What really happened to this forum?

I'm sorry Butrflynet, but I am seperating functionality and familiarity. I understand that I may not be able to completely seperate the two, but I have tried my hardest in the evaluation of this site. I do understand the differences between the two (Web development is a part of my daily job).

"Better" is a matter of opinion, though. No website is all things to all people.

Better is not a matter of opinion when there is a criterion that each thing is evaluated against. I do a better job at philosophical analysis than my wife does, no opinion there. My wife does a better job at cooking than I do, no opinion there.

What I'm trying to get at is that "better" is not just a matter of opinion. Some things do a better job than others at certain things. With respect to saving the old information and migrating the old PF users, Robert, et al., did a better job than some of the other forum owners (particularly the owners of those forums that have "gone the way of the dodo"). However, the fact that Robert did this does not add any value to the functionality of this site evaluated against the functionality of the old site, which is what my "better" comment is focused on.

By the way, thanks to you (DrewDad), Butrflynet, and failures art for the discussion. I also truly mean that. Discussion is what drives forums like this. In a certain respect, opinions also drive forums like this (when they are appropriately used). I apologize if I came/come off the wrong way. Internet discussion is a tough cookie as we cannot/do not know the people we are dialoging with. (This is not a cop-out or a way to make myself "look good" and shed the "complaining" label that has been applied to me, I'm just trying to let you know how I feel about our discussion (and the way I feel about many of the discussions I have on sites like this.)

So soda, not pop. Gotcha.


You are describing features.


Because of what? Different features?


You're not telling Robert. This is exactly what I told you to do: Go to the feedback thread and provide input so that features and other issues can get sorted out. You said you'd do no such thing.


Who is making the argument that this is a better forum because RG did a nice thing? My argument is that for all your desires, you need to do one thing: wait.


If you're going to tell dad thanks for cooking dinner, go to him. How is he going to find it here?

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We know how you feel. We went through the same adjustment curve. You think you folks are complaining? You should go back in the time machine and read the complaints about the change to this format from the very folks who are now welcoming you with open arms and trying to assure you that it isn't that bad and is worth the annoyances to interact with the great bunch of personalities here.

Here's one from two years ago to satisfy your curiosity should you have a curiosity to feed:

New A2K Annoyances

The good thing about it is that since you folks are here and voicing similar annoyances, it has pushed some of the fixes higher up on the to do list so we'll all benefit sooner from it. Thanks for the help!

Pretty much what we've all rather intimately witnessed. Out of curiosity, what alternate narrative did you have in mind?



The site being hacked was not the motivation for the merger, the merger was planned prior to the Philforum purchase and I would not have purchased the forum otherwise. I do not know what would have happened to the forum, and can't substantiate claims made that it would have closed (it's true that something needed to happen or it would have closed, and that I purchased it after most other buyers on the flippa marketplace had passed but that doesn't necessarily mean it would have died, just that something needed to have happened in order for it to have continued online).

The site being hacked was the reason for the rushed timing and the rough landing, but not the merger itself, without which I would not have been willing to spend the $5k on PhilosophyForum.com (as most can tell from the 6 months or so that I owned that forum I spend more effort and time on this forum than I did on that and other forums that I own or operate). Simply put, forums (and other social sites) have a network effect where the value of the site is in the membership.

If you have great social software but no users it is a worse site than bad software with lots of users. Basically, the value is in the social connections.

So I will continue to merge my other smaller forums into this one, sometimes they are dying communities or communities that can't get off the ground and that will have a better chance of maintaining enough momentum to sustain forum activity here than on their own. I also don't like seeing good communities die so when I see them dying or for sale I'll sometimes take a gamble on them.

Despite the squeaky wheels (no derogation intended, I understand that the complaining is part and parcel of such change) that tend to set the narrative on the forums the truth is that if you take a2k's traffic prior to the merge, and take philforum's traffic prior to the merge, and add them together you get about what we have right now and both communities are going to emerge stronger after this (and the complaints will start long tailing in about 10 days in my opinion).

I know there are a number of ways this is seen as a less-ideal (to put it less absolutely) forum than the Philosophy forum, I think some cultural issues are transitive, others are not. Most software issues are transitive, as we'll work to improve this software (that has a far better core on a fundamental level than the previous software did).

One of the big legitimate differences/complaints that I am currently working to address is the "one big room" feel a2k has and how fundamentally there is a different tone here (more literal, less figurative is a good way Butrflynet put it) and that niches on this site would be better served to have more ability to develop differing culture (tone, etc). We don't do a good enough job of letting niches have microcosms on a2k. I'm not just talking about groups and the total microcosm they will represent, but also how too many different interests are pushed into one single grid.

We will address that very soon (measured in days) with features that do the following:

1) Read tracking: following this new posts grid is much less efficient than the last one due to read tracking. On the last one if you read a topic and no new posts had been made since it did not show up on the list, meaning each user had more coverage with less effort. This is coming in days to a2k.

2) Forum filtering: by default the topic grids (e.g. New Posts) will not contain all topics, but rather the topics in forums you have tagged or participated in. Users will also be able to manage this list and manually add/remove what they want as well as opt out of the filtering all together and see all threads if they want.

The cultural effect we are aiming for here is to allow users who are sick of any particular subject (e.g. word games are the most unpopular type of thread on a2k) to get rid of them, as well as more gradual and interest-based introduction to the firehose of a2k topics. Put more simply, it would offer options to better compartmentalize the forums and let them develop culture that differs from each other to higher degrees. Put even more simply, it could mean for an a2k user that the philforum merger will be less overwhelming and for a Philforum user that there will be fewer Chatty Cathy's criticizing differences in tone and personality on their philosophy threads.

We'll also be doing groups in the very near future as well and will be importing the Philosophy forum structure and members as a group.

Anyway, that is what we are planning in the very near future (next couple of days for some, next two weeks for others) and we'll continue to improve where objective criticisms are made, but on a fundamental level some may just not agree with merging forums, and I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that. Some will like it, others won't. You can't please everyone but we'll try to come as close as we can.



The site was up for sale yes, and on both forums I have spoken openly about it several times. You might not have seen me do so, but that is merely a function of my incomplete ubiquity and not any particular deceit.

Is there a particular narrative or deceit you have in mind? I'm a bit curious as to what nefarious motives you imagine (hoping it's more creative that some of the ones I've heard, if you are to be a villain you might as well be a good one).

Not automatically, but it can make good products and we are willing to put in the work, which is what I think was his point.



Features/functionality, call it what you want but if you can objectively describe your opinion it can be constructive criticism that can be actionable.



Sorry 'bout that, but it happens. Hopefully we'll have another chance at your forum patronage in the future when we've improved more. And again, if there's any particular functionality that you would like to recommend I'm always interested in hearing about it.

It's probably due to mental homogenization of the opinions into one big broken record, each Philforum user could just opine politely once and it'd seem like a broken record due to volume.

I've seen this transition several times now (and incidentally, a lot of the people telling you guys to stop whining did the very same thing when we went from phpBB to this software) and it usually dies down at a point I estimate is about 10 days away.

At some point, the forum gets sick of navel gazing and talking about themselves and decide to get back to talking about other topics but until then the feel for the forum is of generalized angst and that is what I think you are seeing people lash out about occasionally (just being sick of all the angst already). Soon it just fades, and life goes on.

Not quite. Perhaps you did not read my post. Both forums have this feature: List My Posts. The implementation of this feature is different, do you not agree? It may be that the implementation of this feature is different because of different features, but that is not the case. The implementation is different because the platforms which the two sites use/d are different. Sure PF.com had more features in the implementation, but that is not what I am talking about, per se. I am looking at the overall picture of the functionality of a feature that both sites share.

Others have said to "wait and see what happens". Unless this site is rewritten to use the old VB Bulliten Board system (I think that's the name of the old platform), it will never be the same. The VB system has always seem to be the best to me.

Saying "Soda" and saying "Pop" reference the same thing. Saying "functionality" and saying "features" does not reference the same thing. Funtionality is seperate from any particular feature of a website.

If I may ask.. how do you define the functionality of a webiste?



I am describing implementation of a feature... See above.



See above.



Good point. Let me chage my analogy. If my dinner is a horable dinner, I have no problem with my son telling his sister, his mother, or his school friends. Why? Because he is not complaining about the dinner, he is talking about it. If I fail and cooking in his opinion, I fail at cooking. If this site fails in my opinion, it fails.



Sorry, I should have been more explicit. I was referencing a post made by DrewDad, my mistake.

As to waiting, waiting is fine. But waiting does not change my experience or my opinion of this site as evaluated against the old site today.



It seems that Robert has no problem finding my posts... As he posted on this topic himself. I'm responding to my feelings about the forum in my posts and my feeling is that Robert did a noble thing, so I expressed it.

I think it's a lot of both. There are huge, fundamental things that the Philforum software had that this doesn't (they came from much more feature-complete forum software than a2k's previous phpBB software).

But you are on the right track with familiarity. See, forum software is generally god-awful. People who've never used it and are not power internet users are often very confused by it. But forum users aren't.

When this software launched it was full of usability treats that testing showed was much easier to use. Little details like returning you to where you were replying from when you post instead of dumping you on the end of the thread where your new posts is. Things like having a lot less clutter and making the core important functionality more prominent (those big green buttons for example are big green buttons for a reason, and all the action items tend to stand out better than on typical forum design).

So when the a2k users kept telling me that this software was less "user friendly" it make the usability geek in me go nuts. I kept studying the analytics and trying to make sense of why they were saying one thing but data showed much more use, etc.

When other forum users came along with their own culture shock and I saw some of the same forum users telling them that this is easy to use it perfectly illustrated how much of it all was influenced by familiarity.

There are legitimate features missing here that they are right to complain about (I'd want to kick someone in the nuts for moving me from read-tracking to no read-tracking alone for example, that they had private groups that are not online as well as blogs and photo albums are all very legitimate knocks on this too) but it's also very true that a huge part of this is just familiarity, and that 4-6 weeks of regular use will likely erase a lot of the "user unfriendliness".

Actually, I want do debunk this one. We like doing this, so this is what we'd do in all the time we can afford to do it in. However we had a large other project (the kind that pays the bills) that we were working on and that launched the week prior to the merger.

The plan had been for us to turn our attention to the a2k development work and do it prior to the merger (merging with groups ready etc) but after it got hacked again we decided to kill the old software immediately and just iterate live.

They are certainly helping provide lots of feedback and shape priorities, but they aren't moving us any faster because we'll always go as fast as we can afford to (we like what we do so time is the biggest constraint), when we have to work on the bill-paying projects we have to make a2k wait and we just launched our biggest bill-paying project earlier this month and now have more development time available for a2k.

Thank you, Robert. You seem like quite the GENTELman (thought that was funny, myself... and I do mean it).

The site has not lost my patronage because of the merger. Classes, Family, Paper Revisions, Presentations, Work... and everything else that gets in the way is the cause of my lost patronage. Sometimes I desire to communicate with fellow philosophers for whatever reason, and this site provides a good sandbox to play in. The sand within which we play is now different, but the players seem to be the same (for the most part).

Again, you've done a noble thing. Managing a forum cannot be easy, especially with the security problems that I've heard reference to. However, this does not change the fact that some sites do a better job at serving information and information management than other sites. Of the multitude of forums I've been on (for both work and play), the VB system always seems to be the best. However, the VB system may not work well for the purposes of this site, and I understand that. Perhaps this is just my opinion. In fact, without a formal criterion to evaluate against... it is just my opinion.

Thanks for the open opportunity for constructive crticism, perhaps someday it will come your way (but most likely not, see the time constrainers above).

Simple. It is what you can do on the site.

On PF, you could debate and discuss philosophy. On A2K, you can't?


Yes he did find it. Damn him, and his timing!

I'd listen to him though. It's true about the big previous update that came to A2K. I was one of the most vocal people who made direct complaints and was shook up about how the community would fall apart blah blah. I had a list of complaints and I'd send RG links to forums with what I thought was a superior way of doing things. Robert, that bastard, you know what he did? he made lots of patches and improvements. He wasn't all talk. The biggest example is the home page and the integration of tags instead. I remember how excite I was when he made the edits, and remember what I told him: "I have no more complaints." So please, take it from me, you'll get lots more out of what you put in. I'm glad to eat my words on the the changes made. It meant that things can change and become better. Don't let your ambition stop with what you had at PF, either. I think the management here is willing of let the community drive the site's development in many creative ways. This won't be the last change to ever happen here, nor do I suspect it will be the greatest of controversy.

In the meantime, I've already noticed plenty of mingling and heated debate is even forming. If this site is so bad, here's my advice: Go to heaven for the weather, and hell for the company.

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I agree with you if you say that VB is the best forum software in its class. As long as you realize the class is generally small-time sites that can get by with cheap, out-of-box software that might be a can of worms under the surface. But on a fundamental level it is just god-awful and wasteful software (as is most common out-of-box forum software) and this forum software, while lacking the polish and features of VB is objectively better in fundamental ways (such as performance, scalability etc).

And for one, it won't constantly have automated attacks that out-of-box software constantly has. This software was breached once, and it was through the first time PhilosophyForum was hacked (letting them onto our server).

But I agree that these are also very subjective things (and most people say best = what they are most familiar with, for old-time a2k users it was phpBB). I think one big thing that lots of people may be right about is how I abandoned tabular design typical to most forum software. Most forum software copy each other's god awful design (here's an example of someone I think does fantastic software who also thinks forums suck and who approached it differently as well: http://bbpress.org/) but even a stopped clock is right twice a day and more tabular layout might be an improvement and it might make a comeback next design refresh.

By your standard, discussing philosophy on this site, the old PF site, or an archaic text based BBS are equivalent. Surely you would not agree.

It seems that what you can do on a site is not functionality, but the means by which you do those things is functionality. (maybe?)

I don't want the last word for the sake of having the last word, but I will say this: If there is one thing I've learned in my studies of philosophy, both in the classroom and out of the classroom, a philosopher should never keep his mouth shut. Dialogue is the driving force in philosophy. The dialogue that we have had stemmed out of my feelings about the failure of this site. I expressed those feelings and out of the ensuing discussion, much was revealed. Most of the revelation came from Robert in his previous few posts, some from you and the others. All in all, I think what has been discussed here was important for my views about this site and potentially other peoples views.

Thanks again for the discussion. In general, perhaps I need to clarify what I mean about the funcationality of a website, but I do beleive that functionality is a seperate beast from features. Funcationality might be born out of features, but it is something that is seperate from any particular feature. The web is full of sites that do the same thing, but the ability of those sites to provide a workable, easy to use, and functional interface with which to do those things varies. The functionality of no two sites are the same, even if they aim to do the same thing.

--Post Edit--

While I stated that a philosopher should never keep his mouth shut, I will add this caveat: he must also realize that he can be wrong about his expressions. I do, honestly, believe that with almost everything I express. While Socrates was ironic in his dealings, he seemed to want people to prove him wrong so he could learn something new. I myself am not ironic in with respect to being proven wrong. In fact, being wrong in one of the things I like best, because that means I learned soemthing new.

Humility is an important part of any philosopher. Please understand that in the dealings, expressions, and dialogues that I have online, I am humble enough to recognize that I may very well be wrong. But, the burden of proving me wrong lies with my interlocultor.

What's that? More boxes?

That bbpress.org example was interesting.

The avatars are a bit huuuuuuge, but it 'looks' good. Of course, I picked a thread to read where some folks were squabbling, so it looked like home

Thanks again, Robert. Keep on keeping on and make this the best damn forum to ever exist on the Interent. PF.com deserves that.

Most of the time that is what it means, but basically I'm talking about the difference between Google search results and a spreadsheet.

Most forums have old-school table-based design with everything in columns (like a spreadsheet). Our grids are more "paragraphical" (like a Google search result). I think we may be able to get the best of both worlds by making the table design as understated as possible while taking advantage of the increased scanability of topics by putting data in columns but there are competing interests between degree of use. For new and casual users just the topic title linked prominently is the key and as prominent as possible is best. For forum regulars prominence for the main items is less important (they already know where it is, it doesn't have to stand out) and overall data presentation may be more.

But it's a tough balance to do for both forum regulars and more casual users. Most of what we do that is good for new users is not good for regulars (e.g. the quote button not being available by default makes the page less confusing for those new to forums but is seen as a glaring deficiency by forum regulars). We'll have to find a way to strike a balance and present more of the data prominently without making it seem too cluttered for non-power users.

Thank you...that is actually very interesting to this particular Luddite.

I don't quite know why, but it is.