mark, thanks for your answer to my previous comment.
I certainly wouldn't presume to tell someone how to write their software, particularly when they're being generous in creating something like Vanilla as open-source. I respect that and the tremendous amount of work that goes into a project like this. I also respect your desire to do something different. That's where I'm coming from in my own work (as a webcomic creator). I'm replying again because the presence of this board itself indicates that you value thoughtful feedback, and I'm still very interested in understanding and using Vanilla.
But, I'm not very experienced as a board administrator and my PHP skills are pretty basic. So, in choosing a board, I'm coming at this largely from the point of view of a board user. I've used a number of forums, and many of them seem slow, clunky and loaded down with a lot of unnecessary features, as you mention. That's why I was attracted to Vanilla when I read about it.
The issue here, though, doesn't seem to be one of repeating extraneous features from other boards as much as one of how poeple actually use a board to find and exchange information. I appreciate your desire to change the way people think about and use forums, but I hope you'll understand that I'm being sincere when I say again that I don't quite get it. If this is a better way to use a discussion forum, I'd like to understand it better.
Maybe I'm dense, but if the community is large enough, and covers enough different topics that it would make sense to organize the posts into categories, I still don't see the advantage of starting with a long list of mixed topics over a selection of categories.
I get the concept of tags on Flickr, but there you're dealing with almost as many topics as a search engine (although even search engines often have associated indexes, i.e. lists of categories). It seems to me that even if I was to use Vanilla's search feature or the categories as a filter, I would still want to do that first: filter before viewing a list. Am I missing something?
Ahh but the tags here wouldn't be like flickr. That is, here the "categories" are defined by the admin. And then those are the tags you get to choose from when making a post. The poster won't get to choose new tags. That would certainly defeat the purpose of it being a forum.
I believe the power of Vanilla lies in its ability to facilitate online conversations. The forum really shines with rapid, informal communities. It is like group based email, but way more fun.
Those wanting further information architecture and tons of whiz-bang features may certainly find it lacking for their needs. I'd imagine extensions will continue to fill the gap, but it does not seem at all the vision of what Mark has created.
Mark is right on keeping a lock on the core right now. The sneakerization of web applications these days is really an issue. Simplicity is awfully underrated. Each marginally used feature simply gets in the way of what Vanilla is all about - community interaction.
I'll just say one more thing and then leave the discussion to the wolves :)
I do plan on implementing a user preference that allows users to specify the category tab as their "start page". It is a very small amount of code, and if people like CharleyParker feel strongly enough about it to write a polite, well-thought-out, five paragraph response on the topic, then it must be important.
Thanks, mark. I didn't want this to sound like just a feature request, I really am interested in how different approaches work.
I'd also like to point out that I wouldn't be here taking the time to write thoughtful comments if I wasn't already really impressed with Vanilla.
It is amazing how useful having the discussions page first is. I spent the last few hours trying to make the categories page display first, when I finally realized how great the standard vanilla setup is.
In the meantime, two years passed, since your last posting here... But I stumbled upon this problem for the first time today.
Is the categories page something like here? http://theskateboardmag.com/forum/categories.php I think this skater magazine did a good compromise: you see there three tabs, on top of the page: the first one is "discussions", the second one "categories" and the third "search". So, those who want it, can clic to have a page displayed, that shows a list of the categories, that could, in my opinion, be even a list of discussions, but organised on categories (the category names are the headers of the list divisions).
I still don't get it, how I can make a page like this to appear, i will have to search more, probably... (i'm using the b&w wordpress 2010 theme).
Well, after upgrading to 2.0.17.8 i discovered that all my questions are answered. I found the new homepage configuration in the dashboard. It's great that now one can choose between different sorting of the discussion list.
@Mark i think adding a categories tab to main menu like you are planing is best, in my view as well. which will present categories something like on http://www.squidoo.com/ home page.
I love the discussion page as it is. I think it will be a great idea to introduce topics on the side bar, more like 'tags', showing the latest and most discussed topics.
Improving 'Activity Feed' page to include the discussion treads/ more like news feed of facebook will take vanilla to a new level, in my view.
Comments
only speaking for myself here
I believe the power of Vanilla lies in its ability to facilitate online conversations. The forum really shines with rapid, informal communities. It is like group based email, but way more fun.
Those wanting further information architecture and tons of whiz-bang features may certainly find it lacking for their needs. I'd imagine extensions will continue to fill the gap, but it does not seem at all the vision of what Mark has created.
Mark is right on keeping a lock on the core right now. The sneakerization of web applications these days is really an issue. Simplicity is awfully underrated. Each marginally used feature simply gets in the way of what Vanilla is all about - community interaction.
Is the categories page something like here? http://theskateboardmag.com/forum/categories.php
I think this skater magazine did a good compromise: you see there three tabs, on top of the page: the first one is "discussions", the second one "categories" and the third "search".
So, those who want it, can clic to have a page displayed, that shows a list of the categories, that could, in my opinion, be even a list of discussions, but organised on categories (the category names are the headers of the list divisions).
I still don't get it, how I can make a page like this to appear, i will have to search more, probably... (i'm using the b&w wordpress 2010 theme).
I love the discussion page as it is. I think it will be a great idea to introduce topics on the side bar, more like 'tags', showing the latest and most discussed topics.
Improving 'Activity Feed' page to include the discussion treads/ more like news feed of facebook will take vanilla to a new level, in my view.