The biggest WTF is the WTF software!!!



  • @rsynnott said:

    vBulletin is cheap, moderately nice to use, and is used on some very, very big forums. (WebHostingTalk, SomethingAwful and so forth). $160, I believe.

    It's MySQL only; sorry. Do you really have a serious issue with running it, though?

    License is not open source, but is a little more liberal than the CommunityServer one.

    PHP under Windows should be fine, provided you run it as a server module. If you run it as an externally executed program, it will be slow. Some PHP apps are written under the assumption that they'll be running on something unixy, and may break (either dramatically or subtly) on Windows, but the big forum packages shouldn't have this issue.

    phpBB is free and open source, but somewhat more resource-hungry per user than vBulletin, and prone to security issues.

    And last but not least, CommunityServer seems to have an export to vBulletin (3.0) thingy. Google for it.

    Both phpBB and vBulleting suck and rot the mind. There are much better boards out there, with far less bloat. See PunBB for example.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I looked at all of those, and none have the Threaded view I want (like /. style). vBulleting had something called Threaded, but it only showed the headers threaded. I want the whole post w/ replies to be threaded.



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    I looked at all of those, and none have the Threaded view I want (like /. style). vBulleting had something called Threaded, but it only showed the headers threaded. I want the whole post w/ replies to be threaded.

    I don't quite get what you're talking about, are you talking about having the articles on the front page AND as the first post of a forum thread? Or a special view of the thread (nested or whatever)? Cause if it's the former PunBB looks like it has it (if you click "comments" on a front page article it leads to the forum. Now I never tried to setup a Pun so i don't know if it's automagically done or whatever, but it does looks very similar to the current TDWTF behaviour)


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Sorry -- I meant like Slashdot.org.

    i've always like messageboards that work that way ...

    ---

    Post Title
    post text here

    Re: Post title
    post Reply here

    Re: Post title
    asdfasdfasdf

    Re: Post title
    asdfasdfasdf

     



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    Sorry -- I meant like Slashdot.org.

    i've always like messageboards that work that way ...

    ---

    Post Title
    post text here

    Re: Post title
    post Reply here

    Re: Post title
    asdfasdfasdf

    Re: Post title
    asdfasdfasdf

     

    Ok, that's the nested view.

    Please, alex, no. I beg you. Nested is the worst kind of layout ever for a message board, and TDWTF is a message board.



  • Slashcode requires MySQL, Perl, Apache, and IIRC a Linux daemon like process running.

    If i could decide i would go with phpBB or maybe look into the punBB somebody mentioned



  • @paranoidgeek said:

    Slashcode requires MySQL, Perl, Apache, and IIRC a Linux daemon like process running.

    Duh... and? I mean what you just said was "running a forum-like HTTP software requires an interpreter for the language the software is written in, a database, an HTTP server and an OS".

    I mean it's not like you could throw phpBB at a bare machine and expect it to work you know...

    Now granted the slashcode has pretty strict requirements and accepts only MySQL while phpbb accepts mysql, sqlserver, postgresql and access, but I still don't see anything non-obvious in the software requirements of the slashcode.



  • Addendum to the previous post: PunBB can run with SQLite as a "backend DB" though (that, or mysql, or postgresql), if you really hate having a DB daemon running.



  • @masklinn said:

    @paranoidgeek said:
    Slashcode requires MySQL, Perl, Apache, and IIRC a Linux daemon like process running.

    Duh... and? I mean what you just said was "running a forum-like HTTP software requires an interpreter for the language the software is written in, a database, an HTTP server and an OS".


    If you can't tell the difference between "an HTTP server" and "Apache", or "an OS that can run Linux daemons" and "an OS", or "a database" and "MySQL", then there's even more wrong with you than with this forum software.  The fucking point is that Slash has [i]extremely specific requirements for every single bit of supporting software[/i], which make it completely useless for Alex who is trying to find something for a system that supports some of the Slash requirements poorly (Apache) and others not at all (Linux daemons).

  • ♿ (Parody)

    Ah ha, that's what I meant, Nested View ...

    What's wrong with it? The posts on the main feed have lots and lots of replies, often going in different directions. With the flat view, you can't tell what's a reply to what.



  • @masklinn said:

    @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    Sorry -- I meant like Slashdot.org.

    i've always like messageboards that work that way ...

    ---

    Post Title
    post text here

    Re: Post title
    post Reply here

    Re: Post title
    asdfasdfasdf

    Re: Post title
    asdfasdfasdf

     

    Ok, that's the nested view.

    Please, alex, no. I beg you. Nested is the worst kind of layout ever for a message board, and TDWTF is a message board.



    Why do you think that's the worst layout and what is better? Personally I find it much better than the current flat text.


  • I hate Nested View too, but I think it's more to do with how the initial data is displayed.

    I read the threads as though they were long documents: top to bottom; start to end. The quotes give me enough information as to who replied to whom.

    But nested views are often collapsed by default and this is BAD BAD BAD because damnit, I'm not going to click it all open, I just want to read all the stuff. In that respect, a 1-dimensional thread works better than a nested view.

    It's true though, that with several quotes, a single page of a 1-dimensional thread can get bloated and overly long, while there's no such expansion in a nested view.

    So, as long as all posts are visible up front and not indented too much per post (side scrolling is the bane of browsing), I'm fine with nest view.

    BUT if I have to manually hunt down post content, nest view is evil. By making it harder to browse, TDWTF would lose the intensity is has now. :(



  • ^ Hmm, that makes me think of Google Groups.

    They use a two-pane system where the thread itself is linear 1D (though sorted in "nested order"), but the thread structure, displayed to the left, is indented. You can click a post in the left pane and get to its body, or you can read the thread top to bottom.

    A system like this sounds like the best of all sought worlds, here. That, or a nested AJAX-ish system where you can collapse nodes without loading new pages. Now, are there any systems like that?



  • Oh yeah, I'd also like to add, in conjunction with the WTF that you're taken to the first page when having posted, that there is no "jump tp page" links at the top so you [i]have to wait until the page is fully loaded[/i] before being able to jump somewhere.



  • @Mikademus said:

    Oh yeah, I'd also like to add, in conjunction with the WTF that you're taken to the first page when having posted, that there is no "jump tp page" links at the top so you [i]have to wait until the page is fully loaded[/i] before being able to jump somewhere.


    A simple matter of holding down PageDown while Firefox hogs the CPU as it renders the page.



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    Ah ha, that's what I meant, Nested View ...

    What's wrong with it? The posts on the main feed have lots and lots of replies, often going in different directions.

    What I don't like with nested views are that:

    • They push people towards lots of different discussions (even though flat doesn't help much with OT.)
    • They destroy the temporal flow of the discussion (there is no notion of time, before/after, between the various nested threadlings)
    • They're extremely annoying when you try to grok the new answers to a thread, while it doesn't matter in a NNTP reader because each post is an atom and atom are marked as new or old, it's much more difficult in a browser
    • In a word nested doesn't work well with discussions/threads that get used over multiple days/weeks. While it's fine in /. where the typical subject thread is rushed for 10-20 hours then more or less dies, it's not in a discussion forum where threads can stay "alive" for weeks to months.
    @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    With the flat view, you can't tell what's a reply to what.

    I find that regular quotes work well for that, I even know a forum where quoting creates a link to the original post (the one you quoted). It's not free though so I won't bring it in the discussion.



  • I now officially agree with Masklinn.

    Down with nested!
    Long live 1-dimensional threads!



  • I used to frequent a forum powered by "WWWThreads".  It allowed users to choose between threaded/nested view and flat view.  It seemed like a pretty "fully-featured" forum to me, although I don't know how many of those features were added by the webmaster.  It was available in both PHP and Perl.

    The most common problem we had was flat mode users who were unaware that there was any kind of thread structure to the posts:  they'd simply hit Reply to the lastest post in the thread.  I think new and anonymous users started in flat mode by default, which didn't help the situation :P.



  • I think we should leave TDWTF as a flat-view forum - I like to read it as a story as opposed to having to click to open each and every reply.



  • @Mikademus said:

    ^ Hmm, that makes me think of Google Groups.

    They use a two-pane system where the thread itself is linear 1D (though sorted in "nested order"), but the thread structure, displayed to the left, is indented. You can click a post in the left pane and get to its body, or you can read the thread top to bottom.

    A system like this sounds like the best of all sought worlds, here. That, or a nested AJAX-ish system where you can collapse nodes without loading new pages. Now, are there any systems like that?


    Heh, perhaps somewhat presumtuous, citing oneself, but as I tried to say above, there should be a way to combine both worlds. Let the thread itself be 1D and have the sub-thread structure in a pane. Even better if the sub-threads could be collapsable. /. does not force you to click each reply, unlike newsgroups, that you have to click a lot is because of their filtering system designed to display only the "best" of the thousands of replies posted. It would not be an issue here at TDWTF. I have also seen several systems that let the users themselves choose between 1D and threaded views. The "reply to latest post" problem should be controllable.



  • I wonder if it would be enough to indent [b]only[/b] if a reply was posted to a post that's somewhere in the [b]middle[/b] of a thread. Spliced-indent, if you will. Replies attached an endpoint will appear right below that endpoint, not indented.

    Tangents and side tracks would be immdiately visible, while there's still the option of having a time-simulated discussion. If it were fully opened by default, you could choose to ignore a certain tangent by closing it, and read on top to bottom. Current nest-views don't seem to allow that, since all direct replies are tangents by definition.

    I'm just brainstorming here. Trying to come up with a layout that is both easy to read as a whole, and offers the sub-threading to prevent the interlacing of several discussions in one flat thread, which seems to upset some people (not me, really).



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    Ah ha, that's what I meant, Nested View ...

    What's wrong with it? The posts on the main feed have lots and lots of replies, often going in different directions. With the flat view, you can't tell what's a reply to what.



    Invision Power Board has what you want. I worked briefly with them so take this with a grain of salt, but I found their threaded view was quite good. Alteratively, you could run Slashcode, but then you'd need to find someway to bolt forums ontop of that (as it's a feature Slashdot is ... missing). Scope might be a good alterative if you don't mind running PHP (which, honesty as long as you use Apache, is pretty stable on Windows).


  • May I also suggest sorting the The Daily WTF forum by topic-creation date rather than last-reply date?  When I try to find older WTFs or decide to look through several oldies I haven't seen before, I sometimes have a hard time finding them or remembering how far back I've read because they aren't in chronological order.  I might also miss some older WTFs that get replied-to and bumped to the top, because I will think that I have already read everything on the first 3 pages.



  • (wish-I-could-trust-the-)Edit:  nevermind.  After harder searching, I see now that there's already an option to sort the threads by Post Date, revealed when you click "options" below the list of posts.  And it actually works, too.

    I have another request, though:  please disable the periodic refresh of the topic list, or make it optional!  Because when I'm browsing through older WTFs, I like to open topics in new windows, and so my topic list window will periodically be taken back to the first page by this refresh.



  • Well.. We have a bunch of devs here. Make some snazzy design and lets get to it? ;)



  • @Ulvhamne said:

    Well.. We have a bunch of devs here. Make some snazzy design and lets get to it? ;)




    @Sonic McTails said:
    I've done message board programming before,
    I'd be willing to team up with other devs here to write new forum
    software.




    Ditto, count me in.



    In fact, let's see if we can use this topic to get some momentum for this idea;



    Functional Requirements:

    @Alex Papadimoulis said:


     - inexpensive (I'm not dropping a grand on this ;-))

     - source avaiable and licenced for modifcation

     - threaded post view (too many replies at this point not to have it)

     - reasonable data model

     - base software is maintained / supported (either by a company or community)

     - database images/pictures storage support (or, fairly easy to add this in)


     - Working quoting

     - Working preview

     - Working Code view

     - No emoticons

     - User-selectable number of posts/page

     - Working CAPTCHA

     - Post Editing

     - Switchable between Flat mode and Nested, to keep everyone happy.

     - Anything I've missed?



    Technical Requirements (or at least, my guesses at them):

     - Must run on Windows server (Is there a preference for IIS?)

     - Separate DB server (Is there a preference for MSSQL? As in, is
    this already bought and paid for, or would a non-MySQL free alternative
    be better?)

     - Minimal Javascripty badness.

     - Anything else?



    So: Who has the spec?TM



  • @random_garbage said:

    @Ulvhamne said:
    Well.. We have a bunch of devs here. Make some snazzy design and lets get to it? ;)




    @Sonic McTails said:
    I've done message board programming before,
    I'd be willing to team up with other devs here to write new forum
    software.




    Ditto, count me in.



    In fact, let's see if we can use this topic to get some momentum for this idea;



    Functional Requirements:

    @Alex Papadimoulis said:


     - inexpensive (I'm not dropping a grand on this ;-))

     - source avaiable and licenced for modifcation

     - threaded post view (too many replies at this point not to have it)

     - reasonable data model

     - base software is maintained / supported (either by a company or community)

     - database images/pictures storage support (or, fairly easy to add this in)


     - Working quoting

     - Working preview

     - Working Code view

     - No emoticons

     - User-selectable number of posts/page

     - Working CAPTCHA

     - Post Editing

     - Switchable between Flat mode and Nested, to keep everyone happy.

     - Anything I've missed?



    Technical Requirements (or at least, my guesses at them):

     - Must run on Windows server (Is there a preference for IIS?)

     - Separate DB server (Is there a preference for MSSQL? As in, is
    this already bought and paid for, or would a non-MySQL free alternative
    be better?)

     - Minimal Javascripty badness.

     - Anything else?



    So: Who has the spec?TM

    A working preview isn't necessary anymore if it's possible to edit posts (nice, yes, necessary, no)

    And stopping this POST nonsense for a page's thread is definitely required, that's fucking nonsense, as is the overuse of javascript everywhere in CS (which would be the minimal javascripty badness part).

    The ability to bookmark/link to a specific post in a thread would be a nice thing btw.



  • Maybe I'll whip up a few Photoshoppings of flat/threaded and my hybrid threadnest view.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Community Server 2.0 looks promising, a lot less buggy than the current build (1.0). Here's the plan I've got so far ...

    I'm going to wait until it comes out w/ full source (Feb 17). I'm going to spend some time with it to add some minor features (RSS feed, the main page, branding, etc) and do the data conversion. This will take a few weeks, or much less if I dont' have a contract at the time.

    After that, I'd like to figure out a way to "open up" the code and provide whoever want to fix obnoxious bugs or add neat features a way to do it. I was thinking some internet-accessible source control management system (suggestions, anyone?). I guess it would be kinda like that "wiki" thing, except I would review/aprove changes before a build & deploy.

    Thoughts?



  • It would be a great experiment.



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    After that, I'd like to figure out a way to "open up" the code and provide whoever want to fix obnoxious bugs or add neat features a way to do it. I was thinking some internet-accessible source control management system (suggestions, anyone?). I guess it would be kinda like that "wiki" thing, except I would review/aprove changes before a build & deploy.

    Thoughts?



    CVS or SVN seem to be the tools of choice.


  • @Mikademus said:

    I've lurked here for over a year, and I've even posted once in a while. Now, posting of other boards is a straight-forward, painless procedure. Not so at TDWTF. It is so ironic that a board only dealing with the worst fuck-ups in software development has the most fucked up software of all time that it must be bloody intentional. So I thought we could band together and enumerate our peeves, grieviences and hates. I expect it to be quite some list...

    I'll start:

    * It can't evaluate quote blocks correctly! I press the quote button on a post, append my additions and click post, and what happens? "Something didn't quite match up", "Invalid quote blocks in post". WFT!

    * Moving the cursor with the arrows is a random affair. You never know where it will go or what parts lines the cursor refuse to go through. WFT!

    * The "Post"-button in fact STARTS A NEW THREAD. Unlike every other board software in existance. WTF!

    I've never figured out what causes people to have problems with the forum software.  We used to blame it on the Preview functionality, but since it has been removed, we see just as much mangling as before.

    I've never had it happen to me, but I've also never done one thing:  looked at the HTML.  Let me see if I switch to the HTML view in FreeTextBox it will mangle my post.



  • @Ytram said:

    @Mikademus said:

    I've lurked here for over a year, and I've even posted once in a while. Now, posting of other boards is a straight-forward, painless procedure. Not so at TDWTF. It is so ironic that a board only dealing with the worst fuck-ups in software development has the most fucked up software of all time that it must be bloody intentional. So I thought we could band together and enumerate our peeves, grieviences and hates. I expect it to be quite some list...

    I'll start:

    * It can't evaluate quote blocks correctly! I press the quote button on a post, append my additions and click post, and what happens? "Something didn't quite match up", "Invalid quote blocks in post". WFT!

    * Moving the cursor with the arrows is a random affair. You never know where it will go or what parts lines the cursor refuse to go through. WFT!

    * The "Post"-button in fact STARTS A NEW THREAD. Unlike every other board software in existance. WTF!

    I've never figured out what causes people to have problems with the forum software.  We used to blame it on the Preview functionality, but since it has been removed, we see just as much mangling as before.

    I've never had it happen to me, but I've also never done one thing:  looked at the HTML.  Let me see if I switch to the HTML view in FreeTextBox it will mangle my post.

    Well that didn't do it.  I switched to HTML, and hit the post button.  Also, just for completeness in the testing info, I am using IE(although I usually use Firefox when coming here).

    Now I'm going to switch back and forth between design view and HTML view multiple times.  Visual Studio 2003 likes to mangle my code then, so maybe it's the same with FTB.



  • @Ytram said:

    @Mikademus said:

    I've lurked here for over a year, and I've even posted once in a while. Now, posting of other boards is a straight-forward, painless procedure. Not so at TDWTF. It is so ironic that a board only dealing with the worst fuck-ups in software development has the most fucked up software of all time that it must be bloody intentional. So I thought we could band together and enumerate our peeves, grieviences and hates. I expect it to be quite some list...

    I'll start:

    * It can't evaluate quote blocks correctly! I press the quote button on a post, append my additions and click post, and what happens? "Something didn't quite match up", "Invalid quote blocks in post". WFT!

    * Moving the cursor with the arrows is a random affair. You never know where it will go or what parts lines the cursor refuse to go through. WFT!

    * The "Post"-button in fact STARTS A NEW THREAD. Unlike every other board software in existance. WTF!

    I've never figured out what causes people to have problems with the forum software.  We used to blame it on the Preview functionality, but since it has been removed, we see just as much mangling as before.

    I've never had it happen to me, but I've also never done one thing:  looked at the HTML.  Let me see if I switch to the HTML view in FreeTextBox it will mangle my post.



    Ok, now I'm using Firefox.  Just switching to HTML view, and then posting.


  • @Ytram said:

    @Mikademus said:

    I've lurked here for over a year, and I've even posted once in a while. Now, posting of other boards is a straight-forward, painless procedure. Not so at TDWTF. It is so ironic that a board only dealing with the worst fuck-ups in software development has the most fucked up software of all time that it must be bloody intentional. So I thought we could band together and enumerate our peeves, grieviences and hates. I expect it to be quite some list...

    I'll start:

    * It can't evaluate quote blocks correctly! I press the quote button on a post, append my additions and click post, and what happens? "Something didn't quite match up", "Invalid quote blocks in post". WFT!

    * Moving the cursor with the arrows is a random affair. You never know where it will go or what parts lines the cursor refuse to go through. WFT!

    * The "Post"-button in fact STARTS A NEW THREAD. Unlike every other board software in existance. WTF!

    I've never figured out what causes people to have problems with the forum software.  We used to blame it on the Preview functionality, but since it has been removed, we see just as much mangling as before.

    I've never had it happen to me, but I've also never done one thing:  looked at the HTML.  Let me see if I switch to the HTML view in FreeTextBox it will mangle my post.



    In Firefox, switching Design -> Html multiple times.


  • @Ytram said:

    @Mikademus said:

    I've lurked here for over a year, and I've even posted once in a while. Now, posting of other boards is a straight-forward, painless procedure. Not so at TDWTF. It is so ironic that a board only dealing with the worst fuck-ups in software development has the most fucked up software of all time that it must be bloody intentional. So I thought we could band together and enumerate our peeves, grieviences and hates. I expect it to be quite some list...

    I'll start:

    * It can't evaluate quote blocks correctly! I press the quote button on a post, append my additions and click post, and what happens? "Something didn't quite match up", "Invalid quote blocks in post". WFT!

    * Moving the cursor with the arrows is a random affair. You never know where it will go or what parts lines the cursor refuse to go through. WFT!

    * The "Post"-button in fact STARTS A NEW THREAD. Unlike every other board software in existance. WTF!

    I've never figured out what causes people to have problems with the forum software.  We used to blame it on the Preview functionality, but since it has been removed, we see just as much mangling as before.

    I've never had it happen to me, but I've also never done one thing:  looked at the HTML.  Let me see if I switch to the HTML view in FreeTextBox it will mangle my post.


    Now I'm editing my post directly in the HTML. Perhaps that makes a difference.

    Still in Firefox.


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