More Features for Forum or phpBB/vB!

If this is aimed at some sort of vote, I’m disagreeing.
I have taken many issues to private email when assisting others, I cannot see why editing a thread title is in order.
Guest posts ? I assume you mean the anon posts ? Yes, I find some of them annoying, but my guess is that it’s one or two people deliberately stirring things up. A registered poster can do precisely the same repeatedly – seen it happen.
I’ve not a clue what a postbit is ??
In some ways I can agree with your sentiment, but having used both the above boards – both as user and administrator, they are unwieldy beasts compared to the speed of miniBB. I hate having to trawl through the sloth that phpBB has been, and is, in my experience.
I don’t see many requests disappearing into a void, and in fact see posts being bumped to that attention is re-grabbed. Before you say that bumping should not happen, I have yet to see this happen with a routine request for help. It has usually been for something quite technical and which needs the attention of one of the few people with the right knowledge.
Maybe the #irc channel should be more widely pushed ? I have used that myself when after an answer, and it’s great to be able to have that help.
Just my 2p.

I don’t disagree that this forum could have a lot of better features. What I do disagree with is a blanket declaration of “the admins don’t care” because that’s simply not true.
Get your facts together before you do the Chicken Little Sky Is Falling Routine.
Then we can discuss the whole issue as adults.

When I said that the admins don’t care, I was referring to a specific thing. That thing being asked multiple times by many people to add features to the board, and them stating that they just “don’t want to”. In my opinion, that’s not acceptable answer, considering they are developing open source software. If it was closed source, then that would be a different story. I know it’s free software, and I am greatful for that. WordPress is the best software out there for it’s purposes. I just wish we had the best community to go with that. The fact is the almost dead b2 forums are more useful to me, and I would guess other’s as well. I’ll let this thread go on for a few more days. If the admins do not at least listen to us, and try to implement a few of our suggestions, then I will go ahead and setup an alternate forum if people are interested. If you are interested in helping, or just want to offer words of encouragement, feel free to e-mail me or AIM me at JoshuaCBC.
Thanks.

I know I may be out of line on this, but I’m going to say it anyways.
Joshua – go sit on it. The way I see it, we have choice. We can allow the admins, who also happen to be the WP developers continue work on WP, or should they drop everything to cater to the whims of the users? It seems to me that this debate crops up every couple of months. Every time it goes away. MiniBB is different, that doesn’t make it any worse, just different. There were reasons for chosing it. Personally I like it. It “forces” me to checkup on it. It “forces” everyone to check in on it. Makes it better as faras I am concerned. Using just the front page with the recent posts, it doesn’t take me long to see what’s moved up. If there is a thread I’m interested in, I’ll know how to find it. Also, with this, I find more threads to read than just the ones where I’m getting help. I’ve learned a lot about the people here and WP in general from that. I don’t get that anywhere else.
As for the admins not changing something because they “don’t want to” – kudos to them and it is a perfectly valid answer. I run a forum of my own. If I made all the changes that people requested, I’d never get anything else done. No one is forcing you to remain here. If you want changes to miniBB, why not go bug the miniBB developers? They are the ones who built it….
TG

keyword: Free
Build your own if your are not happy. Or Pay up, you make your clients pay don’t you?

sushubh – since we all know your opinion doesn’t cound for anything, we’ll go ahead and cut out the middle man and dismiss it right away. ;P
TG

@chris,
“No one cares”? Do you? Yes. Then you’ve already made a statement with no basis in fact. I care. Even our resident Opera hack cares. The bottom line, however, is that we all can’t have everything we want to have. We just have to make the best of what we have and work with it. All of this stuff will evolve over time. It just requires some patience. In this world of instant gratification, it’s easy to get caught up in the “I want” routine.
I want a good tool in WP. If the worst thing I can say about WP is that the miniBB on the support forum sucks, well then WP is pretty damn good. Also, a previous poster wants email notifications, but doesn’t want to use RSS. Okay…sure…that makes no sense at all, because RSS is so simple to use and requires no sign-up and therefore the WP forum admin(s) don’t have to worry about a damn database of users they have to babysit.
Use the RSS dude. It’s the future staring you in the face. Email is the worst thing on the Internet right now, because of what people have done with it. With RSS, you get want you want, when you want. Simple. Open your mind to the possibilities!
@sushubh,
Dude, shut up with that Opera stuff. We know that you get 25 cents every time you mention it… ?? LMAO!
Craig.

@craig: I wish. If I were, I would be competing with Gates!
about RSS…
I suggested this in the IRC sometime back. And Michel_V agreed…
RSS would make more sense if a custom syndication can be provided to the user that shows the latest replies IN THE THREADS he has participated. For example a custom RSS syndication that gives the last 20 messages in the threads I have posted/started. I would like that rather than the last 20 posts in the whole forum.

Besides the non e-mail notifications, the biggest problem I have with this board is the text formatting. On phpBB (which is free), when you do a code tag, it actually formats the text into a nice format that you can easily read. Now this might be one small issue, but it is a big issue when you consider that people ask about problems with code.
My solution, I make people go to my forum (which is phpBB based) to see my answers. Not a good solution, but at least they don’t have a problem reading it.
I have another pet peeve, which is the new scrolling iFrames, but it only seems to be annoyance at home and not at work.

matt was talking abt a code parsing script that does what u want.
maybe he will incorporate it in this forum too.
u are talking abt the color formatting i believe… shoudl not be tough. its already incorporated in the wiki afaik…

This thread is completely pointless. Anyone who spends more than five minutes here knows that the board software is never going to be changed. Is there even a functioning import script that will convert MiniBB to another forum tool? Are you seriously suggesting that we junk all the valuable info, hacks, etc. we have on here? Yes this board has serious limitations but its just too late to change it now. I am all for having an alternate forum where we could have a prominent link to the Wiki, send PMs, disable anon posting and post code more easily, but you cannot dictate to Matt what software he uses for his domain.

but be certain, if matt decides to switch, he will make his own convertor.
so thats not the issue!

I’m of the opiniont that the information already here is so hard to find, that losing it won’t be all that much of a loss, and the new forum, if there is one, would soon bypass the usefulness of this one, simply because it would be so much easier to find. Simply put, Mini-BB sucks. I have yet to see a good review of it from an outside source.

What would you prefer – that the devs spend time making an importer for, then installing and configuring the new tool, or that they concentrate on getting 1.2 out? If you have the time and resources to create and administer a new forum, go ahead and do it. Much more constructive than sitting around complaining about stuff you can’t change.

As minimalistic as miniBB is, it’s far from being the worse. At least on miniBB you can edit posts, see previous posts when replying, and get a decent search out of it. I’ve been on forums that have none of that. It’s scary.
If you feel that you need to open up a new forum to get the attention you think you need, then by all means, for all I care, go right ahead.
FYI: There are other blog related (where there are WP users) forums out there:
https://www.bloggerforum.com/ – in fact this is how I found out about WP.
https://forum4bloggers.com/
TG