Can we improve upon this forum? Now I find it cumbersome to navigate through the treads. I a very much in favor of the style of http://stackoverflow.com/ , where the best answer(s) is floating to the top by a karma system. This has multiple advantages. to name a few: you get a higher signal to noise ratio, it encourages to make a nice contribution, you can find a good answer quicker.
Yet more popularity contests :? For straight factual answers this idea is fine. For an opinion based discussion, not so much. At best it would ruin the flow of a discussion, at worst the person with the "catchiest" way of expressing an opinion gets upvoted, while walls of text (which can be very informative) are buried deeper and deeper as fewer and fewer people read all the way to the bottom. I don't like the idea of the value of a post being gauged on its popularity with the 'average' forum poster.
as nanolathe wrote: the concept of stackoverflow does not really work for discussions that move from A to B to C to D, because the order is important.
A "like" system like on the Castle Story forums might be useful though, it'd allow people to show their agreement with a certain post without cluttering the thread with "me too"/"I agree" replies.
The forums are probably due for an update of some kind, but I don't think the stackoverflow style is the proper style for us. That's an explicit question / answer format, this forum is not.
As with other sites it works well, and would cut down on +1 posts. If you can also neg a post it makes the 'poll-taking' better imo, but can introduce friction between idiots.
what I would find useful is an icon indicating that one of the officials have posted there, as far as I can make out there isn't one currently.
No that is not what I am saying. I am just saying we have something that works already - This forum works and serves its purpose. If the forums are broken - fix them. But I do not see any major benefit of this other than a popularity contest.
The XenForo forum software is high on my personal list to investigate much more closely when we have time to focus on something like that. It combines a lot of more modern features, and also includes reputation, so it encourages people to post meaningfully. In general, it also supports much better moderation while still allowing a lot more poster freedom, ease of thread searches, etc etc. But it's not something we'll probably get to for a while.
I am all for improved forums software. I am looking at it from a usability point of view; an effective use of screen-space, support users in the goal they want to achieve. I can imagine you are busy and have other priorities. I can help if you like, I have experience
The main change I would make is to toggle the SMNC/PA boards. When I click "new posts" I'd rather not see hundreds of irrelevant SMNC threads, since I don't play that game.
I am an admin on a Xenforo forum and its not as good as Vbulletin, not even close. It does look modern and everything but it doesn't have nearly as many features as Vbulletin and it is buggy if you decide to use add-ons that indeed make the forum much better.(kinda contradictory but the naked forum is kinda too naked) The moderation tools are decent and easy to go around with but I much more prefer Vbulletin simply cause you feel like you have more control.
