Various other bits - like a string of several hyphens - get interpreted as some other sort of formatting, so their posts (actually not just "their", as in newbies, the regulars too from time to time get caught out) get unintended H1 Heading font in the middle and stuff like that. You have to become a wizard at Markdown in order to format anything, but the trouble is you cannot force formatting upon it - as you can with a markUP language like HTML. With BBSCodes I can put [b] in the middle of a word, to highlight a snippet, if I want to. Can't do that with markdown (or if you can I don't know how). Boldface is **. It has to be at the start of, and end of, a word. You can't do it at the start / end of a multi-line section, you have to repeat it on every line. You definitely cannot do XXX**YYY**ZZZ (or I don't know how). If you two, separate, asterisks in your prose it will consider them a format instruction so you have to escape them (if you notice ...). I just think that is wrong, it is implicit-formatting-by-side-effect, much better to explicitly-format-by-[tag]. Loads of time I (and other posters) cannot figure out how to format a code block - a whole code block gets swallowed. Add a blank line (i.e. perform some magic) and it then works. Its SQL colour coded only works 90% of the time, at times it misses the first (') of a text string, but catches the second one. So all the code which is NOT a string becomes formatted as a string. There is no way to highlight anything within a CODE block, so indicating a subtle change to the O/P requires explaining what change you have made in the code - rather than just applying Bold or Colour.

    The software on this forum is stone-age, as was SQL Team's before the upgrade, and I curse what SQL Team had before, and what is currently in use here (I have no idea why all the learned people posting here put up with it, and I think the hosts are taking advantage of them, and their free PR, and in return ought to be providing much better facilities for them). But, for me, Discourse is most definitely not the solution. Clearly MarkDown works well on Stackoverflow, but I'm not sure why that is? - maybe that is because of the number of Spelling and Grammar Tsars over there who go around fixing everything? 🙂 Either way, reading a problem and its preferred solution is a treat on Stackoverflow (but I don't think that is a good media for discussion).

    Personally I prefer modern forums software, like Xenoforo (Discourse has some of these features too). WYSIWYG AJAX editors, highlight text in any post for a "quote this" button, drafts are saved frequently so you never lose a post, ability to "follow" posts and see lists of what you are following with replies that you have not read; it remembers where you have got to in each thread, the thread updates in real time if someone else posts to it (here, if you press QUOTE and if someone else has posted to the thread since you started reading it you get the QUOTE text from a completely different post 🙁 ). Separately is a list of new posts (that you are not following). You can tune-out of Categories which are not of interest, which makes the New Posts list more worthwhile. SPAM is almost unheard of (and a "valued member" [e.g. with high post count] flagging it means it is suppressed for others [unless moderated as "not spam"]) and so on and so on. And importantly the formatting is markUP rather than markDOWN 🙂 A joy to use IMHO.

  • P.S. Discourse does have an import from some Forum software (dunno about the one used here). No way could be found to import, cost effectively, from SQLTeam's old forum software, so that now exists as orphaned text/posts in isolation from the new Discourse. I don't know if that is important, and I've calmed down about it since the outset ;-), and now I just think it is a pity.

  • Kristen-173977 (9/19/2015)


    Personally I prefer modern forums software, like Xenoforo (Discourse has some of these features too). WYSIWYG AJAX editors, highlight text in any post for a "quote this" button, drafts are saved frequently so you never lose a post, ability to "follow" posts and see lists of what you are following with replies that you have not read; it remembers where you have got to in each thread, the thread updates in real time if someone else posts to it (here, if you press QUOTE and if someone else has posted to the thread since you started reading it you get the QUOTE text from a completely different post 🙁 ). Separately is a list of new posts (that you are not following). You can tune-out of Categories which are not of interest, which makes the New Posts list more worthwhile. SPAM is almost unheard of (and a "valued member" [e.g. with high post count] flagging it means it is suppressed for others [unless moderated as "not spam"]) and so on and so on. And importantly the formatting is markUP rather than markDOWN 🙂 A joy to use IMHO.

    +100 for Xenoforo

    much easier to watch/unwatch threads than on SSC...better navigation/access to profile settings etc.

    plus....on another forum that I subscribe to that use Xenoforo, the email alert actually contains the content of the new post...amazeballs.........;-)

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  • J Livingston SQL (9/19/2015)


    +100 for Xenoforo

    🙂

    the email alert actually contains the content of the new post...amazeballs.........;-)

    Discourse has that too. I'm not a fan ... I'm dyslexic, I frequently change my posts to correct something after posting - even the Preview doesn't help me find all the issues, indeed in some cases it may be when I re-read the post "tomorrow" that I spot the error. Either way, seeing the content reformatted slightly differently (line width / font / whatever) is often a trigger for me to spot, and fix, an error.

    As a consequence I think email-content does two things:

    Sends the may-be-edited-later version in the email. Of course anyone returning promptly to the thread may see the not-yet-edited version (particularly if I don't spot my error until tomorrow 😉 ), but I've seen complaints on (Xeno) forums where people have said "I didn't mean to say that", immediately retracted it, but the original had already been emailed to the recipient

    Also, I think email-thread-content reduces the incidence of people returning to the forum. If you get an email, the answer looks right, you think "That will do" you then miss out on any subsequent discussion about it (you only get one email about a thread, until you return and view the thread again). Forum can also miss out on ancillary click-through traffic that a returning user might make. (I'm a Techie not a marketing bod, so I'm only assuming that that lost opportunity would drive marketing people up the wall! but maybe not?)

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