TDPL a bad idea?

[Walter Bright]

Yigal Chripun wrote:
> On 06/02/2010 23:42, Walter Bright wrote:
>> Yigal Chripun wrote:
>>> Walter, Please take a look at FUDForum.
>>
>> I did, thanks for the reference. I think reddit blows it away for user
>> interface. Fudforum has the usual problem with web forums of using too
>> much vertical space, meaning you have a hard time keeping track of where
>> you are in a thread.
> 
> Did you try switching to the tree view? It looks almost like reddit, IMO.

I'm looking at it now. It looks nothing like reddit, to me. Reddit shows 
all the post contents in a threaded, indented manner.


> Also, you can't really evaluate a web-forum by just looking at their 
> online forum, Did you try installing a local copy and experiment with it?
> all modern web forums are completely customizable via template systems 
> and themes, but you need to be an admin to see that. Basically you can 
> change the entire UI by changing the template.

Spending many hours working adminning it is a problem for me, as I need 
to prioritize my time to get D2 done.

Basically, I think reddit has the best forum interface, by far, except 
that you cannot mark posts as "read", meaning you cannot quickly scan 
for new posts. The other problem reddit has is no NNTP interface. If it 
had those two features, I'd think it was worth the effort to install it 
on the Digital Mars server.

Reddit has very efficient use of vertical space, meaning I can fit a lot 
on one page, which is very nice for extensive threads. I like the voting 
on various messages, meaning I can do a quick scan for the important ones.

For another example, a simple two word message on FUDForum consumes 2 
inches of vertical space. The same on Reddit consumes 3/4 inch.