We’re looking at new discussion forum software for our start-up.
My co-founder is convinced that bbPress is the answer from his techie perspective. Coming from the customer experience side, I want to check the features which a new platform will offer our community.
How do I discover what bbPress will and will not do? There is no feature list, apart from http://bbpress.org/about/features/
For example, how do I discover if crowd-moderation is supported? I’d like members to be able to report abuse and for us to be able to set decision rules for how many abuse reports are necessary from which level of member before a post is quarantined for manual moderation.
Thx
Graham

[@lynqoid Participant 11 years ago]

It might be easier to list out everything that you need a forum software to do and then see if bbPress meets your list.

The thing for me personally is that if bbPress doesn’t currently do something then with the power of WordPress behind it, you can make it work with a little development. Other forum software is not quite as easy in my opinion.

Good luck!

[@graham2013 Participant 11 years ago]

Hi Lynqoid.

It’s the “see” bit that I am struggling with. How do I “see if bbPress meets” my list of requirements? Does it come down to: install it and play .. and build what you don’t find?

G

[@ronthai Participant 11 years ago]

As Lynqoid said it all depends on your needs and skills in adding and changing things if the standard + additional plugins, is not enough.

BBPress has the big advantage that it is part of WordPress, but a disadvantage is the limitation in all the bells and whistles that other forum software gives, which most forums don’t need anyway.
BBPress is lightweight compared to other stand-alone software, but that also makes it attractive to use.

You should also think what your readers/members will need and do with it.
My experience with forums is that the majority just comes to read and sometimes posts, if they have questions or answers, but that will be if you are lucky at the most 10% of the readers/members.

Crowd-moderation as you call it is not a real feature on BBPress, a simple report link is there, which does not even sends you an email.
Other software has more complex report systems, but don’t think users will use them, since that is not why they are on your forum.

[@lynqoid Participant 11 years ago]

When I say see, I mean – tell us and we can give you some guidance 🙂 sorry I should of said.

[@graham2013 Participant 11 years ago]

Appreciate the responses.

On the Tripadvisor forums the crowd-moderation feature is very effective. Inappropriate posts get removed and Tripadvisor seems to employ very few moderators. I don’t know what software they use, but it’s a commercially attractive feature.

We’re sitting down in a coupla days to thrash out what functionality we think we need to offer to build a successful forum for our business. I’ll be back with more questions as they arise.

Thanks again.