Re: The BuddyPress UI Design and conceptual approach to Social Networking
The irony of “BuddyPress shouldn’t be about forums”, and “if you want a forum, don’t use BP” and “bbPress is a parasite in BP…” is that the FORUM is the center point of activity here on buddypress.org. Almost all of the live activity here among you developers, admins, etc. is based in the forum. When was Andy’s last blog post – almost a month ago? The Forum is the bread and butter of this site.
There is nothing incompatible about Forums and social networks. It is perfectly appropriate to use forums in a social networking framework. Forums are central to buddypress.org, LinkedIn, and other thriving social networking sites.
There was a specific need for forums in BP, and that’s why bbPress was directly integrated into BP as a core function. The bbPress-based bp-forums component is one of the most solid parts of BP, and Andy has pledged to reveal even more of the Forum features of bbPress in upcoming versions of BP (such as tag support).
I’ve spent a lot of volunteer time working to strengthen and troubleshoot the BP forums, and add key functionality to it for the benefit of the whole BP community. I appreciate the fact that Forums are central to BuddyPress. I would be dismayed if BP did an about-face and decided to abandon forum support. Fortunately, I don’t see many of the “anti-forum” comments coming from key developers.
