I am adding this post as a target for another thread.
This will add to the complexity and confusion on the forum.
Here is my post: https://secure.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/...ead,35979_offset,0#443565

Whimsically,
Lawrence

Added: I seem to be giddy this morning.

I just want to say that I have a lot of faith in IBM and what they're doing generally, not just with WCG but also with projects like Watson (separate thread here ). Now that Watson is freely available as a cloud service I think it's going to take over the world, which is why just today I bought a couple of 2016 leap calls on IBM - despite the recent decline in their share price.

That's one of the reasons it pains me to see a place associated with them being run out of the back of someone's broken down minivan - or what is the digital equivalent. Sure, IBM is and maybe always will be essentially a silent partner in WCG. And yes, I can understand the advantages of that. But there is still a link, an association. And whether it is actively exploited or not, it remains and is well known, especially in certain circles.

So even if the powers that be don't care about the effect the current forum software has on the people here and more importantly, the people who DON'T come here but otherwise might, you SHOULD at least care about how this looks.

There's good reason for not allowing post attachments, there being enough 3rd party hosters like paste-bin to provide that service securely and ditch them over a certain age. Another layer of storage, management, concern.

Strangely, in all these years I've never once seen anyone at WCG asking for the standard BOINC forum... avatar, signature, PM with friend acceptance [and the possible snark on the forums if not accepted], author annoyance blocker [there are 3 on my list] and completely for free. Since there's work on getting the badges to show in the client [Question here who's system is going to get snubbed again... WCGs?, though being the inventor of it?], it's not improbable the BOINC forum will get that too, [optional would have my favor]. The BOINC forum even allows opting to show the sig or not for each post. Do we need/want them in support threads e.g?

BOINC/Berkeley uses their own developed forum software, which means, there is a theoretical response time on adaptations/features... the only one using is... BOINC world, pretty much except WCG [think CPDN is on something different too, certainly a heavily customized front compared to what most projects have]

I completely agree with all the points that you've made twilyth and, unfortunately, I also have the nasty feeling that we'll be long gone before we will actually see a serious forum (platform) change here.

I guess we'll just have to...I was going to say "wait and see", but on second thought: "complain and moan" sounds more appropriate to put it a bit euphemistically.

Cheers!