[zozbot234]

> That's good enough to use Discourse at all, but the experience will probably be on the unpleasantly slow side. ... an alternate "lite/basic" mode

Why does this need to be the "alternate" choice though? What does current Discourse provide that e.g. PhpBB or the DLang forum do not? (Other than mobile friendly design, which in a sane world shouldn't involve more than a few tweaks to a "responsive" CSS stylesheet).

[mardifoufs]

I like the scroll view in discourse. Makes it super easy to follow a thread. The subthreads and replies are also easier to use. The search is better, the ability to upvote makes it better for some use cases, and in general phpbb is a mess in terms of actually being able to see what's useful and what threads are relevant.

I think flipping the question makes more sense, why do you think some forums switched to or started using discourse instead of just using phpbb? I can guarantee you that it's not just to follow a fad or whatever, most niche or support forums don't care about that.

[ParetoOptimal]

I do think trendiness and modern feeling uis are requirements for most forums these days from most perspectives.

I say this as someone that frequently uses and enjoys both rue brutalist design of a text web browser and the emacs mastodon client.

[BlueTemplar]

Discourse still offers a worse experience than phpBB though, even if you use a fast device.

[AJ007]

I was thinking about this when I saw this post earlier today.

Why shouldn't the default be: does this website work in Lynx? I think that's a damn good baseline.

And in response to the other parent post, on a (almost) new iPhone, both news sites & Twitter continuously crash and reload for me. I'm not sure what the state of these other popular sites are because I don't use them.

[Cacti]

Voice, video, realtime interaction, a devoted user base, an incredible amount of money…

[zelphirkalt]

What do you mean by voice and video? Why would I want to have voice in a forum? I think that would be akin to receiving voice messages in messengers. Or do you mean, that for these kinds of things a widget can be displayed? That certainly is possible in old style forums. It is just HTML, an embed code away.

[a_bored_husky]

Discourse, not Discord.

[Cacti]

whoopsie. thanks.