Can't seti get a decent board system? there are plenty of free ones out there that do a pretty good job. I know climate predictor uses some.

These boards dont have auto auto-notification (automatically subscribe to threads under certain circumstances, like if you create them), the order on peoples posts is whacky, you get notifications of "a user has replied to a thread to which you are subscribed" if you yourself post anything to such a thread...

Is there any particular REASON why this boardware is used?

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I do not have a superman complex; for I am God, not superman!

It was created by the berkeley staff and is a part of the Boinc server software. If they use their own design, then they don't have to pay anybody royalties and can freely distribute it. The only thing they had to pay for is the programming package to create it. when you look at the other projects, you see that most of them are using the board with just little modifications to meet their needs.

Why would you need to pay royalties on open source boardware?

Example: www.phpbb.com

"phpBB is a high powered, fully scalable, and highly customizable Open Source bulletin board package. phpBB has a user-friendly interface, simple and straightforward administration panel, and helpful FAQ. Based on the powerful PHP server language and your choice of MySQL, MS-SQL, PostgreSQL or Access/ODBC database servers, phpBB is the ideal free community solution for all web sites."

There are a bunch of other ones... Open source means its completely free, and you distribute the source code, so anyone may modify it and submit improvements... (or make improvements and keep them for themselves)

Why did they put all that time and effort into making boardware when there were a bunch already available for free as open source freeware. (I mean... they could have put that effort towards improving seti).

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I do not have a superman complex; for I am God, not superman!

I like the "feel" and "looks" of this board. I think they have done a great job of setting it up and tweaking it. Just my opinion.

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<img src='http://www.boincsynergy.com/images/stats/comb-912.jpg'>

> Can't seti get a decent board system? there are plenty of free ones out there
> that do a pretty good job. I know climate predictor uses some.

First of all I think this message board has already gotten much better than what it was a couple of years ago.

> These boards dont have auto auto-notification (automatically subscribe to
> threads under certain circumstances, like if you create them), the order on
> peoples posts is whacky, you get notifications of "a user has replied to a
> thread to which you are subscribed" if you yourself post anything to such a
> thread...


The features you mention are already in the taskbase - which means they are going to be made sooner or later. The thing about notifications has taskbase #1441.

Could you elaborate on "the order on peoples posts is whacky"?

> Is there any particular REASON why this boardware is used?

Yes, indeed there is. I had a look at phpBB when it was decided whether to carry on with the current system or completely switch to something else. I must admit that I entered this project with the same thoughts as you - "change to phpBB" - and started to examine just what should be done to do it.

While having a lot of nice features it is also an extremely large codebase (when you think about the fact that its only purpose, although essential, is to provide a forum). The current forum is very tightly integrated into the rest of the serverside BOINC software:
- The users
All userdata is taken directly from the BOINC user database, if users are already logged in they will also be able to use the forums directly.
If we switched to phpBB we would have to rewrite either the BOINC account system or the phpBB authorization modules.
This is a problem that CPDN has not overcome yet (and one of the reason why they would like to switch from phpBB to the BOINC forum...).
- The layout
phpBB uses a very strong templating system. BOINC also have a templating system - quite a lot simpler and more direct, though. With phpBB projects should either provide their layout in two places (and the two different template layout formats) OR someone should come up with a wrapper for the BOINC->phpBB templates.
- Some features
phpBB has a lot of features - also a lot of features you are never going to use. Here we have chosen the opposite approach: only add features if people really need them.
This makes these forums a bit more easy to navigate and a bit faster at the same time.
A feature that would be impossible using phpBB is the self-moderation system used in the Q/A area of the site (does phpBB have a rating system as well?, I don't know...). The phpBB system relies more heavily on the use of moderators. One of the main points is that the forum should be able to moderate itself when the project administrators do not have the time to do so.

More points, but you get the idea.

So the conclusion was: It would take more time to change and integrate phpBB into BOINC than it would take to simply add the most usefull features to the existing system.

Personally I don't think that that many features are missing anymore. You should take a look at the entries in the taskbase to get an idea of what is is missing and what will happen next.

> First of all I think this message board has already gotten much better than
> what it was a couple of years ago.
It's definately better than Seti Classic.

> Yes, indeed there is. I had a look at phpBB when it was decided whether to
> carry on with the current system or completely switch to something else. I
> must admit that I entered this project with the same thoughts as you - "change
> to phpBB" - and started to examine just what should be done to do it.
I also prefer this to phpBB. Janus, you guys at Berk are doing a good job so don't let any detractors get you down.

Well, just to clarify things up, this wasnt supposed to be an attack on the forums, I was actually curious. I mean, it did seemed to be an aweful lot of time and effort, for no concrete benefit.

However, you say that the benefits are there.
1. Lower server usage.
2. Easier to integrate into the BOINC user system (easier then changing an open source forumware to do the same that is).

And that the cost in time and effort to develop it, and the lack of features in comparison, are both acceptable for those two benefits. This is a reasonable explanation.
I will be honest and admit that I still like my idea better. But at least now it makes sense instead of just seeming to be an arbitrary random bad decision.

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I do not have a superman complex; for I am God, not superman!