[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

There has to be some level of organization to a forum, I think we can agree, since without form you have chaos and a splat list of data. Of course, organizing in a way that ‘makes sense’ is in the eye of the beholder.

I can’t visualize something ‘less rigid’ than the current iteration of bbpress type forms, since tags gives you a rather light level of ‘org’. Yeah, you still need some categories, but I don’t see how this negates a hierarchy, except in the case that bbPress cats are fake and, thus, annoying to me. Thinking back on the other forum software I’ve used, though, it’s all been a bit similar. You have a forum and sub-forums under that. So… okay, if that annoys you then, yes, everyone sucks equally

But what’s ‘better’?

The only option that would meet the no-standard output is something like an XML file that you format how you want. Dunno how you’d sort out hierarchy though. You’d probably have to treat everything as equal (i.e. it’s all ‘posted’) with flags for cat, forum and post in the SQL table to sort out output. But … Yeah, I can’t see how to unstructure it more.

But yes, yes, GOD yes, the documentation whomps. Then again, so did WordPresses back in the day