A very important feature of our current forum (SMF) is something called "Show unread posts since last visit".  Most people using the forum should be aware of this.  If not, there's a good chance you're missing posts. 

For some reason this feature was not working properly for several months until recently (knock on wood).  This was one of the 3 primary reasons for the decline in use of the forum, in addition of course to the steemit experiment, and the rising popularity of the Telegram chat.

My point is, we really need to make sure any new forum we're considering has this feature, and that it works as expected (similar features on different forums each work a little differently, sometimes with undesirable results).  Without this feature working properly, I can guarantee people will miss posts and the level of engagement will suffer, perhaps dramatically (again).

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By the way, I don't think I've seen a list of requirements for the new forum.  Here's my attempt: 

o open source
o customizable
o show unread posts (with expected behavior)
o import/migration supports SMF 2
o chat component
o translation plug-in (good to have)

Welcome to our community! These are the most popular recent topics.

Your unread topics appear here.

By default, topics are considered unread and will show unread counts 1 if you:

Created the topic
Replied to the topic
Read the topic for more than 4 minutes
Or if you have explicitly set the topic to Tracked or Watched via the notification control at the bottom of each topic.

Visit your preferences to change this.

You have no unread topics. Browse all categories or view latest topics

Your new topics appear here.

By default, topics are considered new and will show a new indicator if they were created in the last 2 days.

Visit your preferences to change this.

You have no new topics. Browse all categories or view latest topics

• A financial breakdown how the witness pay increase will influence worker budgets
• Leasson learned from high Witness Pay on Steemit
• Active Witness Screening - Who is a "lazy" Witness? (Gchicken?)
• Recruit excited Witnesses here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1708476.0

https://youtu.be/QT9Zvx5mqSU

Data Security Node, [16.01.17 05:25]
@ChristophHering I know you been looking at other forum solutions.. during the last hangout where this was discussed I brought up the fact that busy.org was soon to be released.. its a very different interface from steemit.. we know that steemit format was not condusive to community.. but busy.org might.. they JUST released an update a few hours ago about public release in 2 weeks.. benefits include:

1. discussions are on a graphene chain.. yes please
2. potential to reach larger audience (ie. 100k of steem users)
3. Earn steem to sell and put into bitshares
4. No need for admins cleaning up spam all the time.. @favdesu has better things to do


Now I can't say this will work for certain until we get to take it for a spin.. but it's worth considering.

Data Security Node, [16.01.17 05:26]
whups.. forgot the link to the update —- https://steemit.com/busy/@busy.org/busy-january-news-alpha-release-updates-2-weeks-before-public-beta-release-donation-report-what-s-next

voted for discourse, same as last time. majority could end up at "no change" again though

That, and the maintenance for any problems that might arise. I've used Discourse before, and been pleased with it.

Looks like the migration might be pretty hairy, though.

• Translation plug in: https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-translator/32630
• Chat/Trollbox plug in: https://meta.discourse.org/t/babble-a-chat-plugin/31753
• Meetup Plugin: https://meta.discourse.org/t/local-meetup-events-plugin/24430

• https://www.npmjs.com/package/nodebb-plugin-meetup
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/nodebb-plugin-newsletter