Any thoughts about upgrading this forum?

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Abused? Never seen them being abused on technical forums...

I have on a couple of sites. On one of which the system was on trial and was very quickly disabled again (old manjaro forum)

I've also seen it happen.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...an excellent forum platform (Discourse)...

Seriously? I feel it's one of the lousiest platforms out there.

[AZgl1500]

This is my Favorite Forum of all time, and it is PERFECT as it is.

it does not need trashy crap to socialize it, this forum gets 100s of new posts a day because it a Help forum for all of us, new or used old farts. ( I'm 78 and need help a lot )

IMO, there is nothing that needs to be done to change this forum, it works great as is.

[Petermint]

"old fart"
Did forums based on paper tape allow smilies?

The only thing on this forum that is not so effective is the search. Google often does a better job for anything other than the simplest search. Google also includes Ubuntu results which can be handy.

[Pierre]

the Forum Search function is an issue with the Forum phpBB software,
and it does seem to be common issue on some other forums, as well.

you can use the Google Search Trick, to mitigate that issue.

[AZgl1500]

IF,
I just want the search to be confined to this forum, I use Google Advanced Search which allows you to enter the website, I can never remember where the """" marks belong to do that trick.

https://www.google.com/advanced_search

.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I almost never use Google's search engine (Google's too darned snoopy). Instead, I use Start Page with Duck, Duck, Go as a backup.

[Buffy]

The "site:forums.linuxmint.com " search cue works in Duck Duck Go, too.

[Dark Owl]

Forum owners should not limit themselves to their closed world, but go out to people. Create the same public forum on social networks or promote on YouTube, for example.

Why? Ludicrous. We have no need nor desire to know what you had for breakfast or which bars you frequent.