Top likes and dislikes for new format

My top likes:

  1. Only the receiver of "likes" can see where they came from, and not the entire community.
  2. The whole "Trust Level" concept.
  3. The whole updated Nth Circle look.

My top dislike:

  1. 46 "Badge" categories?

Heh...

Top likes:

  1. Markdown
  2. Security is important
  3. Live preview
  4. The ability to mute topics to hide them from "Latest." (If the old forum had that I never noticed.) I don't need to follow the Visible party thread unless I ever decide I'm willing to pay that much for service, and...well, I will probably mute the referral links thread and only go looking in it if I want to sign up for something that takes one, although I suppose if someone posts a referral code for something I never heard of and would like, but doesn't also cross-post it anywhere, I might miss finding out about a neat service that way.

Top dislikes:

  1. The whole updated Nth Circle look. I am not historically a fan of the Discourse UI in general, although it's certainly better than no forum. I'd almost rather have a stack exchange, but I don't think the format would lend itself well to the flow of discourse (heh) we're used to here. Hopefully it will grow on me; I think the Onlykey forums use discourse and I at least mostly got used to them.
  2. I would say the technology stack, because I've heard that the number of technologies used and the way they interact make Discourse both hungrier for hosting power and harder to tweak and debug than I would probably like, but I've also heard it's very easy to work with as a turnkey solution if the hosting cost isn't a problem; so if hungryghost is happy with it, the fact that I'd be skeptical if I were the one planning to maintain it is irrelevant. :smiley:
  3. Only the receiver of "likes" can see where they came from, and not the entire community. I actually kind of liked the way "thanking" worked on the old forum. On the other hand it's entirely possible I'd never have noticed this if you hadn't mentioned it.
  4. I'm not sure how this is a thing, but going by what happens on the "Latest" page when I reply to a thread, somehow my own replies initially count as unread to me.
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It's fast. I like it!

Don't dislike anything!

Edit: why does the latest topic list show first post instead of the latest post?

Thanks scriptninja. I hadn't noticed that. Had I did, it would have been included in my top likes.

Yeah, I know that seem strange to have 46. I'll see if I can make it an even 50, at least! :wink:

Discourse is definitely more resource hungry than the previous forum software, which was actually super lightweight. Discourse uses Ruby and Postgres, compared to the previous Kunena software, which uses PHP and MySql. I don't think that's the main reason for the difference in resource usage though. I think it's mainly due to Discourse's overall system design and how it operates. Firstly, it's a fully "modern" and responsive single page web app with endless scroll. Additionally, Discourse also runs a lot of realtime services under the hood to manage users, realtime messaging, etc.

As for customizability, I actually think Discourse is easier to tweak than Kunena. Discourse has a theming and plugin system that is pretty straight-forward to use and customize compared to Kunena. If it doesn't do everything you want, you can integrate your own theme or component straight from your own git repo. I've already done that to fix a few UI issues. For tweaks and changes to the forum's core functions though, that's a little harder because it involves building the whole application from source instead of relying on the readymade container images and official deployment channels. But even with this, the Discourse dev community is pretty active and seem to turn around updates on a near daily basis, so hopefully relying on the official releases will suffice.

I discussed this in another thread. Unfortunately, it's a limitation of the current Discourse platform. Hopefully, that can be improved in the future.

Suggestions for Badges 47-50 :wink:

#47---first use of an ampersand
#48---first use of italics
#49---5 consecutive posts with proper punctuation
#50---5 consecutive posts with proper spelling

#51 First to get 50 badges
#52 First to get 51 badges ....

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Just thinking about your post mmfacemm:

What if they took your idea and started to use it beginning with badge #10?----Yikes!

BTW, the Brave Browser forum is using the same software. Here's their "Badge" page.

(Sorry about my empty deleted post below. It was repetitive of this post. I'm still trying to get the hang of things)

I'm particularly fond of these 2 badges.
(etc, I think you might have already earned both of them, if they existed.)

Since I excel in both those categories. I already received mine. :blush:

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More Badges: We Don't Need No Stinking Badges! - YouTube

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Ahhh, yes the original (well, except for the book).

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Badges in Social Media:
A Social Psychological Perspective

β€œIn this paper we deconstruct badges
and present five social psychological functions for
badges in social media contexts: goal setting,
instruction, reputation, status/affirmation, and group
identification.”


The following link is a summary, but it contains the PDF link to the full article.

I just received a badge for best spelling.

Well, it looks like someone won't be getting their "spelling" badge anytime soon.

Shouldn't we have a Math Badge?

TWO WORDS: Dimentia!

(and yes, we should)

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Uh oh... no spelling badge for you! :smiley: Fortunately, misspelling words is not a symptom of dementia.

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