I really wonder why Usenet Newsgroups aren’t used much more.
It’s a dedicated protocol just for forums,which can be accessed using native client applications on a lot of different systems.
I tried it for some time,then left because of a lack of content nowadays,but technically I find it great.
I very much agree with @nephele that this Web 3.0 stuff can be annoying for some stuff.
Also,I think that something as simple as a forum shouldn’t require the latest browser version to work correctly,but instead be usable even in Internet Explorer or something of that age,maybe with some design glitches but the basic functionality should be working.
That “Javascript or read a blank white page” trend is,to me,a major annoyance of the modern web.
3 Likes
The forum doesn’t give you a blank page if you have no javascript, it gives you a nice plain HTML view of the forum which is actually much better usable than the modern javascript based thing. Unfortunately, it does not have any way to interact with the forum and is completely read-only.
Regarding emojis, we already talked about if a few months ago and I made a poll about it. Most people voted to keep it this way 
Anyway; yes, this forum is bad, but as far as I know, all web forms, old or new, are likewise. So there isn’t another solution I can push for (even if it will be a lot of work to migrate all the posts to a new forum system once again anyways…).
Yes,if you have no Javascript at all,it shows the content read-only but you can’t login or reply or something like that,so it’s still rather useless.
If you have Javascript,but your browser is a little but outdated so that a few Javascript functions aren’t supported,you get a blank white page however.
That happened in Otter Browser and other QtWebKit-based browsers for some months.
I think now it shows the read-only version.
Discourse isn’t the only software which does that,there are much worse ones that don’t have a fallback to a static non-JS page at all,and I strongly dislike that trend on the modern web.
Unfortunately I also don’t know any forum software that is really fun to use.
I think the proprietary ones,like XenForo,have a quite good balance between a modern design and keeping things working without relying on Javascript too much,but it’s also bad to use non-free software for a open-source project,so that’s not the solution.
I think some developers just can’t be arsed to use mailing lists. The interactive part of forums is MUCH better… even if the SNR is a smidge worse.
@PulkoMandy I tend to agree with the excessive use of emojis is not desirable… but sometimes people post sarcastically and people take it wrong and well… the occasional emoji does help there to get across things that are difficult in plaintext. 
I think some of the complaints in this case aren’t the use of emojis themselves but perhaps overenthusiastic posting in every thread with no real meat to the replies…
2 Likes
Even if we disable turning text into emojis, the emojis would still be available from the editing toolbar when they are needed.
1 Like
I think that as Haiku grows the number of posts made on this forum have increased over time. Sometimes I used to clear what had been written each day, but now I am more selective of the threads I choose to follow. There are only so many conversations a person might choose to follow at a given time.
I think some developers just can’t be arsed to use mailing lists. The interactive part of forums is MUCH better… even if the SNR is a smidge worse.
In my experience, albeit limited, mailing lists are actually a pretty terrible medium for actual open discussions.
They generally do a good job of notifying a bunch of people when you need to get some information out there. And they are decent enough when there are just a few focused conversations that need yes/no answers or when you just need information directly from one of the people on the list (single question, single answer).
The moment any “discussion” gets beyond a tightly focused back and forth between a SMALL number of people, mailing lists just turn into a shit show.
1 Like
It’s swings and roundabouts. As you say, there are times when a mailing list gets tricky. But with forums, all the javascript and CSS, all the remote loading and phoning home to numerous servers all around the World, all the excessive and extravagant lines of code in the forum software, all the zig-zagging in and out of threads…it makes up plenty of friction; that is annoying too.
Be Inc.'s BeUserTalk mailing list was great when it was going. There was a decent amount of talk that wasn’t software engineer argot. There were a couple of Be engineers on it and Scott Hacker and a bunch of the BeOS third-party developers and a small admixture of stupid muggles like me. It was a good and quick way of getting an answer to a specific question. You could chat a little bit but not too much. More people used BeGroovy and BeNews than the mailing list. I used to wonder why people preferred the websites but I suppose its smallness helped the list stay pleasant. I had a quick look at the general Haiku mailing list archive in the hope it would be a bit like BeUserTalk but it was nothing but conversations about software plumbing. So I’ll stay on here even though it has friction.
1 Like
What about a FAQ for new users &c
Welcome circledancer!
The FAQ is linked from the front page of the Haiku website.
Perhaps @circledancer was thinking about a FAQ category on the forum, for people arriving directly here? It could contain a series of read-only posts with basic answers. Some of Michel vids could also fit.
I don’t know how many posts we can pin. One per forum category?
One with important links could help. How many times are we giving links to the user guide or the different bug trackers?
The forum software allows to pin a “banner” post, that can be dismissed. However I don’t know if this would show to not-logged-in users. And I don’t want to annoy people who don’t have an account needlessly with a faq entry that can’t be dismissed.
The forums already have a rules/faq section…
Raise your hand if you knew where this was or read it. : P
https://discuss.haiku-os.org/faq