[timskii]

This topic is an interesting read.

I don’t see that BBPress should fit established norms for “forums”, which I personally think are horribly outdated: Trying to apply a nice neat academic/usenet ontology to the “Twitter generation”, who would rather just communicate. Now.

So I believe the prime role of “forum software” is to allow users to freely express themselves. Structuring and organising the information they post is a different challenge. “Categories” is essentially a response to that challenge. But can’t we do better?

Which ironically is where things like XML-RPC become interesting. Can I make use of that now? Probably not. But it surely has potential to cross-reference discussions.

BBPress is clearly still an early stage product. It’s certainly not there yet, even if technically it works. And almost by definition nobody is going to have clear view of where it is going.

(And for the record, personally the biggest annoyance with the core of BBPress (0.9.x) is that users cannot register using a unicode-style username – Russian, Chinese, Arabic, or even oddball European characters. It’s just… rude, right? Or is there a solution I’ve missed that doesn’t involve rewriting the core?)