Gotta agree with Pinguin, and less diplomatically: so far I can't say I've heard a truly good argument in favor of this format, whereas the popularity of more typical forum layouts pretty much speaks for itself.

I'd be happy to offer up my time to help moderate a phpBB forum. I'm at a keyboard almost all day every day, anyway, and as I've noted before I already run several phpBB forums so I know my way around...

i truely hope this forum doesnt get changed i disagree completely with everyone who says it does, this type of forum in my opinion aids discussion espically from people who wouldnt normally, an example of this is djbent saying shes only interested in dip related topics so in a traditional forum would only look at that section but she made a very interesting contribution to the drugs thread

With real forum software we could just create a vote thread. LOL :)

@Mr. Pinguin - Again I'll reiterate that I think most of the features you want could be added to this forum without having to switch to a traditional phpBB style forum, which frankly is exactly what I DON'T want. I was thinking about it last night and actually one of the main things I want to avoid is the standard forum style where all you can see about a new thread is it's title. One of the things I like here is that you can get a title and a short explanation/introduction to a thread here and see it all without clicking on anything.

I'll say it again, there are a number of traditional forums I frequent, but none more than this one, and none where I participate in as wide a variety of threads, and I think if we switched to a more traditional style forum we'd lose some of what makes this place unique.

So again, I'm all for adding a few features, and improving things here and there, but I really don't want to switch to a standard type of forum.

Oh, one last thing! The other thing that has popped up in the past when this has been brought up is the Kestas really wanted a simple way for all of us to talk to one another here using our actual game screen names, which would be tough to set up with a traditional forum.

I love this forum too. I'm not sure I would like checking each "area" like a normal forum. Here it is all in your face for all to participate and not miss anything.

Perhaps if the new forum had a section that consolidated all messages so it would be like this, it wouldn't be bad.

It's easy to set up phpBB to show you a portion of the first post.

Integration with the userlist wouldn't be remotely "tough".

The only section-splitting I'd advocate would be for "game mechanics" threads (e.g. "mods please unpause") and I can't imagine anyone would "miss" having those mixed into the general discussion.

Frankly I'd prefer the devs spend their time working on the game. I'm here for that, primarily, not the forum. Hours spent adding forum features are hours not spent improving Diplomacy.

The official position on the forum:

- What we have is very efficient (which is important) and works pretty well despite traffic way beyond what it was designed for

- Other forum systems are difficult to integrate into the existing software. If we added phpBB it would feel like a separate site, not a part of the site like this forum does. My search for a complete forum system that can fit into an existing system hasn't turned anything up

Other phpDip derivatives have tackled the forum issue in 2 ways:
- Over at Facebook phpDip they moved to the Facebook built-in forum, which definitely has more features, but as far as I can tell they don't like it (and it's not an option here anyway)
- Over at PlayDiplomacy they moved to phpBB, loosely coupled with phpDip. This provides the generic fully-featured forum experience, but the forum feels like an entirely separate site


So in a nutshell the official position is we're not sure where to go with the forum, some like it, some hate it

Reformists and reactionaries.

@DrOct:
Maybe I gave the impression that I was lobbying for a specific forum type as the solution (pHpBB?). I'm not. I'm merely challenging all the naysayers here who seem to throw up walls against a new forum without valid reasons..

For example, the username integration, the preview text for each thread.. As Ninja says, all these things are quite possible (and they exist on the other forum I frequent).

I don't hate this forum, and I'm not demanding any action to change it, but I feel compelled to continue challenging this forum's apologists because I've seen solutions to (almost) every one of the supposedly intractable problems they present as evidence against a switch.

If nobody wants to make the change, perhaps simply because no one wants to do the work (I don't even know how, myself), or as Kestas says, maybe it's difficult to integrate. That's fine with me. I won't argue there at all.
But I do wish people here would stop imagining an endless list of excuses regarding the evils that *other* forums hold. :)

Figlesquidge votes for 5 or so different section Tabs, with a 6th called 'All'. This is for true traditionalists who still want to see everything in the most-recent-first form. That would then separate things out and as long as there weren't too many sections they would be active enough.
I'm happy to do the work, but I'd like others to agree before I do!

Go for it figle.

I figure good e.gs for tabs might be Diplomacy, Discussions, FaQs and Mod contact

I'm in favor of whatever solution requires the maximum amount of time, money, and aggravation on the part of kestas. Because that's how I roll

(not)

@Figle:
Yes yes, I meant to point that out as well. In most other forum I've seen there's a summary feature for recently active threads, or new threads, or both. Such a feature provides a page just like this, with all the active discussion in one place regardless of category.

Thanks for reminding me Figles (can I call you Figles?). Yet another concern bested by the wonders of modern forum technology.

I still don't know anything about incorporating that stuff into the site (as Kesta said), but I know that many of the forum systems are skinnable.

Most current forum systems are skinnable.

The way I see it, the existing phpBB installation would only need the current userlist imported, then a relatively simple tweak to the phpBB registration process would also create your phpDip profile.

Everything else is already there and running... just link the Forum tab to it. Viola, instant full-feature forum.

"Oh and chris - how come when you say it everyone loves you for your view :S More to the point, why don't you manage such perfect diplomacy ingame!"

I don't know. =(

kestas - thanks for responding on here. The thing I feel like needs the most improvement is having the ability to retrieve a thread. The current system where threads fall off can be quite frustrating.

Jacob - In the next version you'll be able to see a list of threads based on your posts to them (plus whether they have been posted to since you last saw it), from the new home page (plus this'll be available from peoples' profile pages)
I think this'll help people keep track of the posts their interested in, as the forum can be a bit overwhelming at the moment

We also have pagination which allows you to go back to find older threads (though you can't respond to threads older than 3 pages)

One thing that'll be missing in the new version is search for the forum though, because full text search would use so much resources. I'm hoping to make the forum more Google-friendly at some point instead

Sounds like this next version is going to be legendary.

That does sound good... I always thought it would be good to have a list of all my posts somewhere.

The next version sounds exciting. How much longer before it is rolled out?

Based on the todo list Im going by it'll take 6 days of work without any major hiccups, so hopefully 1-2 weeks since the semester ends tomorrow

But I definitely should have split 0.9 into smaller individual updates, it has been months since I forked 0.82 :-(

Oh well, it will be a great improvement!
Mr P - "can I call you Figles" Sure ;)

I think I'm going to stay out of any dev-related comments until 0.9 now though because that will change a lot of peoples views