Why hasn't this abomination died yet?



  • Srly guys, why is Discourse still a thing? The layout is awful, it duplicates posts, it has a somewhat moronic structure for threads, it shows condescending messages and much, much more. I know we like crappy software in an ironic way but even Disqus would be an improvement.



  • +1, agree

    For more Discourse disapproval, see this:
    http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/vote-of-no-confidence/270
    and other threads.



  • I don't hate Discourse, but I do honestly think I'd prefer a regular forum. Meh. "It is what it is" as the business managers say, when shrugging at a wtf!



  • EDIT: meant to reply to @serguey123

    1. I guess we're used to it?

    b) Tyring to do creative stuff with your posts leads to a puzzle-a-day...

    I've stumbled into support Forums that "powered by Discourse", and every time my first reaction is :wtf:,

    "What am I supposed to do? Where do I click? How do I find what I want? Why did they this pick this tool? "

    Then, I realize, "wait a sec... it feels like discourse..." maybe it's Discourse... maybe if I click that icon...

    TLDR: other Discourse-powered sites would be totally unusable without the Stockholm-syndrome experience I've had here.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @serguey123 said:

    The layout is awful, it duplicates posts, it has a somewhat moronic structure for threads

    I...disagree.

    @serguey123 said:

    I know we like crappy software in an ironic way but even Disqus would be an improvement.

    There are a lot of problems with Discourse, but it actually is a lot easier to talk to people with it than CS.



  • @boomzilla said:

    There are a lot of problems with Discourse, but it actually is a lot easier to talk to people with it than CS.

    +1.

    And it's easier to be creative with the medium...

    ... but the disconsistency :facepalm:

    And it's been a whole bunch of work of a lot of bright people on this forum to get it to this point... 👏 👏

    And keep it here... thx to mods, and TL#'s


    What is #? 3? 4? Whoever, thanks.


  • FoxDev

    @serguey123 said:

    The layout is awful

    The overall layout is essentially the same as [insert forum software here].
    @serguey123 said:
    it duplicates posts

    More often down to user error, now the product's matured a bit.
    @serguey123 said:
    it has a somewhat moronic structure for threads

    First post at the top, the rest in chrono order in a list? Seems pretty sensible to me.
    @serguey123 said:
    it shows condescending messages

    Well… yeah, some of them are a bit I guess.
    @serguey123 said:
    even Disqus would be an improvement

    Not really.

    There are many things to dislike about Discourse, but you also have to remember that we're unlike any other community that uses this software; we collectively abuse the fuck out of it, so of course we're going to break it. We broke Community Server just as badly at times. And there are a couple of features that are actually quite good; easy access to reply chains is useful, and I've yet to find any forum software that makes cross-topic linking a first-class feature in the way Discourse does.

    And to all those who want a return to Community Server: did you all forget how much you all used to bash that software? Discobashing is no different.

    And I'm not just saying this because I have three lines of code in Discourse.
    It's not like I've kept that a secret; it's already public knowledge. Plus it's in the commit logs.


  • BINNED

    @RaceProUK said:

    Plus it's in the commit logs.

    For that, you'll be amongst the first ones against the wall when the revolution comes.



  • Because Alex doesn't give a shit about these forums.



  • @boomzilla said:

    There are a lot of problems with Discourse, but it actually is a lot easier to talk to people with it than CS.

    Whoop-de-shit.

    The real question is, is it better than competing forum software available now?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    The real question is, is it better than competing forum software available now?

    I don't really use other forums, but I do sometimes end up looking at them as the result of queries. It generally looks nicer, though I honestly couldn't say.

    Definitely better than Disqus, which I find decent for blog comments.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    My husband has signed up on this site to join in the Sekret PM Club. He doesn't read the main forum threads, and he basically only interacts with the PM functionality. Pedantic: and the cupcake thread that one time

    About once a week he's come to me going "How the hell...?" or "Why the hell...?" because he's having some issue with the software. This week it was "I tried to make a line like you showed me but it made my words huge and bold, wtf?"

    Is it as bad as people who are heavy users are complaining of? No, of course not. But he's not involved in intentionally breaking anything and he's feeling the pain.

    Similarly, a thread was posted elsewhere recently about someone's adventures trying to use Dreamweaver on another Discourse-based forum. In their thread, there were 3 or 4 post about "How the heck do I X in Discourse?", but they derail less than we do so it didn't eat the whole thread.

    In short, there's evidence out there that even casual users have some trouble with the software. It's not just our experimenting. It looks slicker and more attractive, but honestly, that's just lazy forum-software-makers not putting effort into making a slick interface that isn't dated and boxy. It works less well under the hood, where it counts.


  • FoxDev

    @blakeyrat said:

    The real question is, is it better than competing forum software available now?

    I'm a regular on a phpBB forum and a ProBoards forum; on balance, I'd say Discourse just has the edge. But then I'm also a regular on a forum powered by XenForo, and on balance, I'm tempted to say XenForo is better than Discourse.

    It's a tough question though, as the userbases are very different on all those forums, so it's not something I would stake my reputation on.



  • Why are @blakeyrat's posts green? Is anyone else seeing this?

    I tried doing a Discosearch for "green" which went about as well as you'd expect:



  • Thank goodness. I thought it I was losing it....



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Whoop-de-shit.

    The real question is, is it better than competing forum software available now?

    It certainly has more functionality and responsiveness than phpBB, the only other forum software I have more than a passing familiarity with. Discourse is annoying and tricky to learn how to use in some ways but it gives you a lot back if you tolerate that.

    Also phpBB, at least the implementation of it we have on a certain ursine-infested forum, isn't without bugs.

    @hungrier said:

    Why are blakeyrat's posts green?

    [color=#0000BF]I thought maybe he just decided he likes to write in green, but I can't get any colour tags to work[/color]


  • FoxDev

    @PJH is having a bit of fun ;)


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Yamikuronue said:

    Is it as bad as people who are heavy users are complaining of? No, of course not. But he's not involved in intentionally breaking anything and he's feeling the pain.

    The markdown / etc stuff is easily the worst part of discourse for me. I mean, I don't really have a huge problem with markdown, but the implementation that is used here is so inconsistent that it's really problematic.


  • FoxDev

    Agreed; a saner Markdown (or just BBCode) would improve the Discourse experience by about 50% (YMMV).



  • @CarrieVS said:

    a certain ursine-infested forum

    How many other people missed the s in ursine the first time they read that?



  • @CarrieVS said:

    I can't get any colour tags to work

    Apparently, coloured text is uncivilised.


  • Java Dev

    Would have been in line with Discourse is Rainbows™, but unlikely to be implemented now that we're moving away from Clown Vomit™ to Clown Spittle™.


  • BINNED

    @PleegWat said:

    Clown Vomit™ to Clown Spittle™.

    I'm not holding out for the Clown Diarrhea™


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @HardwareGeek said:

    Apparently, coloured text is uncivilised.

    Now I'm curious to know if this is more than a discodisreply to @CarrieVS.



  • The five tons of wasted space on the sides is a problem. Honestly, you could probably fit two threads in the same space.

    Would that be a :wtf: or interesting functionality? I'm leaning more :wtf:



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    Apparently, coloured text is uncivilised.

    I come from a forum where we disagree. We think it's much more interesting, and besides we need it for our forum games. But we're also all as mad as a box of very large frogs that are off their medication, so there we go.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @JazzyJosh said:

    Honestly, you could probably fit two threads in the same space.

    Ugh...yeah, what we need are more web pages that cram something into every single piece of screen real estate. I'm not sold on the "minimalize all the things" stuff that went on recently at meta.d, but I definitely don't have the white space phobia that I've heard a lot of people talk about.


  • FoxDev

    Plus it's been shown time and time again in numerous studies that humans read easiest when the average line length is somewhere around 80-120 characters, which this site's design meets.


  • :belt_onion:

    @RaceProUK said:

    I'm a regular on a phpBB forum and a ProBoards forum; on balance, I'd say Discourse just has the edge. But then I'm also a regular on a forum powered by XenForo, and on balance, I'm tempted to say XenForo is better than Discourse.

    It's a tough question though, as the userbases are very different on all those forums, so it's not something I would stake my reputation on.

    I'm happy with IP.Board personally, if you're OK with the $300 (owch) price tag.



  • inb4 discourse ad plugin for the whitespace.


  • :belt_onion:

    @boomzilla said:

    The markdown / etc stuff is easily the worst part of discourse for me. I mean, I don't really have a huge problem with markdown, but the implementation that is used here is so inconsistent that it's really problematic.

    Actually, the inconsistency in general is the worst part for me. The UI looks good (to me, inb4in@ftr wasting screen space omg flat is stupid bla bla bla), responsiveness is good (if we're not trying to import 10,000 posts or something) and it generally works, eh, fairly well. But when things are inconsistent, it just breaks the entire experience.



  • @sloosecannon said:

    inb4 wasting screen space

    Super hanzo?


  • :belt_onion:

    If there were a hanzo badger, that would deserve it

    Filed Under: Replying up-thread is a barrier to not being hanzo'd


  • :belt_onion:

    @ijij said:

    b) Tyring to do creative stuff with your posts leads to a puzzle-a-day...

    Now that it has driven off half of the old forum population and re-stabilized with a new population, at this point duckwhores is fine because it is actually driving traffic to this forum, just that the traffic seems to be more people coming to complain/break it than people coming to have duckwhoresdicsoursediscourse.

    For those of us that miss the people that left... sucks to be us.



  • Don't know if you're making a counter-point to my post or not, but I'll elaborate...

    For me, I kind of like the little puzzle-solving tricks that are required to post in a non-linear/non-wall-of-text style.
    (And I like that we can.)

    We did lose a some very good people.

    OTOH I don't have to break out the brain bleach every time I read the forum...



  • I tell you what, you spin up a forum, and make threads for every article linking back to this site, and keep it up, and I'm sure the community will move there.


  • :belt_onion:

    No i think i'm agreeing with you, but on a more complex level - not just that there's "fun"1 tricks for the plebes, but there's "fun"2 tricks for the .fa-spinners and xssers.

    1: as in not fun.
    2: For varying definitions of fun.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    The real question is, is it better than competing forum software available now?

    There are several sets of forum software.

    All of them try to provide the competitive set of features.

    Each one has strengths and weaknesses.

    This one, we at least have some say in how it improves.

    Meh, it's not the worst, and I bash it mostly for fun.

    I have a lot of problems with Alex and his 'Jobs' take on how to handle PR, but a lot of software treats customer relations the same, but doesn't boldly say it to your face (Internet Explorer). And doesn't call you toxic either. And generally doesn't treat everyone like an ignorant child.

    In short, my problems with discourse, isn't the forum software itself.



  • @darkmatter said:

    people coming to complain/break it than people coming to have discourse.

    Well at least the flow of the rants won't be broken by pagination.



  • @JazzyJosh said:

    The five tons of wasted space on the sides is a problem. Honestly, you could probably fit two threads in the same space.

    Would that be a :wtf: or interesting functionality? I'm leaning more :wtf:

    [Ctrl]+[Mousewheel forward].



  • @RaceProUK said:

    Agreed; a saner Markdown (or just BBCode) would improve the Discourse experience by about 50% (YMMV).

    No such thing as saner Markdown





  • @delfinom said:

    No such thing as saner Markdown

    It could get worse.

    Print to a PDF.



  • pdf.js would be an improvement so.



  • How is that worse?

    That is a super useful feature. If you don't have a printer, generally the only other option is Microsoft XPS viewer which nothing supports

    I mean, you're making a joke that you'd have to print to pdf to use discourse, but meh.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @darkmatter said:

    For those of us that miss the people that left... sucks to be us.

    People leave all the time for various reasons. I've been going back through the early import stuff, and there are tons of users I remember but had forgotten because they've been gone for so long.



  • Agree, I think Discourse walks a very pleasing line by looking clean and clear but still showing a lot of content.



  • @JazzyJosh said:

    How is that worse?

    That is a super useful feature. If you don't have a printer, generally the only other option is Microsoft XPS viewer which nothing supports

    I mean, you're making a joke that you'd have to print to pdf to use discourse, but meh.

    Print to PDF is useful.

    But now you have a PDF.

    And the last time I checked the way PDF formatting works.....



  • We just need to write our posts in


  • :belt_onion:

    @boomzilla said:

    People leave all the time for various reasons. I've been going back through the early import stuff, and there are tons of users I remember but had forgotten because they've been gone for so long.

    But not usually in a single exodus as happened when it sunk in that duckwhores was here to stay. Reasons for users leaving are usually independent of each other.


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