Cross post from similar thread:
I haven't posted anything on here yet but I have been lurking a bit. Since it genuinely pains me to use the horrid web design and interface on Flarum (note after writing this: it was difficult to put bullet points in this post properly, that's how bad it is), I have chose not to be an active poster on these forums as they currently are. I intend on this being my first and last post (excepting responses possibly) on the Flarum forums. It's good to see that many agree including Wild and wish to scrap this forum software in favor of something different. However, my thoughts:
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I have investigated the usability of the ProBoards forum as it currently is. While it appears that all data related to 'liked' posts are gone, all threads and posts from the past appear just as they always have. If you for some reason aren't able to log into your old forum account, there is a very simple workaround to make it possible. The only problems with ProBoards is the members list and search, the latter being much more important as it appears to be completely broken. This is an issue that can likely be rectified by somebody contacting support and telling them that it needs to be fixed. Ultimately, there would be minimal difficulties going back to ProBoards, and we would be uniting the history of the forums onto one platform and using the original forums from 2012.
Flarum is not a good forum software. It is what it is, it looks horrible, it is terrible just to use, and I can't take it seriously. I am not alone in holding this opinion, many people here do not want to have use this god-awful forum software. Many basic features are missing from it and what features are there are not pleasant to use in any way. This is okay however because Flarum is not a production-ready forum software, it is in beta and its developers recommend against using it production. We made the mistake of using it in production.
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A transition to forum software like XenForo or WoltLab would be a significant improvement over Flarum and be more welcomed by the aggregate community here, but see the next point.
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The last 8 years (minus the last few months most of which has been permanently wiped anyway) of the history of this community is in one place: the ProBoards forum. After all the effort (and technically getting ProBoards staff to break their own rules) that was put into getting that back restored to how it is now, I think it would be a mistake not to switch back to using it as our permanent forum. We spent 8 years there and all users here are comfortably accustomed to it. Being attached and accustomed to software like that is not a bad thing that needs to be rectified; it's actually a great thing for a community. People in general don't like sweeping, bold change; that goes for this community as well. I would know because I tried to enact it many times. People prefer incremental adjustments and improvements, the switch from ProBoards to different software has been anything but that and it's frankly one of the hugest mistakes that has been made by the administration of this community in the history of it. If we switch back to ProBoards, we can easily have some sort of archive for the threads that have been posted here thus far (relatively not much), and we will be uniting the community's history on a platform that ALL of its users are already accustomed to, not fracturing the community into segments that prefer a different software (XenForo, WoltLab, Flarum, etc). It enables Finest to be the independent forum manager which has helped this community greatly in times of struggle or ownership debacle and enables smooth transitions of power which we unfortunately missed out on with this particular debacle as we had switched to Flarum. It reunites us with the members of the community we may have lost out of disinterest when it was chosen that we had to move off ProBoards, it reintroduces familiarity. Thousands and thousands of people know what totalfreedom.boards.net is, who knows what forum.totalfreedom.me is? Hell, more people I'm sure know about totalfreedom.boards.net than totalfreedom.me itself.
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Ultimately, I think that it should be the community's choice which path we pick, and I think that it should be something discussed with all options thoroughly considered. I think that the history and legacy of this community should be kept in mind and not just a blinding light of ambition. If you remove all of the aspects of history this community holds, you are left with nothing.
Based on all of those points, my vote is for ProBoards as it always has been and I suggest everybody think & discuss strongly about which option is the best route for the community.
