Recent discussion about discussions

[bossfong]

On Wednesday, 12 March 2014 at 18:15:33 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev 
wrote:
> On Wednesday, 12 March 2014 at 18:11:52 UTC, bossfong wrote:
>> As a "new kid", I'm really baffled by by how much discussion 
>> in the developers scene is done in mailing lists.
>> I strongly believe that mailing-lists are not suited for 
>> heated discussions on very specific issues. I even belive it's 
>> counter-productive when comparing the discussion flow with 
>> modern forum software.
>> By modern forum software I mean discussion centric software 
>> like disqus[1].
>>
>> My appeal is it to switch to a more modern forum software 
>> (even though I value really much, that the current webforum is 
>> implemented in D).
>>
>> Is there anything specific holding us back?
>
> Many core contributors, as well as Walter Bright and Andrei 
> Alexandrescu, communicate using news and email software (using 
> the NNTP server and mailing list gateway). It would be 
> unreasonable to ask them to switch. This forum was created as a 
> compromise, as it provides a forum-like interface for those who 
> prefer one, without dividing the community.

I can definitely understand that.

> Which Disqus features would you like to see in the forum 
> interface?

Although it might sound very much like a Facebook fanboy, I would 
really like to have a way to agree to a post/someones opinion 
without having to go through the (to me tedious) process of 
writing a reply.
I also think this would get rid of the "+1" posts, which I find 
to be annoying.
Another reason why I think a 
Like/Thanks/Upvote/whateveryouwanttocallit feature would be 
helpfully is the following:
In one thread (I believe it was about Memory Management), there 
was some "side duscussion" about a "vocal minority". Reasoning 
about a vocal minority seem odd to me. So if there was a really 
easy way to somehow express your opinion about some statement, 
that would help.
Another feature I would like is proper line breaks. Line breaks 
are inserted in places where they just don't belong. This becomes 
especially visible when someone pastes code that spans over the 
"automatically insert a linebreak here" width. I have no clue, 
but to me it seems to be a limitation of the forum being backed 
by a newsgroup.
These are just two problems that stand out to me on a regular 
basis.
There are more things that annoyed me once or twice, but they 
just won't come to my head right now. I'll post another reply, 
when I remember them.