I realize it says Beta when you enter the boards, and that it functions very differently from the forums. But are you replacing the Forums in favor of the Boards? And when could we expect that? At least, in what phase of developping the Boards can we start to expect it's full release?
Hopefully. We generally think the forums as they sit are in a pretty bad state. They're much more difficult to moderate, they pose a security risk, they're much harder to build on/improve, and they don't scale very well.
I think the people who really like the forums over the boards have some pretty legitimate criticisms about some of the fundamentals of the boards. Some of which are objective and some of which are just preferential.
We have some upcoming improvements that we believe address many of the criticisms that forum-goers have and so when we roll those out we're going to take another shot at getting feedback.
At the same time - I like the culture of civil discourse and collaboration here, I like the more aggressive approach to moderation and I like having a tighter-knit community so as we expand we're going to do our best to preserve what we think is strong on this side of the house.
Edit: to the people downvoting - it would be very helpful to also hear the rationale. As we've said a bunch of times - the burden is on us to build something that's worth so it's fair to expect that if we can't deliver on that then we're going to make the transition.
There have been a few red comments on this, the summary is that it won't replace vBulletin forums for a while. Their objective is to improve the Boards enough that people will switch over of their own volition and NOT suddenly shutting off vBulletin and forcing people over to the Boards. But yes, the purpose of the Boards is to eventually replace the older forums.
I know that doesn't give any hardnumbers or dev cycle checkpoints to look out for, but I will also say that if they're even thinking about shutting down vBulletin there will be plenty of warning.
are you replacing the Forums in favor of the Boards?
I don't think the Forums will ever be fully replaced unless there is such a small minority of the playerbase using that platform that it becomes worthless by its own accord. As an example; if there are 50 players using GD, there's pretty much no conceivable reason to keep it around any more because it no longer facilitates conversation.
in what phase of developping the Boards can we start to expect it's full release?
I might be wrong here, but my assumption is that it will continue to stay a beta until they have implemented the features they consider to be "core". Examples might be subscriptions, creation of new boards, private messaging, etc.
