Show HN: Tavern, Next Generation Bulletin Boards/Forums (Product Idea)

Those slides are horrible, they are too fast for reading and worse, it seems that manual clicking on the arrows do not reset the timer.<p>Not sure if I'm particularly slower than others at reading or something, but I closed the page after 3 "slides" when the site made it abundantly clear that it didn't want me to read its content.<p>One note though: you should use mockup pictures for the visuals rather using screenshots from existing websites, as it is now it sort of give a "Chinese knockoff" feel.

For the love of god, turn off the auto-slide, it is completely broken and made me ragequit the browser never to look at your idea again even though I actually might find it interesting if I could tolerate the presentation.

Based on what I've read (the screenshots are just of reddit and Facebook) this sounds like it would be a genuinely irritating service to use and be a part of.<p>• If there's any place for a 'social' button, it's certainly not a discussion forum. Typically the content you would be talking about on a forum would be separated from what you might want to post on Facebook (see pseudonyms).<p>• People love pseudonyms, there's no escaping that. One of the large attractions of discussion forums is that you can be pseudo-anonymous if you are so inclined. If Google Plus failed to convince people to give up their real information, I can't imagine a forum suite would either.<p>• Profile photos make page loads long and make the information on the page less dense. They add absolutely nothing to the conversation, which is why I presume HN and reddit (large influences in this) don't have them.<p>• "Flame war control" will just obstruct constructive conversation. Speed and depth of posting isn't an indicator of malice, and will just make users discouraged to contribute.<p>• A hosted service isn't a feature in this case. I can go and read forums that I was a part of in 2005, but there's no guarantee that a hosted service will be around next week. If the service disappears, so does the content.<p>• "Banhammers Galore" isn't a feature, see the current attitude towards StackOverflow's moderation.<p>There's headway to be made in bulletin boards, but I feel you've missed the main issues with the current solutions (vBulletin, phpBB, Vanilla).

This is really a list of features, not a product. Basically if you execute well and create great forum software it may become popular, otherwise it won't. That's pretty much a truism.

Signatures? One line is still to much for me, all forums need the option to turn off displaying signatures.<p>Real names? Hmm. That kills basically all but talking about pets or whatever. No forums for whistleblowers, abuse victims, with alternate sexuality and/or religion and the problems arising thereof in certain areas of the world, no place for really nutty art. It's also trivial to make a fake facebook profile I'm sure, so in the end it might offer a false sense of security more than any actual security.<p>The "flamewar control" stuff.. Yup, definately too nosy to me. Wouldn't know the difference between flaming and a burst of creativity and all around merryness, either. Have you ever been member of a really <i>wild</i> forum, I wonder? Why seek technical solutions to social problems?<p>And then comes "tagging". Just to increase user engagement, because that's useful for the site owner, not because it's useful for the users :/<p>I don't mean to be negative though; built it, it's bound to be useful for someone, just not me. If anything, it would make for a neat "facebook-like" forum (facebook, last time I checked, was completely broken for complex discussions, and the forum apps are ugly and slow). All the complaints I have about this forum I would also have about facebook, so they shouldn't be a negative to "that crowd". I'm simply not the target market, but I <i>am</i> a forum user since I'm a web surfer, and I do care about them a lot, so I have to ramble.<p>A next generation forum of <i>my</i> taste would have complete moderator action transpareny and accountability. How's that for a radical new idea? Or hey, how about making page views and ad revenue visible to the people providing it? Maybe allow users to tag and organize content like they want it, with a bayesian filter suggesting stuff they might like. My next generation forum would focus <i>LESS</i> on real-time and "current" and "popular", and make all that just one of many factors. It would be not for ants to pass the time, but for ants to build weird little palaces over time, with many twisted passages, and if they so choose, to refactor and straighten out the bits that turn out to be most useful, to build a library; be it of knowledge, fun, friendship or anecdotes.<p>Instead of more tools to use <i>on</i> the users, more tools <i>for</i> the users.<p>And of course, it can't be hosted; gimme the source or I'm not interested in the least.

One obervation: if you're really that adamant about Real Names, you're going to be regarded as just another privacy reaper. I suggest you implement some form of locally-registered aliases if your concern is accountability, because there are entirely too many real reasons for limiting exposure surface on the Internet. Of course, if it <i>is</i> all about the tracking...

Ok, it seems that this is just to measure the interest, as such product doesn't exist at all yet.<p>Some comments:<p>1. Reddit/HN style threads (sorting function by time and score) are great for news or current issues, not for topics that are continuous. That's why reposts and duplicates are actually needed. Old threads on HN and Reddit are forgotten quickly.<p>2. Upvoting mechanism / community moderation requires a sizable community to provide any value.<p>3. Real user names do not provide any value, usually it actually reduces to quality of discussion. Anonymous/throwaway accounts serve their place. Community moderation already solves the quality/spam/troll issue to some extent.<p>Most of these 'features' should be configurable, as there seems to be no clear thought of why this configuration would be good for everyone.

At first i was thinking this was a parody, but it seems that the idea is well ... serious.<p>Popular stuff on top, unpopular stuff at the bottom makes me think of downvote squads and paid upvoters.<p>Social logins. What when they go down? See facebook login last week. What about people that don't want to log in with their social account?<p>The flamewar control seems that it might hamper legitimate conversations. Imagine 2 or 3 people discussing something civilised, and each time they post, they have to wait 5 minuten or more. I know I'd stop talking pretty quickly.<p>The other points are mostly standard stuff. Notifications, mentions, ..<p>Perhaps I'm not the target group, which might explain my answer :)

Will it be hosted only or will a leased version be available? Any thoughts given to design or branding customization?

Are the screenshots used from Reddit, Stackoverflow and Facebook comments or do the show the actual 'product'?

So what's the difference between <a href="http://www.discourse.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.discourse.org/</a>? I think discourse implement it clearly, I didn't figure out any difference.

Would be interesting, if built.<p>You should slow down the speed of the slides, though :-)