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[Mike Foran]

Because the MC applications and apps rely so heavily on the user forums to explain functions of the program, answer questions, and request new features, the current forum format isn't working very well. All too often I try to search for an answer to a question to find threads that are many pages long, and I can't even tell if it's a relevant result until I have wasted many minutes trolling through the linear list of forked conversations and off topic replies.

I suggest a forum setup similar to Reddit. Replies will have a ranking system which will shift those responses up or down in the list of the results, so the best replies are always the first seen.

It should also allow branching of the conversation, so multiple avenues of responses can exist without being all jumbled up in each other. If someone goes off topic, that branch of the conversation can easily be ignored.

A system like this would allow the dev team to easily see what are the most popular feature requests. It would allow the best answers to questions to be easily discerned. And it will improve the quality of the conversations overall as irrelevant results will be down-voted.

[Hendrik]

I absolutely despise Reddits layout, and I can't see how so many people can claim to spend every free hour of their life on there.
Classical discussion forums are still well suited to, well, discussion. Discussions between multiple people just don't work at all on Reddit-type layouts (IMHO, anyway).

If every thread had a simple and single answer then having one pinned to the top would be nice, but it doesn't, many questions require a lot of back and forth to determine the actual requirements and use-case, only at which point it is possible to give a precise answer.

Unfortunately its a common problem that discussions "branch" off, and the people involved would've been better advised to create a new thread, but often thats not clearly visible until its too late, and of course we can't really enforce such things either.
Threaded discussions don't solve that problem, you still have to actually find the thread you want to follow.

[glynor]

I absolutely despise Reddits layout, and I can't see how so many people can claim to spend every free hour of their life on there.
Classical discussion forums are still well suited to, well, discussion. Discussions between multiple people just don't work at all on Reddit-type layouts (IMHO, anyway).

+1

Some people prefer threaded discussion boards. I'm not one of them.

[Awesome Donkey]

Ugh, no setup similar to Reddit please.

[mwillems]

I read reddit for certain kinds of news unlikely to be covered anywhere else (certain types of competetive gaming discussion, etc.), but I find it very hard to follow conversations there once more than about three or four people get involved because users are really bad at responding at the correct thread level (responding to the person nested above the person they're actually replying to, etc.) .  Fortunately once more than about three or four people get involved in given sub-thread on reddit most of the content becomes "dank memes" instead of conversation, so I can easily move on to the next sub-thread without guilt  

Add me to the "please don't reddit the forums" column.

[ferday]

What's Reddit?

Really though, anti-threading here as well

[JonnyRedHed]

How about something like discourse. (https://www.discourse.org)

An example: https://forums.inovaestudios.com   (forums for the space game Infinity: Battlescape)

A very smooth and modern forum UI. Lots of intelligent little features that work for you.


Add a nice dark grey theme for discourse along side a daytime theme.

I  prefer a night time theme to save my eyes on a large computer screen.

[RD James]

Some people prefer threaded discussion boards. I'm not one of them.

I dislike "traditional" threaded discussion boards like forums used to have 5-10 years ago, however I think Reddit's layout works very well since everything can be collapsed dynamically and posts can be voted up/down. (of course voting can be abused)
Instead of one post being able to derail a topic, or having three different people discussing similar but different ideas in the one topic, it just splits off into its own branch that can have meaningful discussion within that topic.

How about something like discourse. (https://www.discourse.org)

I'm not a fan of most modern forum software.
It follows modern design trends with nice big fonts and lots of white space which looks great on tablet devices.
However I find that on a desktop PC with a monitor it really slows down my reading significantly.

[imugli]

Personally I like the forums the way they are, but if we're throwing software names up there or comparing to other sites, how about something like stackexchange for those questions that have definitive answers (like "How do I", "Where do I find" etc.) ?

[JimH]

I've been thinking we could change the color to pink.  We seem to attract very few women here.

[glynor]

I've been thinking we could change the color to pink.  We seem to attract very few women here.

What could go wrong?

[JimH]

How about fuschia?

[Mike Foran]

Threaded discussions don't solve that problem, you still have to actually find the thread you want to follow.

No, but they do isolate chains of the conversation so the topic at hand can remain relatively unpolluted. Even when everyone is on topic a conversation can still go in several directions. Also, the voting aspect ensures that the quality posts float to the top. It's not perfect, but for a forum like this, where most conversations relate to 'How Do I,' 'Feature Request,' or 'Unexpected Behavior' I think voting and threading would enable other users to follow in the previous user's footsteps and find answers to their questions faster.

[astromo]

Regardless of colour (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shades_of_pink), if I'm after a focussed search of the forum I use an advanced search functionality outside Interact:
https://www.google.com/advanced_search
and specify the domain to suit.

In most cases that works pretty well.

[jgreen]

In the absence of a perfect forum or a perfect world I do the second best thing and ask a new question.  I hate searching for anything--especially my car keys--and so I just do the online equivilent of shouting "where the heck are my car keys". 

A new question by a new forum member has gotten immediate attention every time that I can recall.  And I've never seen anyone scolded on this forum for not doing a search, a needless exercise on any forum (IMO) because it's all the same bits and electricity.  Ask the question and get the answer and let the search police work their special magic at Reddit!

Er, IMO.