Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

wil93 · 2014-12-07 23:48:15

mrunion wrote:

My two cents: Please, please, PLEASE do not switch to Discourse. It's buggy, bloated and just not that nice of a tool.

Buggy? I smell FUD.

Notice that:

The Discourse team is very active, their last commit goes back to about 20 minutes ago.
Discourse can be automagically upgraded from the admin interface.
FluxBB must be updated manually. In fact: I wonder whether this very FluxBB instance has been upgraded since this recent critical security vulnerability

mrunion wrote:

(And another opinion: Forums are not really "social media" sites because they don't cram stuff I don't want to see down my throat. When I am on a forum, I only view the posts I want to read, and never see anything about other posts on other threads. I am also not encouraged to "join groups" or "like" things, or "share" stuff. That is the "social" part that is so terrible these days.)

Going by your definition of social media, neither FluxBB nor Discourse are social media. I'm ok with that

fsckd · 2014-12-08 05:05:02

wil93 wrote:

FluxBB must be updated manually. In fact: I wonder whether this very FluxBB instance has been upgraded since this recent critical security vulnerability

It was some time ago. I have no more power to upgrade here than you, but I can see what version of FluxBB we're using. When I first heard of that vulnerability a couple of weeks ago, I checked these forums which were already upgraded by that time.

Allan · 2014-12-08 05:13:32

No.

Jristz · 2014-12-08 06:06:00

Allan wrote:

No.

You know that without a question mark, the tittle on this page is an afirmation, right?
also I'm sure that your message is that short that could pass as a feature.

also please, brink the fun to Arch again.

And taking about the thread, I dont thing that is enough reason to switch to another engine, as they say it more like FUD than real facts.

ANOKNUSA · 2014-12-08 15:43:11

wil93 wrote:

[Discourse is] easier (e.g. no pages) and more usable (e.g. it's mobile friendly).

Pages of information are easier to handle than streams (SEE: books vs. scrolls), and the ability to more easily waste time on a phone in inappropriate situations isn't the same as usability.

Buggy? I smell FUD.

The Discourse team is very active, their last commit goes back to about 20 minutes ago.

I never have and probably never will understand this obsession among end users in the FOSS world with thinking that more commits/updates equals more awesome, and few commits equals dead or broken. Once a piece of software is stable and feature-complete there's no reason to update it all the time, and the number of commits on a project could just as easily signify sloppy work as it could new "features" being introduced.

I can only speak for myself, but I sure as hell do not want to see my precious Arch forums turn into another flashy narcissism network. Crappy name aside, Discourse may in fact be fine forum software. It may actually be an appropriate medium in some kinds of online communities, and switching to it here wouldn't bother me provided that we didn't end up with a bunch of pointless features that, ironically, actually stifle and reduce discourse (like voting on posts---ugh). But a cursory look at what it offers makes me think many of its big selling points are things that simply wouldn't be allowed on the Arch forums anyway. If the only real reason for switching is that its new and flashy, or that it allows you to sit in class browsing the forums on your smartphone instead of paying attention to your instructor, then I don't see the point.

On a slightly related note, I have a lot of respect for Jeff Atwood and enjoy his blog, but it is worth noting that he's spent the better part of a decade frantically trying to invent a new medium for online communication with (by his own admission) limited success. It seems the best solution he's come up with is to split things into pieces---tech support in one exclusive medium, casual open discussion in another, long-form discussion in another, collaborative work in another, and so on. Heralding Discourse as some new catch-all solution is probably premature, and if we were to follow Atwood's model then switching the forums to discourse might necessitate more change than we think. It might require the present forums to be split into an official Arch-centric StackExchange and official Arch-centric Discourse forum, which in turn would require new rules and greater manpower.

satanselbow · 2014-12-08 16:05:59

wil93 wrote:

Buggy? I smell FUD.

I smell an ulterior motive...

Last edited by satanselbow (2014-12-08 16:07:48)

mrunion · 2014-12-08 18:50:52

@wil93: To each is own. But my statement is based on MY experience and of those people I (used) to post with when another somewhat popular website switched their forums to Discourse. It's not FUD when it's experience with the tool.

progandy · 2014-12-08 18:54:57

I believe that discourse is not the only way to improve presentation on small screens. I suggest a resizable theme like kokuto, tytan or aira2 or maybe a tapatalk plugin.

Last edited by progandy (2014-12-08 19:01:01)

wil93 · 2014-12-08 19:42:36

ANOKNUSA wrote:

I never have and probably never will understand this obsession among end users in the FOSS world with thinking that more commits/updates equals more awesome, and few commits equals dead or broken.

Although I'm inclined to think that, in my previous post I meant something like: "if you have seen a bug in the past, it is probably gone by now (given the fact that they are very active); also, if there will be lots of bugs in the future, it will be painless to upgrade each time because you can do it from the admin interface"

wil93 · 2014-12-08 19:46:43

satanselbow wrote:

I smell an ulterior motive...

Like what?

Last edited by wil93 (2014-12-08 19:47:03)

drcouzelis · 2014-12-08 20:25:51

wil93 wrote:

What do you think about it? I think that Discourse is cleaner, easier (e.g. no pages) and more usable (e.g. it's mobile friendly).

Opinions are fine, but does Discourse solve any technical problems that exist by using FluxBB?

I adore the Arch Linux forums. It's very well organized. It loads blazingly fast on any device I use. There are no advertisements. Sure, the text is a bit small on my Jolla mobile, but that just means instead of "clicking" I need to "zoom and click", which is not a big deal to me.

Allan wrote:

No.

More importantly, does Discourse allow for answers less than five characters in length?

satanselbow · 2014-12-08 21:16:59

wil93 wrote:

satanselbow wrote:
I smell an ulterior motive...
Like what?

I really don't know Your undoubted enthusiasm for the Discourse app - which for all intents and purposes is one of a very long list of trendy RWD, pseudo-social software "app" favours of the currently indeterminate time period - and your willingness to parry each and every argument with well informed counters leave, in my cynical old mind at least, the impression that you may have some interest or investment in this page?

wil93 · 2014-12-08 21:36:25

drcouzelis wrote:

Opinions are fine, but does Discourse solve any technical problems that exist by using FluxBB?

I don't think so, all I think is that it would be better and fitting to the "bleeding edge" Archlinux philosophy of course, I am totally ok if FluxBB will stay

drcouzelis wrote:

More importantly, does Discourse allow for answers less than five characters in length?

Ugh, I agree that it's a hideous detail.. especially when you're a forum moderator or admin (mods should definitely be able to overcome that limitation).

wil93 · 2014-12-08 21:43:46

satanselbow wrote:

I really don't know Your undoubted enthusiasm for the Discourse app - which for all intents and purposes is one of a very long list of trendy RWD, pseudo-social software "app" favours of the currently indeterminate time period - and your willingness to parry each and every argument with well informed counters leave, in my cynical old mind at least, the impression that you may have some interest or investment in this page?

I see, well, even if I was involved with Discourse I don't think that Archlinux would need hosting (or someone to install/configure the board).
However, I'm not involved with Discourse, in fact I'm currently an unemployed student .

I just like new things (that's one reason I use Archlinux ), and I didn't mean to sound "overprotective" or anything, I was just discussing

cmtonkinson · 2015-04-29 16:30:31

Just for the sake of it, thought I'd throw in some practical and objective observations (not "I feel" statements).

Discourse Pros:

For content, Markdown is far quicker and easier than BBCode without sacrificing functionality (lists and links are a great A/B comparison)
When your main/only computer is Arch, and it takes a dive, you may not have a viable connection/browser left, in which case an RWD site is a hugely positive feature
Search is easy, fast, and more robust
Docker-powered upgrades require negligible downtime and are completely automated
Optional scheduled digest emails (which are clean & relevant)
Easy media embedding (e.g. for screen shots/casts)
Self-contained backup/recovery
Easily extensible to provide Arch-forum-specific features (e.g. auto-linking to packages or bugs)

Discourse Cons:

You can't beat the LAMP stack for simplicity of infrastructure setup and administration. While Discourse (with Docker) is virtually zero maintenance, if something were to come up internally, the guts are significantly more complex. Rails itself is a beast besides Nginx, Postgres, Redis, and other fairly intricate machinery under the hood.
You can't beat the LAMP stack in terms of minimal hardware reqs. Even an empty Discourse forum requires hardware on-the-order-of 1GB RAM simply to spin up. Unfortunately I have no realiable data to A/B compare usage of a given set of hardware at a given load between a Flux site and a Discourse site so I don't know how the performance compares at higher rates of utilization.
There is no existing Flux import script for Discourse; not even one for Pun that could be sanely forked
Initial Discourse page load is painfully slow

Neither here nor there:

Social: The reluctance about "social" features are moot - any such hooks can either be disabled at the site level, or are completely unobtrusive and ignorable at the user level
Community activity: "More commits" isn't a valuable metric for this conversation. It's a wash; a net zero. In the context of Discourse vs Flux, more activity does actually mean more patches to existing flawed logic, but it also means more new logic (which will itself have flaws requiring future patches). You can see this playing out in the commit logs for each.
Features: Some want change just for the sake of it (which would be no bueno), and some will resist change just for the sake of it (also not helpful). Not all features are Evil(tm). Some are. It's worth avoiding "feature X is/isn't {good,useful,helpful}" arguments when these assertions are being made with respect to the individual, and not the greater community.

Arch Linux

#26 2014-12-07 23:48:15

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#27 2014-12-08 05:05:02

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#28 2014-12-08 05:13:32

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#29 2014-12-08 06:06:00

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#30 2014-12-08 15:43:11

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#31 2014-12-08 16:05:59

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#32 2014-12-08 18:50:52

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#33 2014-12-08 18:54:57

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#34 2014-12-08 19:42:36

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#35 2014-12-08 19:46:43

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#36 2014-12-08 20:25:51

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#37 2014-12-08 21:16:59

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#38 2014-12-08 21:36:25

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#39 2014-12-08 21:43:46

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

#40 2015-04-29 16:30:31

Re: Switching the Archlinux forum from FluxBB to Discourse

Discourse Pros:

Discourse Cons:

Neither here nor there:

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