I was told to check in here for updates. I'm not sure how the change-over is supposed to work (or if that is the "integration" you were talking about) but I went ahead and created an account there.
http://community.mises.org/news
But obviously that isn't exactly bustling with updates. And it's a wordpress site...so the blog section is obviously up to par (Daniel James Sanchez even moved his blog back after having to jump ship from the Mises site due to limitations.)
However, the "forum" section there is even worse than this one. I agree, vBulletin is a good platform. It's popular for a reason. I don't know why everyone here pisses on it so much. (Then again pissing on popular things is done a lot around here).
vBulletin took a huge step back about a year and a half ago when they were bought by a publicy traded firm (Internet Brands), and the latest version of the software is not even close to their legendary quality. They have a lot of customer satisfaction issues from what I have observed.
I don't know why LvMI doesn't push resources towards this side of the site or finish the new community but I stopped worrying about it a long time ago.
I like ronpaulforums.com's forum. It looks a lot nicer than it did 3 years ago.
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
liberty student: [...] I don't know why LvMI doesn't push resources towards this side of the site or finish the new community but I stopped worrying about it a long time ago.
[...] I don't know why LvMI doesn't push resources towards this side of the site or finish the new community but I stopped worrying about it a long time ago.
I think it's a manpower issue. A lot of the development is by volunteers that have higher priorities.
Daniel Muffinburg:I like ronpaulforums.com's forum. It looks a lot nicer than it did 3 years ago.
That's vb4. It takes a lot of development to get a site looking like that.
Daniel Muffinburg:I think it's a manpower issue. A lot of the development is by volunteers that have higher priorities.
I have a lot of thoughts on this. One certainly is that developing a user community isn't a casual thing and it's best not left to volunteers, even though LvMI is blessed to have volunteers like it has had in this community.
liberty student: vBulletin took a huge step back about a year and a half ago when they were bought by a publicy traded firm (Internet Brands), and the latest version of the software is not even close to their legendary quality. They have a lot of customer satisfaction issues from what I have observed. I don't know why LvMI doesn't push resources towards this side of the site or finish the new community but I stopped worrying about it a long time ago.
The previous lead developer of vBulletin and others have quit and created their own new forum (written anew from the ground up).
http://xenforo.com/
(see also: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/a-statement-regarding-the-current-litigation.7567/ )
I think it looks great. (adoption: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/show-us-your-xf.9236/ )
Otherwise, there are a number of good commercial ones too. ex. http://www.invisionpower.com/
And if Mises wants to have open source free ones, there is phpbb and mybb.
I have two XF licenses, haven't deployed them yet, one is spoken for however. I think the issue with this community, and many communities in general is that they aren't run for profit, that is there is no clear connection between development hustle and desired results.
I'd be announcing every new book and Mises Academy class in here. This is a very targeted audience of people who spend money on LvMI related stuff. That sort of demo targeting would be very expensive elsewhere.
I've deployed and I'm administering a xenforo forum. It's not worth paying for. Free stuff works fine.
Giant_Joe: I've deployed and I'm administering a xenforo forum. It's not worth paying for. Free stuff works fine. Whether something is worth paying for depends on your needs. I imagine that having professional support can make it worth it. Another thing may be that, because a commercial forum is usually bought by commercial entities, the testing of new updates is more stringent because it is more important. VforVoluntary.com | Youtube.com/Nielsio | Reddit.com/r/austrian_economics | Post Points: 20
I am currently migrating a free forum (phpbb) it is a joke. Paid forums are much better, the quality standard is night and day.
I would say MyBB is better than 'night'.
http://www.forum-software.org/mybb/review/conclusion-advantages-opinion
The Pirate Bay forum runs on it, with 122K registered users. http://forum.suprbay.org/
liberty student:I'd be announcing every new book and Mises Academy class in here. This is a very targeted audience of people who spend money on LvMI related stuff. That sort of demo targeting would be very expensive elsewhere.
This appears to be taken care of quite well on the MIses Blog. Not that it would hurt to have more advertising, but it's not like they're slacking off on publicizing anything that could possibly be promoted. And to be quite honest, I think it would possibly alienate frequent users of the forum to be constantly barraged with notices and adverts. I personally would be, and I think it would crowd the forum. Perhaps if it were a format where threads were kept in their specific forums, and there were a dedicated announcements forum or something like that. But in a setup like this, where every message, regardless of what forum it is in, gets bumped to the top of a master list, it would get quite annoying.
Show me 10 mybb forums with one million members each, and I will pay attention.
John James:This appears to be taken care of quite well on the MIses Blog.
Which gets all of the attention, the high quality big name posts, and a lions share of the dev resources.
Think that has anything to do with it being the more commercially successful medium? I do.
I'm not sure I understand. You're saying you want all that attention, posts, and resources to be shifted to a forum instead?
I've never set up a forum, so I don't know what it takes, so I don't why the new forum isn't post-beta. After all, there has been work put into it. But it would have been great to have something set up, until the new forum went post-beta, that didn't require more than one click to quote or having to write or copy and paste code to embed a youtube video.
It isn't a matter of what software is used. It's a matter of the number of dev hours per year put into the forum: 0.
My main issue with the forum software is there is no browser spell check support, which is odd. If you install a dictionary in to firefox when you type in every window apart from these comment boxes it underlines spelling mistakes. So i end up copying and pasting my post in to word to do a spell check and then pasting it back. If you could intergrate mybb in to the site then i would vote for that. I have used mybb with postgre and it was easy to setup and configure, took like an hour. Other than that i have no problems with the forum software and do not realy mind, plus i just joined so i don't realy have a say...
edit: if you do use mybb i recommend disabling the reputation and calendar/events features and a few others as well, makes it less bloated and the reputation feature just gets abused. Unless there is a specific use for the calendar feature, disable it.
^
It has to do with the nature of the rich text editor. If you click the "source" button at the top left of your post box and view your work in the html source, the spell check works. I just click over to that and have a glance through. It's like putting on spell check glasses.
Caley McKibbin: It isn't a matter of what software is used. It's a matter of the number of dev hours per year put into the forum: 0. I agree. I spruced up my own MyBB forum the last two days (it's very customizable and easily so), and it looks great now (imo): http://www.vforvoluntary.com/forum/ VforVoluntary.com | Youtube.com/Nielsio | Reddit.com/r/austrian_economics | Post Points: 5
From today on Facebook (after I asked about it):
Am I the only one who sees enormous irony that improvements to this community are announced on facebook rather than here? Sorta says everything doesn't it?
What's more ironic is that the last forum upgrade was what broke the forum.
Nielso,
This is where the new community will be: http://community.mises.org, if you want to get a head start. It's been up for months but I don't know when it will be finished.
Daniel Muffinburg: Nielso, This is where the new community will be: http://community.mises.org, if you want to get a head start. It's been up for months but I don't know when it will be finished. Yes, I've seen it. It's a bbPress forum ( http://bbpress.org/ ). I suppose it follow more or less the philosophy of wordpress: good basic functionality and then expandable with plugins and themes. It's so bare that you have to expand dozens of features. You need a plugin for posting with codes, for avatars, for images, for quoting, for youtube embeds, etc, etc. I suppose this can work, but developing it to the way you want is more difficult, and from the bbpress forums that I have seen ( http://bbshowcase.org/forums/view/top100 ) I'm not that impressed with what people have come up with. But it does appear that all the elements required are there and you can make it proper. It just seems easier to use MyBB (or another 'regular' forum software), where you have much more right out of the box. This also seems the reason why it has taken so long for Mises to get this going. If you have a team of volunteers, you can have a forum (such as MyBB) up in a matter of days, fully configured and easy to maintain. VforVoluntary.com | Youtube.com/Nielsio | Reddit.com/r/austrian_economics | Post Points: 20
If your volunteers building the community don't use or mod/admin the community, you're flying blind during development. As far as I know, there has never been outreach to the people who have been here for 4 or 5 years to help. It's always some outside volunteer who doesn't have to eat at the table he built.
I'm guessing that our forum accounts will be migrated.
liberty student: If your volunteers building the community don't use or mod/admin the community, you're flying blind during development. As far as I know, there has never been outreach to the people who have been here for 4 or 5 years to help. It's always some outside volunteer who doesn't have to eat at the table he built. Agreed. I automatically assumed them to be part of that team (or even exclusively that team). VforVoluntary.com | Youtube.com/Nielsio | Reddit.com/r/austrian_economics | Post Points: 20
I'm not working on. As far as I know, no other mod is working on it, although I think DJS might be working on it.
Nielso, volunteer on the project.
I would volunteer. But there is nobody I can offer it to because Jeffrey Tucker nor anyone else is responding to email or questions elsewhere. I'm suspecting this is because Jeffrey and the technical people (I have no idea who they are) have an idea of what they want and are not interested in any deviation from it.
Email DJS.
Anything is better than this current software unfortunately. If the quote button actually does what it is supposed to do, that would be a huge step forward. I dislike the compatability issues with Opera... :(
Daniel Muffinburg: Email DJS. I don't what that stands for/who that is. The Mises faculty page lists David Veksler as Lead developer. Is that him? edit: Oh, you mean Sanchez. VforVoluntary.com | Youtube.com/Nielsio | Reddit.com/r/austrian_economics | Post Points: 20
Yes, Daniel James Sanchez.
Jeffrey passed your comments on to me. I would be one of those "technical people" ;-)
I'll confess up front that I have not been eating "at this table" (the old teligent community system) and thus am not versed in the specific grievances you might have with it. All I know is that everyone hates it (members and admins), and thus I've been trying (amongst other mises projects) to get the new community off the ground. I got close some months ago, and am now back on the job...
I am a wordpress developer by trade, and have been responsible for nearly all of the migration to linux/apache/mysql/php for the blog, academy, wiki, etc.
While I agree that putting up a standard phpBB/myBB forum would be rather simple (and would serve very well as a forum), the choice to go with the wordpress multisite / buddypress system for the new community was based on the desire to have the community be more than just forums - to continue to allow users to host their own content (blogs), socialize/connect (groups/members), and discuss (forums). The old Teligent software we've been running here covered all those bases, but it's too expensive, too closed, and too hated.
Of course, wordpress does blogs like no other, and phpBB (+variants) do forums like no other - but the Mises universe already had so many separate systems, each with their own login accounts, that spawning even more was not desired. Wordpress/Buddypress was the best solution for open, free software that covered all the bases while allowing for a single userbase.
The weaker link in the new system is definitely bbPress (the forums inside Buddypress), as it doesn't have the developer base that Wordpress does, and so development goes much more slowly. I've only recently got tinyMCE (rich-text) editor working for forum posts (you'd think that would have been in the core long ago), and I'd love it if someone could solve the issue of threaded replies...
There are some very close updates to Buddypress and to the social-network integration component Buddystream which should help a lot. Stay tuned for more updates...
Sounds like good stuff.
Thanks, Israel.
Neilso,
You can follow some (but not all) of the tech talk here:
http://groups.google.com/group/misesdev/topics?pli=1
I haven't been able to find much forum stuff there, but you might be able to chip in your 2c.
Israel Curtis: Jeffrey passed your comments on to me. I would be one of those "technical people" ;-) I'll confess up front that I have not been eating "at this table" (the old teligent community system) and thus am not versed in the specific grievances you might have with it. All I know is that everyone hates it (members and admins), and thus I've been trying (amongst other mises projects) to get the new community off the ground. I got close some months ago, and am now back on the job... I am a wordpress developer by trade, and have been responsible for nearly all of the migration to linux/apache/mysql/php for the blog, academy, wiki, etc. While I agree that putting up a standard phpBB/myBB forum would be rather simple (and would serve very well as a forum), the choice to go with the wordpress multisite / buddypress system for the new community was based on the desire to have the community be more than just forums - to continue to allow users to host their own content (blogs), socialize/connect (groups/members), and discuss (forums). The old Teligent software we've been running here covered all those bases, but it's too expensive, too closed, and too hated. Of course, wordpress does blogs like no other, and phpBB (+variants) do forums like no other - but the Mises universe already had so many separate systems, each with their own login accounts, that spawning even more was not desired. Wordpress/Buddypress was the best solution for open, free software that covered all the bases while allowing for a single userbase. The weaker link in the new system is definitely bbPress (the forums inside Buddypress), as it doesn't have the developer base that Wordpress does, and so development goes much more slowly. I've only recently got tinyMCE (rich-text) editor working for forum posts (you'd think that would have been in the core long ago), and I'd love it if someone could solve the issue of threaded replies... There are some very close updates to Buddypress and to the social-network integration component Buddystream which should help a lot. Stay tuned for more updates... Okay, I'm beginning to warm up to the concept. I see what the function of a Group is now (though I don't know if it's usable in practise, maybe you can explain how it will work?), and it is nice if users of the 'community' can post their own blog in Wordpress style. As far as threaded replies go: Do you mean with indentation, similar to Wordpress blog comments? Because I don't think that's very readable in forums. Take zerohedge.com for example, their comments are an absolute disaster. It could possibly work if it was collapsable. I would say quoting with a statement who you're quoting and a link to the original post is the way to go. Very standard for forums. I would also get rid of one post gray background next post white background. It's not calm to the eyes. Why a rich text editor? Activating links and posting youtube videos is too much of a bother with it, especially for new users. Copy-pasting is also a problem with them because mark-up is brought over. No major forums use it, and for good reasons. VforVoluntary.com | Youtube.com/Nielsio | Reddit.com/r/austrian_economics | Post Points: 20
The way to do effective tree-threading for posts is this:
The Active Topics page looks the same. But when you click on a thread, instead of going straight to all posts, it expands a map of the thread itself. It shows who replied to the OP and the branching trees of replies to each person. Personal arguments between two posters you don't care about form one single branch that is separate from the rest.
OP
1st reply to OP (just the poster's name is shown)
Reply to the 1st reply (again just the poster's name)
Reply to the reply to the 1st reply
Angry personal reply
Angry response
[More flaming personal stuff...]
Another reply to the first reply
Reply to OP
Reply to the second reply
Reply to the reply to the second reply
[Interesting conversation develops between two discussants...]
So if you see a long, snaking back and form exchange between two people you don't want to read, you can completely ignore it. You don't have to scroll past it in this lame vertical format. This makes it actually possible to go off on tangents in threads without destroying the main thread and making it unreadable after the second page, as is now the norm. It makes it way easier to follow the discussion as it branches out into various sub-discussions, instead of how it currently always peters out or turns into a cacophony of different arguments that only the most careful and dedicated can keep track of, with people constantly wondering who's replying to whom, and having to include some kind of quote to make that clear when there is otherwise no need.
The only disadvantage to that is you have click on each individual post to read it, but that could be remedied by having a button to "Expand all posts replying to this one."
Or you could do it like Reddit, or even better, like LessWrong.
Why anarchy fails
I have a suggestion for the new forum: Make it so that by default private messages are enabled and that users opt out of them. Here we have so that they disabled and users opt in to have them enabled.