the inconsistency of inanimate objects!

i've been reading audiworld for many years now and i've always preferred that style forum to the typical zeroforum/phpbb/rforum forum like vwvortex. audiworld uses a php-based system named kawf, which i prefer for a number of reasons:

• kawf: viewing a single page of a forum shows many threads at once, with each thread's posts in-line. this allows for a lot of information to be viewed with a single page load. when users post meaningful content in the subjects of replies, an entire discussion can be read without clicking anything, promoting near real-time discussion in threads.

  zeroforum: only the subject of the initial thread is shown, requiring the user to click on it to see any replies. when viewing a large thread for the first time, users are forced to read every page in sequence to read the small number of replies shown on each page to get any useful information.

• kawf: posts are displayed in a threaded format with each reply underneath and indented, to clearly show which post each one is in reply to. this is how mutt shows e-mail threads which made it very popular.

  zeroforum: one usually has to quote a post's content to reply to it, duplicating information. if the post isn't quoted, it's often very hard to understand which post a user is replying to, especially if the reply ends up being shown on a different page in the thread than the original post. however, when a user is replying to a post with pictures, he usually doesn't trim these out, so a page of replies will show the same pictures over and over again since they are being quoted in order to be replied to.

• kawf: each post has its own url which can be bookmarked or linked to. this page contains only the specific post in question, with its context in the thread shown below it. this also allows each post in a thread to have its own view count.

  zeroforum: one url for the thread itself, but the thread is broken up into pages. if a user is trying to locate a specific post, he has to visit each page and search for a specific inline reply. it may be possible to link to a specific reply inside of a thread by using an anchor, but if previous replies are deleted in a thread and the linked-to post gets bumped back a page, the link will be incorrect.

• kawf: when replies are made to a thread, the thread stays at its same position by default. replies to older threads have no affect on new threads. users may "track" individual threads (and replying to threads tracks them by default) which causes the thread to show on the front page for that user and anyone else that has it tracked, but the same amount of new threads are also shown on the page (so no new ones are bumped off). this allows users to only see recurring threads that are of interest to them. once the new replies to a tracked thread are read, the thread will disappear from the front page until another reply is made, allowing the user to continue seeing only new threads.

  zeroforum: when a reply is made, a thread is always bumped to the top of the front page of the forum index page. users have no control over this and are forced to see the same threads over and over again. a new thread with few replies may quickly get bumped off the page by old, active threads that have constant replies to them (or some stupid user purposely "bumping" his thread to the top just so everyone will see it).

• kawf: when tracked threads are updated, new posts are shown in a different format than old ones. this makes it easy to see at a glance which posts within a thread are new since the last time the thread was seen.

  zeroforum: bumped threads are just pushed to the top of the page with no indication which posts are new. if the new post is on a new page in the thread, it usually requires having to click around and read previous pages to see the context of the new post.

• kawf: because old threads that are replied to are usually only seen by people that have it tracked, it is more common for users to start new threads than to reply to old ones. i see this as a benefit because it causes new information to be posted rather than continuing a large, old thread that may not be relevant anymore.

  zeroforum: because old threads are always on the front page, users are encouraged to reply to them instead of starting new ones. this causes situations like on vwvortex where some threads have over 700 pages of replies, because the same thread has been continuing for over 4 years. of course, none of the recent replies have anything to do with the replies from many pages back, and may not even have to do with the original post. it is impossible to review all 700 pages and try to extract any useful information out of them.

a long time ago i wanted to start a forum for personal discussion so i looked into getting kawf running. i didn't like the code too much and the installation at the time was not very simple, so i wrote my own system that had the same user interface as kawf with some extra features added, but had my own, smaller code underneath using sqlite instead of mysql. i called this software bier and had it available on this site for a while, but my interest faded in operating a forum and i removed the software.

recently i wanted to start a forum again and since i'm doing more ruby on rails now, i decided to rewrite bier in rails (although i'm not sure what to call it now). i worked on it last night and today and it's approaching a very usable state with an efficient interface.

(and yes, ramblin.gs is the domain where i'll be hosting my forum once the code is done.)