More phpBB like forum?

[Brad Roberts]

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008, Kyle Furlong wrote:

> Gregor Richards wrote:
> > Daniel White wrote:
> > > However, for many people who don't have these readers (and don't want
> > > to try one yet)
> > 
> > Waitin' 'til '91 or so to see if this whole "Internet" thing pans out?
> > 
> >  - Gregor Richards
> 
> Actually Gregor, the opposite is true. You're implying that anyone should have
> a newsreader by now, but in fact, my generation knows little about newsgroups,
> since by the time we came on the scene the internet had passed them by in
> favor of html based forums.
> 
> Do a census of 26-19 year olds, even tech-savvy ones, and you wont find a
> significant portion with the capability or know how to browse newsgroups.

Survey that same set and you'll also probably find a high percentage that 
can't:

1) describe what pointers are

2) describe how hash tables work

3) tell you any detail about how network routing works

4) describe how email routing works

...

The list goes on.  It hardly proves any point that there's a segment of a 
population that doesn't know how to do something.

I haven't yet seen a forum that does as good a job as email does for 
monitoring traffic in a discussion or set of discussions.  That includes 
nntp to a large degree.  I acknowledge that user requirements differ 
though.

I'd be happy enough with a forum that allowed me to configure my account 
to automatically send every message posted to my email address with proper 
threading headers and additionally handled properly me replying to the 
emails and having them show up appropriately via the web pages.  So far, 
I've not found that to exist (admitedly with rather little investigation).  
Most allow you to tag threads to be watched, but don't deal with new 
topics/threads/whatever.  And most don't support bi-directionality.

Given one that supports both of those two main features, all three of 
nntp, mail, and forum could easily be stitched together.  Setup the forum 
software, subscribe it to the mail lists I provide.  Those already gateway 
to/from the newsgroups.  Icing on the cake would be removing redundancy of 
data stores, but that's less important, imho.  Additionally, backfilling 
the duplicated datastores would be nice, but not required.

So, if you're passionate about using forum software, find one that meets 
the requirements and get it setup.  It doesn't need to be some mythical 
'someone' doing it on behalf of those that want it.  Do it.  Get it 
working.

Later,
Brad