The new Winboard Forum software

[Ron Murawski]

First of all, I would like to say thank you to Volker for working so hard to bring the Winboard Forum back.

However, from the new software announcement:

Some features are not available at the moment for example ... the threaded view. ... The threaded view was never supported by phpBB and the support of the developers ended years ago. As far as I know there also is no mod to enable threaded view for this version of the forum software. Therefore it is unlikely to be re-enabled soon.
vp

This makes me very sad. Without a threaded view it becomes difficult/impossible to follow large discussions. How can I know which are the new posts when they are not highlighted in any way? Do I assume that the last post is always the newest? How do I know if I've read the one before that? and the one previous to that one? What if someone replied to the original post -- where does his post land? Does it immediately follow all the original replies, or does it always land at the end? Maybe I just don't understand these flat boards, but I believe that a flat-view limitation will very quickly kill the Winboard Forum. To me a threaded view is much more important than keeping backwards compatibility with old posts.

Has anyone considered using a bulletin board other than PHPBB with built-in support for threaded viewing? Assuming we stick with free software using PHP here are a few choices:
http://www.anelectron.com/
http://chimaera.starglade.org/aterr/
http://bestweb.ca/
http://mylittleforum.net/
http://www.phorum.org/
http://www.tribby.com/board/

Despite the fact that everyone would have to re-register and no old posts would be available, I would vote to change the current software to something supporting threaded viewing rather than making the forum flat and unintelligible. but I'm not so sure I have a vote here.

Ron

[Volker Pittlik]

... Without a threaded view it becomes difficult/impossible to follow large discussions. How can I know which are the new posts when they are not highlighted in any way? ...

I never understood this argument. New posts were highlighted in the flat view in the 2.x version of the software as they are in this version as well.When ever I have the choice which view to use I always use the flat one. I follow long threads in CCC and even in CTF without problems. (Sometimes I'm under the impression the longer the thread the less worth reading is it. That is different from forum to forum however.) In addition its possible the get notified by email when a new post has been written (this feature is not available at the moment because the hosting service provider has disabled e-mail, but it will be back tomorrow I guess). I guess this is possibly only question of time until one gets familiar with the flat view.

To install the threaded view in the old forum took some time. That modification also altered the database what is always a bit dangerous. After I had installed it there was absolutely no difference in access frequency. It seems it makes no difference in user acceptance at all.
The best software for such a message board would be a traditional newsreader like Forte Agent or Pan. These programs also support the threaded view what possibly bring people in favor to such a feature. What is much more important IMO are the possibilities to ignore certain posters and threads or to follow them automatically. Without such features usenet is simply unusable because of the enormous amount of spam and trash posted there. Take a look to rec.games.chess.* to see what I mean. So the threaded view by itself does not make a message board worth reading.

What is available with the new version is an ignore function. It that were available at CTF for example that would be a big step forward. So this version of phpBB went closer to a traditional newsreader than it seems on first sight.

...Do I assume that the last post is always the newest?

Yes.

...How do I know if I've read the one before that? and the one previous to that one?

As I wrote before: its highlighted.

... but I believe that a flat-view limitation will very quickly kill the Winboard Forum.

Sorry but experience just proves you wrong here IMO. Look at the phpBB support forums for example. Compared to that forum all the chess forums are really really small. The have several hundred thousands
members, multiple of topics and millions of posts. The is no sign of confusion at all. Whenever I posted there I had absolutely no problem to follow the threads. As I wrote before maybe only a question of a very little training.

...To me a threaded view is much more important than keeping backwards compatibility with old posts.

Shall I delete the programming forum? Not really I guess.

...Has anyone considered using a bulletin board other than PHPBB with built-in support for threaded viewing? Assuming we stick with free software using PHP here are a few choices:
http://www.anelectron.com/
http://chimaera.starglade.org/aterr/
http://bestweb.ca/
http://mylittleforum.net/
http://www.phorum.org/
http://www.tribby.com/board/

Despite the fact that everyone would have to re-register and no old posts would be available, I would vote to change the current software to something supporting threaded viewing rather than making the forum flat and unintelligible. but I'm not so sure I have a vote here. Ron

To install such a forum is possibly easy to to. To install the phpBB software takes 15 minutes or so. What makes it time-consuming is the import of the old messages (what takes hours to days). Besides the fact that I estimate the preservation of the old messages more important than the view to them I'm not so sure if the support of these alternatives are so good as in phpBB. PhpBB has a really big community and much supporters. Security issues have been solved fast in the past. Improvement was steadily.

Therefore all in all the forum looks like as it looks now.

Volker

[ChessKnight]

Volker Pittlik:

Thanks a Lot for bringing the WinBoard Forum back up running live!
We are highly appreciative of your efforts.

Thanks n regards

[Ron Murawski]

Hi Volker,

Today I looked very carefully at the new posts and there is a (tiny) red square next to the new posts. I did not notice this yesterday. I guess this subtle indicator is the highlighting you mention. I'm used to seeing the entire message heading in bold, so I was not looking for a subtle indicator.

Also, there may have been problems when the board switched from old to new. Yesterday I looked at several topics that were supposed to contain new posts but I had read all of them already. Today it did not happen.

Volker, I appreciate all your work getting the Forum back up, I really do! But I'm very used to using a threaded view. The threading on a topic can give a lot of information to a knowledgeable threaded-view guy and I've always taken advantage of this 'hidden' information. I can easily ignore messages posted by any person I want to ignore -- all I have to do is not click on their post. Look at this CCC post (in threaded view):
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 26&t=26152
it was obvious to me that any further posts in this sub-thread by HG or Bob would not be of interest to me. So I glanced down the subthread and noticed a post by Gerd, where I learned the answer to the dispute. I also knew that any posts by HG or Bob past this particular point would be "I told you so" and "Well I thought you said something else .." etc. So threading saved me from reading many tiresome posts that I cannot avoid in flat mode. I would suggest that your low opinion of long threads is a direct result of your decision to view them in flat mode! But I have to admit that once the threads have no more room to indent, then I, too, lose the 'thread' of these long topics.

With the new flat view you cannot tell that I am responding to your message, not the other one. I really should be quoting your message here so you can know which message in this thread I'm responding to but, in the interest of bandwidth, I prefer not to.

The new Forum looks more attractive but, to me, it is also less powerful. It's like someone took away my old, beloved, beat-up car and replaced it with a brand-new, shiny new vehicle that doesn't meet my minimum requirements. You can argue that the new vehicle is safer and I should be happy, but I'm not. Maybe some day I will get used to this flat view, but I don't think it will be any time soon...

Best regards,
Ron