It simply does not work: this is what we get: “Unfortunately, your browser is too old to work on this Discourse forum. Please upgrade your browser”. Useless to say how old it made me think of myself. The world is going to belong to the richest, wealthy, healthy young crowd and the landfills are going to crumble under the waste.
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Also the comments counter? I liked it!
Use any browser that is a) updated the last year and b) not IE, and you’ll be fine, without spending a penny. Besides, you’ll actually be safer, and it might well feel faster.
Admittedly, moving browsers can be a bit of a hassle, especially if you have a lot of bookmarks.
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I know, I don’t like being forced to change my habits and/or the whole computer (no, I am not using IE, but Firefox and my computer is seven years old, works fine for my needs, and above all my means… ) Anyways, thanks for the advice.
Sometimes, you can’t follow because change goes too fast.
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Right, fair enough. The newer firefox versions have also changed things around compared to the old, but after some time I kind of like what they’ve done with the place. If you ever feel like you just have too much free time (right… ), it’s mildly recommended to test and see. 
The machine beside me is actually 8 years old now, and running a fairly new Windows 7; it seems we are finally getting to a point where a PC can be “good enough” for a while.
It’s just for threads created by Boing Boing posts. If it becomes a problem, we’ll change it.
Does that mean I could have simply logged-in using my native BB account, rather than creating a new Discourse account?
Would it be hard to change it to “after N days of inactivity”, so ongoing discussions can … ongo, but necroposting is still impossible?
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Ms. Fancy Pants.
Somehow, I don’t think a lot of "Christ what an asshole!"s will make the “Notable Posts” cut. Burying them so far away from the normal flow of “Reading Post/Skimming Comments” is killing something indefinable but part and parcel to the Boing Boing feel.
The comments section has always been about the serious, the silly, the casual, the crazy–all mixed together and on display for everyone with just a quick click, and with great moderation that kept things under control. There was an, I dunno, linear nature to reading comments on Boing Boing. Many’s the time I delved into comments on subjects I had no interest in just to read the wisdom and snark of the comments. It was easy and natural to do, and you didn’t feel you were taking a detour from the site as a whole. In fact, the comments felt like part of the original post. Not so much now.
I think the intentions are good–more focus on the topic at hand, more control and nuance, but the effect is likely to isolate and reduce contribution to only people invested enough in a given subject to create posts that will be seen by the relatively few people willing to do the same. There’s something sterile about it–like the main site has lost half its voice. I think this change may be one of those things that sounds great on the surface but is completely missing what really what makes Boing Boing’s comments so beloved.
I hope I’m wrong, but I think this is going to really change the site’s feel for the worse.
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Lack of nesting is a problem.
For example, I commented (here). Nathan Hornby replied to me (here), and I replied back to him (which I can’t link to because I’m only allowed two links per post (rolls eyes)).
My original comment now shows his reply to me (as well as others’), but not my reply to his reply to me, which, at my original comment (expanded to show replies) makes it look like I’ve not responded.
Sure, it shows up as a reply to the main version of his comment (as opposed to the reply-attached-to-my-comment version), but how would anyone reading my original comment know that unless they trundled off looking for the main version of his comment, which they wouldn’t because they’d already read it?
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Discourse is generally still beta — mobile is definitely something that will be covered.
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Different is always difficult, but given that this is an open source system I say BB has the moral high ground here.
Somebody suggested to make the speech bubble link to the comments instead of the permalink (we’ve got the title to click on for that) and that is a great idea.
If useful input like that is taken into account (I think @beschizza picked it up) , I think this thing will feel like home in no time.
To be honest, I’m mostly commenting because I am curious about it. So in that sense, it’s already winning over Disqus Also, I’m a big fan of the automatic linking of other users via the ‘@’ shortcut.
I’m not loving this comments on a completely separate page from articles format. I also found my inability to register in Safari irritating; I had to change to FireFox to see the box to enter a password, where in Safari I was offered only the name, username and email boxes.
Dennis, thanks for your thoughtful post.
Boing Boing has always been our own creation, our own site, and only accidentally (and very bizarrely) a platform for others to publish as they please.
These forums are our first commitment to providing the public space that you imagine we’ve been offering all along.
Until now, on-the-post comments were always merely a convenience–a convenience that came to be seen, by some users, as more than a privilege.
This is problematic, and not just for the obvious reasons of trolley control and what-have-you. Boing Boing is owned and controlled by its editors: even if we tried to share it as a matter of principle, the underlying facts tend to assert themselves in the long run.
Indeed, we’ve always been strict – even censorious, to some – about what comments we will publish. We’ve always privileged editors and contributors over commenters.
So when you imagine the “real” Boing Boing, at which the public is entitled to exercise a dialectical “royal rumble” of ideas where strength rather than editorial discretion prevails, I can’t stress how mistaken you are.
But it’s our fault that this idea sometimes persists, because the format of the old inline comment system–new posts appended to the OP, on the same page–encouraged the idea that such a social contract existed.
[quote=“DennisArmstrong, post:179, topic:327”]
(Please, don’t say “you’ve still got the BBS”. That’s like saying “you’ve still got free speech zones”).[/quote]
I think the best way to make my point clear is to point out that while BBS is a more open and creative space, you still don’t have it. It still isn’t a free speech zone! It’s just a new place we’ve set up for discussion, and whether you participate is your choice.
Maybe it won’t work out, but I think the clearer separation between “Boing Boing, our publication” and “Boing Boing, the public house” will make it less likely that anyone will labor under any illusions about what we’re about–and reduce the potential for disappointment in how we run our site.
I do think that ‘Notable replies’ is a poor wording, though. “Letters to the editor” would be more appropriate, as the intention is that only the most insightful, thoughtful and well-written postings will go there.
At Boing Boing, a post should feel like a series of distinct stories on a subject matter, with the “real” conversation here at BBS.
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But you still need to allow scripts from an external domain, discourse.org.
I quite agree.
I’m so terribly awfully sorry!
Please accept this picture of some slightly less but still quite fancy pants by way of an apology 
[Amusing Photo of 70s Tom Baker Doctor Who Y-Fronts][1]
[Sorry, new users can’t post images, so you’ll have to use your imagination. They’re a real thing, I swear!]
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unhappy mutant sadface
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You’re gonna like the way you look at BBS, I guarantee it.
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