[vote] Upgrade Forum Software

[fav]

Thanks Chris for the detailed info about Discourse.

Although @tbone ranked translation functionality as a lower priority on his list, I believe it should be given more weight. It may be a moot point since the consensus appears to be converging on Discourse, but we should be doing all we can to be inclusive.

We're all very aware of how strong the eastern contingent of users is, so let's make sure we do everything we can to be inclusive of their input.

On that note, have we considered the weechat or whatever they're finding popular? According to my limited research Discuz! is the market leader for forum software in China. The language barrier is a big deal. We need to bridge the gap, and it almost seems unfathomable that solutions don't exist to solve that problem. They may be I guess, but perhaps not a price we can afford. 

After searching around and not finding much, I posted a question to the IMUG facebook page:

'm looking for a different forum for our international user group. There are quite a few multilingual versions of various social platforms, however the multilingual support on those I've looked into doesn't provide translation of messages / posts / articles. Ideally I would like a forum similar to Discuz! (http://www.msg2me.com/portal.php) where ALL of the content, not just the user interface or input laguage is translated by clicking on the little nationality flags at the top of the website.

Does such software exist? If so are any open source versions available? If not what level of costs are involved?

Thank you for all the work you do at IMUG. If you can't answer these questions I'm not sure anyone can.

Hopefully I'll get a reply and we can factor that into this discussion.

@Thom, I'm in total agreement about the importance of communication with the Chinese community.  I've been pushing that idea heavily in Telegram, trying to be diplomatic in heated conversations with @alt and @bitcrab, etc.  And I put translation on a list of must haves, but in last position with the "good to have" qualifier because an existing plug-in isn't necessarily a total requirement since the other requirements include open source and customizable, so it should be possible to create our own translation plugin if necessary.  But yeah, it would be better if we didn't have to!

anyone with a modern browser can download a google translation plugin and use it in 1 click. I don't see this anywhere near as needed on forum basis

[tbone]

Thanks Chris for the detailed info about Discourse.

Although @tbone ranked translation functionality as a lower priority on his list, I believe it should be given more weight. It may be a moot point since the consensus appears to be converging on Discourse, but we should be doing all we can to be inclusive.

We're all very aware of how strong the eastern contingent of users is, so let's make sure we do everything we can to be inclusive of their input.

On that note, have we considered the weechat or whatever they're finding popular? According to my limited research Discuz! is the market leader for forum software in China. The language barrier is a big deal. We need to bridge the gap, and it almost seems unfathomable that solutions don't exist to solve that problem. They may be I guess, but perhaps not a price we can afford. 

After searching around and not finding much, I posted a question to the IMUG facebook page:

'm looking for a different forum for our international user group. There are quite a few multilingual versions of various social platforms, however the multilingual support on those I've looked into doesn't provide translation of messages / posts / articles. Ideally I would like a forum similar to Discuz! (http://www.msg2me.com/portal.php) where ALL of the content, not just the user interface or input laguage is translated by clicking on the little nationality flags at the top of the website.

Does such software exist? If so are any open source versions available? If not what level of costs are involved?

Thank you for all the work you do at IMUG. If you can't answer these questions I'm not sure anyone can.

Hopefully I'll get a reply and we can factor that into this discussion.

@Thom, I'm in total agreement about the importance of communication with the Chinese community.  I've been pushing that idea heavily in Telegram, trying to be diplomatic in heated conversations with @alt and @bitcrab, etc.  And I put translation on a list of must haves, but in last position with the "good to have" qualifier because an existing plug-in isn't necessarily a total requirement since the other requirements include open source and customizable, so it should be possible to create our own translation plugin if necessary.  But yeah, it would be better if we didn't have to!

[Thom]

Thanks Chris for the detailed info about Discourse.

Although @tbone ranked translation functionality as a lower priority on his list, I believe it should be given more weight. It may be a moot point since the consensus appears to be converging on Discourse, but we should be doing all we can to be inclusive.

We're all very aware of how strong the eastern contingent of users is, so let's make sure we do everything we can to be inclusive of their input.

On that note, have we considered the weechat or whatever they're finding popular? According to my limited research Discuz! is the market leader for forum software in China. The language barrier is a big deal. We need to bridge the gap, and it almost seems unfathomable that solutions don't exist to solve that problem. They may be I guess, but perhaps not a price we can afford. 

After searching around and not finding much, I posted a question to the IMUG facebook page:

'm looking for a different forum for our international user group. There are quite a few multilingual versions of various social platforms, however the multilingual support on those I've looked into doesn't provide translation of messages / posts / articles. Ideally I would like a forum similar to Discuz! (http://www.msg2me.com/portal.php) where ALL of the content, not just the user interface or input laguage is translated by clicking on the little nationality flags at the top of the website.

Does such software exist? If so are any open source versions available? If not what level of costs are involved?

Thank you for all the work you do at IMUG. If you can't answer these questions I'm not sure anyone can.

Hopefully I'll get a reply and we can factor that into this discussion.

[adolf512]

My forum uses phpbb, it's ok but i fail to see any good reasons to switch to it becuase prophpbb offeres free hosting for that software.

I will not caste a dunning-kruger vote for this poll.

[Chris4210]

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).

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)

very good point:  show unread posts (with expected behavior)

Discourse has several ways of doing that:

1. Latest topics

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

Here you have all latest forum activities

2. Unread 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

3. New 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

4. Top topics
Here you can select the most active topics for a specific timeframe . January 1th - January 18th etc.

[tbone]

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).

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)

[Thom]

As discussed with Fuzzy, I personally think a group solution for hosting the forum is making the subject unnecessary complex. I would prefer that one trusted active community member is in charge of the forum. That would make it easy in terms of the responsibilities, who to contact and also who is in charge to fix something in case of a problem. I prefer to keep things simple.

How simple will it be if that person can't fulfill their responsibility due to unforeseen circumstances?

No, I think the best model is worker for hosting / server costs, several trusted community members with admin rights. If one admin can't do the job or heaven forbid gets hit by a bus, there are 1 or 2 more that can pick up the slack. I would prefer a primary admin and 2 backup admins.

I do agree with you tho that we probably shouldn't count on buy.org. I like the idea of a blockchain based forum but it may be too much to ask of it to meed our needs upon launch.

I also think that anything we can do to improve communications with the east should be given priority.

[Chris4210]

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

Just adding it to the conversation.

My POV, busy.org is a very interesting project but still too young to run a full community like us on it. We need to make important decisions based on in-depth discussions where a chronological discussion style from a forum can help us. I stay with my favorite discourse

[Chris4210]

Seem to have missed phpbb forums i added. Can we please add it? It is not the prettiest forum bit has the most tools for community growth and development out of all of them.

I also have been in contact with taulant. He said he has received many requests to be the new owner of the forums, but he and the team decided they would prefer to give to me (I never asked him to own the forums, instead approaching him for the community at large, which is probably why).  After rceiving the forum from taulant I stated out loud to you chris that I am not comfortable with any one entity (no matter how much I personally trust them) to have ownership. Please dont forget this as we move forward.

The reason is actually simple. I also believe this is why taulant and team decided this route. I am interested in opening community discussion about this further when im ready in the coming days. For now please co sider talking amongst yourselves about the best way to give OWNERSHIP to bitshares community as a whole.

(P.S. I trust you to run them personally)

Thank you for bringing up this important point fuzzy. This proposal is not only about changing the forum software, but also about who will host and maintain it in the future.

My proposal is to bring it back to an active entity within the community. We can think about different models:

- Forum is hosted by voluntary first
- Forum is managed by trusted representative / Proxy, one person has exclusive access
- Forum is managed by trusted representatives / Proxy, multiple people have access at same time
- Forum is managed by trusted representatives / Proxy, one person at a time is having access

Optional condition:
Hosting is paid via worker

As discussed with Fuzzy, I personally think a group solution for hosting the forum is making the subject unnecessary complex. I would prefer that one trusted active community member is in charge of the forum. That would make it easy in terms of the responsibilities, who to contact and also who is in charge to fix something in case of a problem. I prefer to keep things simple.

How we compensate the hosting cost is a different discussion.

Do we have other opinions? For all those who are happy with the current forum, any reason why?

[fav]

I Think discourses translation feature could be a huge benefit to our community!! i

you can do it with 1 click in chrome already by the way

[GChicken]

I Think discourses translation feature could be a huge benefit to our community!! i also like the solved answer plugin allowing people to find accepted answers to issues easily without trawling the whole tread; also if the meetup plugin would allow use to schedule our mumble hangouts for extra visibility i think that is also cool feature.

My only concern about this integration with sharebits that @fuzzy is working on. i think the requirements are simple i.e ability to send pm via api, post via api and receive pages (@username) via api. 

If the above is possible i would vote for discourse; hopefully there is another theme also that would make better use of a wide screen monitor

[fuzzy]

Domain + forums xferred to hosting I chose.

[santaclause102]

Following the discussions in the last mumbles and the old threads by Bitsapphire I created a short summary of potential software we could use.

The idea is to streamline communication and improve the exchange between the different communities around the world. One of the goals was the to find a translation plugin, that will help us to talk better with the Chinese community. Further upgrading the forum software will send a strong signal that BitShares is active and improving.

What is wrong with the current forum?
Since Bitshapphire is not active anymore in the BitShares Community anymore, it would be better to have an active community member hosting the forum and be in charge of the maintenance. The goal is so to keep the forum 99% online.

Who could host it?
An active member of the BitShares community, let us discuss who could be suitable.

What are the current hosting costs?
50-60 Euro per month according to Bitsapphire

What happens with the current posts, ranks, and the old forum?
I found this guide for Discourse How to import Simple Machine to Discourse
We can probably import everything to the new forum and put the old posts in an archive.

Why now?
If not now, then never.

The two forums that would suit us the best:
1. Discourse http://www.discourse.org/
Demo: https://meta.discourse.org/

Plug-ins:

• 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

Very cool, Discourse also has a google translate plugin, which could help us to talk better with China.

2. NodeBB https://nodebb.org/
Demo: http://forum.expii.com/

Plug-ins:

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

3. Simple Machines Forum (currently used) www.simplemachines.org



Happy voting and a good discussion!

ps.: My favorite is discourse

Seem to have missed phpbb forums i added. Can we please add it? It is not the prettiest forum bit has the most tools for community growth and development out of all of them.

I also have been in contact with taulant. He said he has received many requests to be the new owner of the forums, but he and the team decided they would prefer to give to me (I never asked him to own the forums, instead approaching him for the community at large, which is probably why).  After rceiving the forum from taulant I stated out loud to you chris that I am not comfortable with any one entity (no matter how much I personally trust them) to have ownership. Please dont forget this as we move forward.

The reason is actually simple. I also believe this is why taulant and team decided this route. I am interested in opening community discussion about this further when im ready in the coming days. For now please co sider talking amongst yourselves about the best way to give OWNERSHIP to bitshares community as a whole.

(P.S. I trust you to run them personally)

Fuzzy, when you speak of Ownership, do you refer to the ownership of the domain bitsharestalk.org? If not what else? 

[fuzzy]

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

We will discuss it on the mumble again and make a decision by the end of January 2017.

mumble is by no means an indicator for consent (even less so than the forum).

Partially true. But remember that about 10x people listen to the mumble as those who attend so it is a good place to catch a very large % of the people who really are the true bts community.

[fav]

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

We will discuss it on the mumble again and make a decision by the end of January 2017.

mumble is by no means an indicator for consent (even less so than the forum).