Yeah, I think the forums need a little tweaking…
I think a paginated forum discussion loop with only the “legacy” groups – Creating & Extending, Installing BP, Gallery, etc. (or maybe all of them?) – at the top of the support forums page would be nice.
Then there could be just links to these group forums in list format below.
Or this list could also be put in the sidebar (similar to the Vanilla forums – http://vanillaforums.org/discussions ).
hi Boone
The master feed is still working
https://buddypress.org/forums/rss.php
I am still able to see all the updates via that. So I guess, that’s an Intelligent move by @apeatling.
Yes, It feels a little bit clumsy, but that is just a matter of days until we are going to get accustomed of it.
My only concern is, whether the users will be able to find relevant groups to post or will just wonder in the so many 100s of Groups.
Master feed doesn’t really replace the recent posts list, it’s an rss feed and formatted depending on your browser, in Opera that isn’t usable for me as a replacement.
I am very conscious of how changes of the magnitude do take time to settle down with from experiences with another forum that went through a similar conceptual change from original Vbulletin trad forum to a far more community orientated site using Drupal. One thing the regulars and mod agreed on was that to a man/woman we all entered the site via the Tracker page labeled ‘Recent Posts’ that simply kept a single list of all posts made across the sites subforums/groups for those of us that checked all posts this was and remains an absolutely fundamental and vital page to enable fast tracking of new or updated posts along with the ability to filter to our own responded or started topics/posts – something that I feel is going to be missed here?
@boone I guess now that your original thread on the Send Invites plugin should be considered closed? otherwise you end up having two separate areas to track and the attendant confusion that brings, but it feels slightly odd that I now have to find that plugin group, join and remember to keep track of it.
@hnla – I think it’s more important that you leave comments about a given plugin in a place where others are likely to see it (and you’re likely to remember to check them) than that you leave them in a “well-organized” space. Which is to say that you should continue to use the thread if you’d like.
@boone – not sure I tend to agree there, yes point taken it would suit my personal likes and wants, but suit the site/community? not too sure it does, based on the notion of duplicate threads and essential forum nettiquette that says duplicate threads are a bad thing giving rise to confusion. You will end up having multiple places to keep an eye on , I will ask a question already asked elsewhere, someone will make a salient point in one place and it might be overlooked? Just thinking out loud 
I’d have to agree with @hnla here. It’s also too easy to leave a reply in the activity stream: https://buddypress.org/community/activity/
These replys don’t seem to get added to forum threads, so because of multiple posting areas, lots of useful info will easily be lost/looked over.
Comments and replies on the activity stream are just that – on the activity stream. They don’t feed back into the forum.
@boonebgorges
Trying to take this thread back to Boone’s original topic (and I think purpose), I plan on using the forum feature of each plugin’s group as the primary support area for each of my plugins–athough I may still offer a premium support model in another location. I’ll use the primary BP support forum Third Party Components & Plugins as a place to announce any new plugins, but I will do so only after I’ve set up a group for that plugin. That way, I can post a link to the plugin’s new group in my announcement thread.
One issue that remains to be determined is how extracting the discussion of a given plugin to its own support forum will detract from its buzz. In the old model, since all discussion about a given plugin took place within the main (as in the only) support forums container, it was a great place to have your work stay forefront in people’s mind.
It will be interesting to see if plugin discussion will end up in that plugin’s forum. I think it will but that raises the question that should the forum moderators move any threads in the wrong place? I think we should.
Once, of course, someone creates that functionality 
Trying to take this thread back to Boone’s original topic (and I think purpose)
Yep, apologies it was mildly divergent, but felt somewhat pertinent to OP
“I think it will but that raises the question that should the forum moderators move any threads in the wrong place? I think we should. Once, of course, someone creates that functionality”
This functionality exists. I wrote a plugin that allows you to move topic threads. https://buddypress.org/community/groups/buddypress-forums-move-topic-planned-split-and-merge-topic/
I would maybe prefer disabling (or hiding) the activity stream tab in plugin groups and only having a forum.
I don’t want to see two modes of interactivity in the plugin group… just makes things a little harder to manage.
The problem with this idea is the plugin author would need to manually go in and enable the discussion forum.
Not much work, but just thinking aloud!
What I am most excited about is that this new environment will give Andy some seriously valuable feedback about human behavior in a BP world. TestBP is not about getting the most out of a community..it’s just a test bed. BP.org, however, needs to function like a well oiled BP-machine and, while I do like the direction it’s taking (esp the Group Plugin metaphor) I think Andy will be surprised that not all behaviors will be as he expected and the site & BP will have to evolve as a result. It’s all good.
I am shocked, however, that Andy left on the Activity stream Reply function for forum posts which which, by design, bifurcate the support conversations due to those users who live more in the Activity stream than Groups
“Andy left on the Activity stream Reply function for forum posts which which, by design, bifurcate the support conversations due to those users who live more in the Activity stream than Groups”
I agree activity stream replies need to be shut off here… and this is one for which there is an easy fix already available in the admin panel.
This will definitely split the discussion and excitement around a certain plugin. I kind of waited for plugin comments to be made to bring it a recent list and then on occasion I’d read the thread to see the progress made on that plugin. Now I guess I’ll watch the Activity stream for that? Not as likely and so plugins will lose some “hype.”
I guess the key will be adding the right filters to the activity stream so we can filter out all the new members/join groups and see the topics that really matter to us most.
I plan to do much the same as @jeffsayre is; that is, using the groups here for support and announcements.
I’m really enjoying the reduced functionality, increased navigation clicks, and general inability to quickly review the newest forum posts. Awesome
Just setting up a bp support site for my plugins, so I won’t be using my plugin groups here for support at all. Only for announcments maybe. The new site is subscription based as well, which is obviously not possible here
off topic I know, but I have already seen a few replys in the activity stream on this post that don’t show up as replys in this forum post so could cause some confusion – i.e. what is @djpaul refereeing to in relation to @jeffsayre – seen it in the activity stream but that will soon be lost & no longer be relevant to this forum thread.
@thekmen – I’d say you’re ‘on topic’. The new bp.org can’t be used to support plugins until there is a common understanding of how bp.org is organized and operating.
Very happy (in a misery loves company kind of way) to read these posts. I’m having trouble understanding the flow of content on the new buddypress.org. You’d think it would be fairly intuitive given I host a bp site and have been a frequent visitor of the old bp layout. I agree that Activity Stream reply’s to forum posts should be disabled. Where are we posting comments / reporting bugs / asking and answering questions about specific plugins? Plugins now have group pages but there is no group forum. Are we supposed to post Everything on the Group’s Activity Page? That doesn’t seem to lend itself to efficient/effective archiving of various topics and discussions. Maybe we’re still in the early transition stage and I missed the memo explaining ‘who’s on first’. If I did miss an ‘overview’ post about the new bp.org, please point me to it.
I am shocked, however, that Andy left on the Activity stream Reply function for forum posts which which, by design, bifurcate the support conversations due to those users who live more in the Activity stream than Groups
I use etivite-rich’s @nuprn1 (man I wish he had an easier username to remember, display and ‘real’ username) subplugin for Activity stream replies to forum posts that show up inline (ajax-expandable) to the forum posts themselves. It’s perfect, and keeps the conversation from fracturing. Preserves hierarchy in replies, too.
Don’t expect @andy‘s going to do that here, though.
What @mikepratt said is exactly right, though. I’m looking forward to seeing some serious useability changes as a result of using the current BP here. As it stands, and much as I think BP is great stuff, I think it’s a poor fit for the purpose. I am very sympathetic to my users’ concerns and complaints during a recent alpha run with BP for an existing community, even more than I was before, about being confused about how the parts fit together (until I seriously changed things around, changed terminology with the language file, and beefed up forums functionality a lot).
@stwc I’m interested in what changes you made in language file and beefing up forum. About to launch out a new community here and forums are the big weakness right now for sure ~ bbpress needs some bplove !
@bplove I renamed most components — Forums –> Discussions, Topic —> Discussion, for example, and renamed most navigation elements to make the way that things fit together clearer. At the moment, the way things are named is awfully counterintuitive, I think, and a thread I started many months back about rethinking it didn’t get any traction, so shrug.
I trimmed down and redesigned the forums list to change the balance a little more towards useability over prettiness, used @3sixty‘s last-read plugin with some changes to save last-read time to the database so users could switch browsers and computers and not lose their last-read time, changed pagination and added pagination divs at top and bottom (just done today, here, I think), added a link to the last-post in a thread from the front, hacked BP-Like to work with Forums (changing the verbiage to ‘Thank’ rather than ‘Like’ which my users are used to), added favoriting to forum threads, used Rich’s Forums extras plugin to add a Forum index and allow activity-stream replies to forum posts to show up inline with the forum posts themselves, added oembed, attachments, and an HTML toolbar to the textareas in forums, added quoting with some changes (to allow quoting selected text only in a post — still working on that one — and to allow nested quoting) using Rich’s tools, made stickies always sticky on the forum front page rather than just the group forums, shrank avatars and rejiggered layout inthread and about a hundred other changes large and small, all either my ideas or requests and demands from my userbase.
The current implementation of BBpress is weak sauce, but it can be massaged with an awful lot of work to be adequate.
