Any thoughts about upgrading this forum?

[drlucas]

I really love Mint and this forum. The members and managers/admins are quite helpful and friendly and I truly appreciate all the help and good will.
I was wondering why this forum looks so unattractive (IMHO) and old, no offence. Especially compared with such a polished and well made product.
Even the lack of likes/karma/rating/thanks-meter alone, features that motivate quality and helpful answers, is a good enough reason to consider upgrading. I believe that a better forum will attract a lot more users and Mint adpoters as well as a lot more activity of exisiting users.
Have you considered upgrading it to a more modern, user-friendly and attractive BB? (such as vBulletin or my personal favorite Invision)?

[Lucap]

vBulletin costs money and is repeatedly exploited with some bug or another.

Discourse looks nice but the amount of scrolling needed to get through a thread is an absolute pain.

[Pierre]

the Forum had an Minor Update .. quite recently.

some time ago, the Forum had some serious issues,
and the whole thing, did get re-loaded ..

some folks, did miss certain aspects of the Old Forum,
& several requests .. were made .. and acted upon.

- - like the Site Colour Scheme is Green .. coz that was one thing that got requested, a lot.
plus, a few other items, as well.

NB: the web site does use the phpBB software.
& so any ideas .. would have to be compatible.

[drlucas]

vBulletin costs money and is repeatedly exploited with some bug or another.

Discourse looks nice but the amount of scrolling needed to get through a thread is an absolute pain.

Yeah, that's why I like Invision the most.
It does cost a bit too, not much, and it's worth every penny.
I will be happy to donate to have this forum upgraded, I believe many others here will too.
It is also compatible with phpBB and it has a built in conversion tool.

[Hoser Rob]

Wikipedia is even uglier than this forum and it's not hurting them. Who the frak cares?

[AndyMH]

I like it the way it is, but you can have blue if you don't like green.

[drlucas]

Wikipedia is an online encyclopdia, not a forum where people interact. It's also a monopoly at present and doesn't seem like anybody is interested in competing with it. Huge differences to begin with.
Besides, I wasn't talking only about modern and dated design ( that some people do care about actually and that's the first impression they get), but about important features that are well known that people do care about and motivate them to participate and make quality posts, such as emotions/likes/like-meters/trophies etc. That's not new, it's been the going online trend for years.
You asked "who cares". Well, if you had a "like post" feature (for example), you could see some who do, as it's easier and quicker than posting.
Yes, sure, some people couldn't care less about it or live by the "if it ain't broken...", but it's a fact that many people do care and like them and while upgrading the board absolutely won't hurt, it can definitely help getting more interactions, more users, more donations and improve the overall board experience.
Just my 2c worth.

[MartyMint]

... such as emotions/likes/like-meters/trophies etc. That's not new, it's been the going online trend for years.
You asked "who cares". Well, if you had a "like post" feature (for example), you could see some who do, as it's easier and quicker than posting.
Yes, sure, some people couldn't care less about it or live by the "if it ain't broken...", but it's a fact that many people do care and like them and while upgrading the board absolutely won't hurt, it can definitely help getting more interactions, more users, more donations and improve the overall board experience.
Just my 2c worth.

Given what I perceive to be the average age of forum users, turning this place into Tumblr would not be a high priority.

[drlucas]

The average age, good one...lol
It's not about turning it into Tumblr tho. Forums such as Prestashop, GreenSock, ThaiVisa and many well known ones are using IPB for example, they are not even close to resemble Tumblr.
Manjaro forums is using Discourse, other great ones are using vBB etc.
Chicken and egg. Attracting more users, including young users is a step in the right direction for Mint specifically and Linux in general I think.

P.S. One very important thing about "Likes" etc. is that they help find more useful and helpful posts in threads, especially long threads, so ultimately save time. Also a way to mark posts as "Solution" help users a lot....

[cliffcoggin]

Yes, sure, some people couldn't care less about it or live by the "if it ain't broken...", but it's a fact that many people do care and like them and while upgrading the board absolutely won't hurt, it can definitely help getting more interactions, more users, more donations and improve the overall board experience.
Just my 2c worth.

You have been attending too many marketing courses. Out in the real world its performance that counts, not "like" and "thumbs up " buttons.

[rattkjelke]

P.S. One very important thing about "Likes" etc. is that they help find more useful and helpful posts in threads,

Why would anybody think that? It's totally bogus. What if the majority of people that like a post/product/service don't know anything about it? Why would anybody rely on something like that to make decisions?

[antikythera]

Like/dislike and other vote based post ratings systems always end up getting abused. I'm sure the moderators here already have enough crud to deal with without arguments over perceived malicious dislikes.

[drlucas]

Based on my many years experience in technical forums, posts with high like counts are usually the best quality posts. People with high like ranking are usually the best quality posters/members.
Abused? Never seen them being abused on technical forums...
I guess none of you are clicking "like" or upvote posts anywhere, do you?

[MartyMint]

Based on my many years experience in technical forums, posts with high like counts are usually the best quality posts.

If popularity=quality, we'd all be running Windows by that logic.

[antikythera]

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)

[drlucas]

Manjaro forums have "likes-system" and an excellent forum platform (Discourse).

Yeah, Windows is an excellent OS indeed if it's the only OS that supports all my hardware out of the box. Linux community took almost a year to find a hackish way to support my laptop's sound card and even that is kind of a work in progress and no out of box solution. So for people with my hardware who want to love and use Linux, it's kind of a pain to do that without audio for such a long time.
And there is still no solution for my keyboard backlight and fingerprint scanner.
Anyway, we totally digress.

I guess none of you are clicking "like" or upvote posts anywhere, do you?

[MartyMint]

The responsibility for supporting hardware and writing drivers is the manufacturers, not the Linux community's.
Research your hardware purchases first, or find workarounds later.
Sorry if that sounds harsh. Manufacturers will support Linux when customers vote with their wallets.

Uplikes and votes are fine....but it's somewhere at the very bottom of how I rate a website. But then again, I'm not a teenager, so YMMV.

[antikythera]

Yes the new manjaro forum still has a like button but do you see dislike on there? You shouldn't because that's what they ditched. Also Discourse is very high maintenance and breaks quite often due to some decidedly dodgy updates that don't seem to get proper QA before pushing to public servers.

As for whether or not I up-vote posts elsewhere, I do if they warrant it.

[drlucas]

I guess the main question is if upgrading phpBB to a more modern and feature rich board, such as IPB (or whichever you like), can attract more users (=>donations), more interactions and produce a better user experience overall, or will it hurt it.
I don't see how it can hurt it, I only see many benefits in such a switch, but that's just my own opinion. It's not like I have hidden agendas, I just want what's best for Mint, hence the suggestion and my dontation offer.

[AndyMH]

As an aside, but relevant - how does this forum get funded? Somebody has to pay for the website hosting and domain name, maybe some maintenance as well.