Forums (was Re: [Actionchix] Website wishlist)

[Terri Oda]

I'm going to second Jane's comments here:

phpBB is lovely and so commonly used that many of the chix would 
probably be familiar with the system.

But... it's big, more than we need, and is a bit of a target for 
attacks because of its popularity.  (It's also popular because it's one 
of the the better bits of forum software available, though, so 
popularity isn't necessarily a downside.)

I'm also pretty familiar with phpBB, and I'd feel comfy modifying it to 
suit our needs if it were the best choice.   However, my feeling is 
that we don't actually want a lot of common bulletin board features: 
smilies, avatars, post counts... all kinda a waste of resources when 
you're talking about something which is basically just a gateway to a 
mailing list archive plus a little box for people to write posts.  So 
I'd much rather see us concentrate on finding a good archiver and then 
extending it to act a bit more like a web forum.

Note: threading and stuff is actually harder with email than with a 
forum, because less information is being saved about replies and such, 
which is part of why forums do a better job than our current archives, 
and one of the reasons gateway-ing can be a pain.