Discourse - Thoughts

[rob_guardian]

*Mods - I'm new here, and this might be in the wrong place, or against the rules. Please kill if it is.

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I'm a reporter for The Guardian newspaper in the UK. I'm working on a piece on Jeff Atwood (of Coding Horror), and his new forum product Discourse. It's an attempt to redefine what web forums look like, and how they work.

You can check it out here.

Why am I posting this here? Simple. I'd like to get some comment for the piece - and who better to ask than the users of one of the smartest computer forums around? Especially when the forum they're on actually uses a product - vBulletin - that Jeff Atwood wants to improve on.

What do you think of Discourse? Would you be comfortable using it? Do you think it improves on current forum structure?

I'm hoping to use some of the comments on this thread in my story. I promise to only refer to you by your username - and if you'd prefer not to be named, all you have to do is say so.

 

[ChristineBCW]

As DISCOURSE is presented on-screen on Mar 22, with only a few dozen entries, it appears innocuous enough. Do you ever plow thru CraigsList pages? Endless user-defined Subject Lines, perhaps half or more completely meaningless to the casual scan, thus snowballing that 'casual scan' reader into faster scanning, less attention and thus less interest.

Go thru CraigsList for 3 cities and see how willing you are to do a 4th. "A lot less willing" is my gut-reaction. I burn out from masses of apparently disorganized Subject Lines.

And the standard complaint is, "I got tired of scanning thru useless Subject Lines so I didn't find what I want."

On this forum, I'm a newbie but I've used forums for 12 years and 10 years of BBS's before that. The biggest complaint about Organized BBS-Forums is exactly the opposite to the unfettered CraigsList DISCOURSE - "I can't find what I want because I don't know the Organization Lingo or limitations - the topics are too generalized." And they almost need to be.

Every forum's "NEW USER" section is full of threads that start much like yours - "I don't know if I'm in the right spot, but here goes..."

CraigsList evolved into their current Front Page full of columns of dozens of single-link categories, by the way. I suspect DISCOURSE will also evolve into some organized Front Page.

What do you think of watching a Twitter Log or a fast Chat-Room's "conversation"? It's great IF you're interested in that subject. It's pretty boring if not. But that's always the risk in human communications.

 

[kmote]

As long as you have javascript enabled it looks pretty great.
If the admin functions are up to scratch (I dare say they will be) and it is relatively painless to install, I'm sure this is going to be a big hit.