> As the author says, this a web-forum software, all it is doing is displaying some text on a page and maybe sending an email. This was a solved problem 15 year

> As the author says, this a web-forum software, all it is doing is displaying some text on a page and maybe sending an email. This was a solved problem 15 years ago with PHP This reminds me of what Jeff Atwood had to say about people over simplifying the nature of stack overflow (and by extension, claiming it to be over valued). He eventually responded about the fact that the little details mattered. From auto searching for existing similar questions to little prompts on framing the question. Similarly, Discourse is being built with principles in mind that go beyond a threaded discussion. It's attempting to answer the question of "can we use software to encourage a civilized discourse?". It's easy to ignore this, and look at it as bloated. But in that vein, Stack overflow is a bloated Yahoo answers or any other. And we all know it isn't. Essentially, it's more than just "a web-forum software". That distinction really matters. Relevant links: 1: http://blog.codinghorror.com/this-is-all-your-app-is-a-collection-of-tiny-details/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/this-is-all-your-app-is-a-colle... 2: http://blog.codinghorror.com/code-its-trivial/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/code-its-trivial/ 3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678501