If Forums had to be designed from scratch..

This crazy thought popped up in my mind while reading something right now.

What if engineers like you & I have to re-design the structure of forums?

The way they work, the way they look such that it maximises the quality of user experience on the forum and make the forum very easy-to-use and as simplistic as possible.

There are things (apart from smileys, of course) that we all feel should exist in a website when we surf through it.

We now have technologies that didn't exist when vbulletin (the software that runs CE Forums) was first designed.

Let's have a discussion of crazy ideas about what we would like to have in a forum of/for/about engineers.


PS: Please do not spam this thread with comments like "good idea".

Replies

  • Manish Goyal
    Manish Goyal
    It would be better, If something can be done for CE Labs section,

    It would be great if people can collaborate together and form teams together in order to work on some projects in this project,

    Even we can also discuss concepts , like explaining them on notebook by using advanced Jquery features
  • Kaustubh Katdare
    Kaustubh Katdare
    goyal420
    It would be better, If something can be done for CE Labs section,

    It would be great if people can collaborate together and form teams together in order to work on some projects in this project,

    Even we can also discuss concepts , like explaining them on notebook by using advanced Jquery features
    That's actually good suggestion. I think there are existing tools which allow people to do exactly the same. I earlier thought that we'd work on projects 'online', but it turns out that we better build a core team located at one place (which manages the project) and have joint collaboration from CEans from different parts of the world.

    Back to the point - The basic structure of the forum is the same. I think improvements can be made on the way people interact with forums. For example, it would be nice to be notified if someone 'quotes' you or we provide some kind of incentive to the users when they start posting.
  • Ankita Katdare
    Ankita Katdare
    You are talking about which sections should be revamped. (to which I agree)
    The thread is about what change a "forum system" needs so that problems with the current system are eliminated.

    For instance, there should be something like "tagging users". When someone tags you or mentions your quotes, you should be notified.

    Or, there should be some replacement in the system that doesn't put interesting threads at the bottom i.e. threads shouldn't die a slient death.

    These are just some vague ideas. CEans can come up with better, I am sure.
  • Harshad Italiya
    Harshad Italiya
    The_Big_K
    That's actually good suggestion. I think there are existing tools which allow people to do exactly the same. I earlier thought that we'd work on projects 'online', but it turns out that we better build a core team located at one place (which manages the project) and have joint collaboration from CEans from different parts of the world.

    Back to the point - The basic structure of the forum is the same. I think improvements can be made on the way people interact with forums. For example, it would be nice to be notified if someone 'quotes' you or we provide some kind of incentive to the users when they start posting.
    Same thing what i was thinking is that as we have so many CEans from all around world and from all the Engineering fields, how if Some CEans started working together that project may be of CE or may be CE get some clients and that project will be developed by CEans.

    If talking about Forum. . . . We can add some group facilities for example i talk about People Interested in RF they can join a group dedicated to RF and they can discuss on forum as well as on that group too.
  • Manish Goyal
    Manish Goyal
    The_Big_K
    , it would be nice to be notified if someone 'quotes' you or we provide some kind of incentive to the users when they start posting.
    Yeah this is what i was thinking few days ago, currently you get notification if some one reply on thread where you have posted something

    There should be some way through which you will get notification if he reply you with quote,
  • Manish Goyal
    Manish Goyal
    AbraKaDabra
    You are talking about which sections should be revamped. (to which I agree)
    The thread is about what change a "forum system" needs so that problems with the current system are eliminated.

    For instance, there should be something like "tagging users". When someone tags you or mentions your quotes, you should be notified.

    Or, there should be some replacement in the system that doesn't put interesting threads at the bottom i.e. threads shouldn't die a slient death.

    These are just some vague ideas. CEans can come up with better, I am sure.
    Currently i guess ce is experiencing problem of handling peak loads, i was researching about it on net few days ago and talked with sandy about this , he told me about clustering of servers, i found it very interesting , it is something like master slave approach , where if suddenly load increased which is difficult for server to handle , then it will be balanced to slave

    But i am in doubt if v bulletin support clustering or not
  • Rupam Das
    Rupam Das
    IMO,

    1. There are many forum software which are great to the possible extent.
    2. If you want extra features, you can actually develop your plugins. Like in my Forum, I have developed a plugin which Integrates with A Shop system. You post. You earn virtual money, use that to buy Items like books, you loose money... and so on.
    There is another module that fetches the excepts from my blogs and posts that to a particular forum. Any comment on the blog is seen in the forum and vice verse.

    3. Web technology changes like whisker. If we work into a forum softwrae, before it is completed, there will be another active change. So unless you have a dedicated
    group of 100 odd people who can form a .org and can work with it, it is really not worth.
    4. There are security issues like MySQL injections. So even after the software is ready, it needs to be tested by hackers and changes are to be incorporated.

    Better: Read and understand the code of any forum software. get the modules. Then develop your plugins. Like OpenID session. etc.

    So a New script is not need of the hour for an existing concept. Need of the hour is technologies that can better them. Say like attaching Skype with Forum. Like a live shows is recorded and seen by all members. Once the show is over, the recording is automatically posted.

You are reading an archived discussion.

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