[21cdb]

With the introduction of the enhanced activity stream in BP 1.2 communication improved a lot. Forums are used less and less, users call them to be “alien” and most is done from within the main Activity Stream, but users can’t reply on forum posts.

I was asking myself if it would be possible to utilize the great Activity Stream technology to build some way of new Forums based on a new type of Acivity Items -> “Forum-Activity-Items”.

It would require an additional selectbox that would enable users to mark their “Update” as a “Forum Post” or “Discussion” and the ability to add a Topic-Title.

Everything else should be just plain html and css styling. I’m not sure if the Activity Stream technology is able to cope with this kind of requirement, but it would feel much more Buddypress than bbPress and could improve from further development of Buddypress instead of depending on bbPress.

I did a mockup about this idea:

http://trac.buddypress.org/attachment/ticket/1559/ForumActivityPublishing.gif

Related Trac Ticket:

http://trac.buddypress.org/ticket/1559

I would love to hear your thoughts about it.

[r-a-y]

I’m in favour of it. Makes sense from an usability perspective and it doesn’t alienate the forums as you mentioned.

[Avi M]

Dito I think its a great idea!! I myself am having a really hard time figuring out how to make the most of our forums and I think this is a big step in the right direction!

[abcde666]

definitely great idea to enhance usability !

Timewise, I am in favor of implementing proper Privacy-Features for BP at first.

[Mike Pratt]

@21cdb you clearly put a lot of thought and effort into your ideas. bravo. on this one, I am slightly confused though. Aside from the absense of syncing of the stream and forums (forthcoming according to Andy) What do you mean forums are used less and less? To my mind, they are still an awesome way to have discussions remain anchored contextually to the group to which they originate & belong. (indeed it is a pain to have to send a user back to the forum to reply but I view that as a temp setback)

I am also confused by the forums are mor bbPress than BP. I thnk the default styling alone removes the similarities. When Adny syncs them, does this accomplish your goal? (I like the ‘post in’ drop down btw)

[21cdb]

@mike that would clearly accomplish the main goal of this idea. I totally agree with you that forums are the best way to have complex and ordered discussions.

The reason i posted this idea as “Forums based on Activity-Items (instead of bbPress)” and not just as “Frontpage Forum Posts” is that i thought it would be great if the forums could directly benefit from improvements on the Activity Stream Technology in the future.

For instance if there would be “Global Content Tagging” (https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/global-content-tagging) and “Attachments for Activity Items” (https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/attachments-for-activity-items) added in a future version of BP the forums could directly benefit of this features, because they were build with the same technology. This should be valid for plugins too. I know this would be a big step, certainly with some drawbacks at the beginnig, but overall i believe this would be more straight forward and future proof.