Show HN: My forum project; a different philosophy than Discourse

[pessimism]

    tl;dr: http://pony-forum.com, forums are in again, baby!

    Longer version that breaks character limit: https://gist.github.com/ndarville/4753948

I was abroad earlier last week, so I unfortunately was not there to join in on the discussion of Jeff Atwood’s Discourse[1].

Discourse has received a lot of attention, and revitalizing the forum software of yore is suddenly part of the public conversation. As such, I feel I should bring your attention to my own forever project[2], which has been years in the making from the idea stage. I am not planning on “launching” it any time soon, but the project, Pony Forum, is relevant to the discussion for a few reasons:

1. As another “modern” take on forum software, it allows us to conceptualization modern forums from multiple perspectives.

2. My approach is entirely different than Atwood’s—just look at the screenshots(!).

3. All of it is open source, available for your immediate perusal and comparison at GitHub.

4. It is based on Django, increasing the potential for some hilarious fanboy wars.

The project should be fairly easy to set up on dotCloud or locally. Here is how to do it locally, IIRC: https://gist.github.com/ndarville/4753982.

I submit this project not because I plan on “launching” it soon, but because it makes me happy that Jeff was able to draw so much attention to something so great and yet so abandoned. It means the iron is hot as ever, and the the time to discuss the future of forums is now.

As you can tell by comparing both of our projects, Atwood and I only agree on the state of forums, and the urgency of doing something about it. But now what?

That couldn’t be a better way to start the discussion of what to do now.

http://pony-forum.com

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5172905

[2]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5096009

[arxanas]

It looks the same as regular forums to me. What features does it have that regular forums don't?

• “Written in Python and uses the popular Django framework”: Doesn't really mean anything. Not a feature.

• “Mobile CSS that adapts the layout to your iPhone”: That's a front-end issue, which forums can handle just fine without switching from phpBB or whatnot.

• “A redesigned, mobile-friendly admin interface”: Also front-end.

• “Experimental dyslexia support”: Also probably front-end. Dyslexic users probably have different default settings for text anyways.

• “A powerful editor for writing and creating content”: These have existed for several years.

→ “Super simple Markdown-based formatting learnt in no time ...”: Okay.

→ “... with automatic, typography-friendly SmartyPants conversion”: What does that mean?

→ “You can even create tables for data- and fact-based discussions!” Tables are not exactly revolutionary and forums have had those for a long time. Granted, Markdown doesn't necessarily. Do you have quotes, though?

• “Values security and privacy with such things as: SSL support, PBKDF2, password-hashing, django-secure vetting”: These aren't “features” we should have to look for actively. They should be a given.

• “Complete HTML fall-back support for people who block JavaScript”: Forums have had that since the beginning of forum-time.

[AznHisoka → arxanas]

Some good points.

The funny thing about forum/group software is that they always look so plain and unexciting when there's no content.

Of course, we all love StackOverflow, but the interface, editing, and UI capabilities all pale in comparison to the wealth of information it provides us.

[pessimism → AznHisoka]

The majority of what makes for a good forum community is the community management, not the community software.

Good forum software mainly just removes obstacles, but it doesn’t create a good community alone. And I think the thing I disagree with Atwood on the most is that you can somehow “fix” community management with scripted automations, algorithms, and whatnot. Especially if it creates an incentive to game the system, which works against the intended purpose. Atwood’s visit to Something Awful spawned a great discussion on this: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=347....

Hence, all the feature lists sound so inane, which is also why you need to watch your rhetoric when promoting it; your software isn’t God’s gift to discourse, and the competitors aren’t as unequivocally bad, as some make them out to be. Creating a good community is not really something contingent on the software (unless it’s HORRIBLE). The problem with current forum software is that is is a hassle to maintain, set up, and use.

But communities like Something Awful obviously do fine in spite of so-so software. If I could choose, I would stick with the Something Awful community’s management acumen over some fancy software such as my own. The latter alone isn’t enough to grow a great, vibrant community. The first one can still overcome clunky software. People > Software.

If anyone thinks forum software alone can create a great community, I would love to disabuse them of that notion immediately, and of the idea that using my project alone will magically fashion you a community on par with Something Awful.

I do plan on incorporating some more tools towards managing a community, but nothing that should give anyone the impression that it is going to do the actual work of managing an entire community for you.

Communities are people.

[pessimism]

Clicky:

[1]: https://gist.github.com/ndarville/4753948

[2]: http://pony-forum.com

[3]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5172905

[4]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5096009

EDIT: Looks like Travis is acting up, even though all I did between my last working build was to edit a Markdown file.

[tucson → pessimism]

Do you have a working demo site?

[pessimism → tucson]

You can use http://pygm.us/PfPgorKl for now, but only the admin log-in admin//password works for now, since I haven’t set up the e-mail server.

[Socketubs]

Oh yeah please, leave me trash all these old PHP forums! Good project!