Benefits of Drupal Forum over third party for newspaper site!

If your client is happy, that's fine. But you said:

I have tried twice to get excited about the Drupal core forum system. The last time I tried, going through the check list of things UBB.threads currently does for us, I came across forum icons.

which sounds a lot like you wanted to use Drupal's forums but didn't. I was just wondering why. Not arguing... Just always looking at the reasons people choose not to use Drupal so I can use that to improve Drupal. If it's too late for you, that's fine, but maybe the next person will benefit from the discussion.

Drupal's weakest area is moderation & administration of the forums. I'll be tackling that, but that's probably some months off.

Michelle

See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region

CMSes are not all the same, but since they are not forums, they don't purport to offer extensive (or any) forum features. They all present some level of challenge to people who want a CMS+forum. (There is a distribution of Drupal packaged with vBulletin that exists to meet this need.)

With Wordpress there is a real divide--no great forum extensions or bridges to standalone forum software. Wordpress has fundamental limitations in its simple, not inherently extensible ACL and user accounts that contribute to the divide. For Joomla there are some adequate forum extensions, but despite being fully integrated with Joomla, they are still limited by Joomla's ACL, which is also limited and not inherently scalable, not open to customized, infinite roles-based permissions. Worse, Joomla doesn't regard any content in extensions as core content. You can use really robust forums like SMF, phpBB, vBulletin, etc. with Joomla, but you have to bridge them, and this is typically quite a chore, but at least there is software to do this.

Drupal's forum module, like Elgg's, has been part of the core module set distributed with the core distribution. (At least that was true of the original, "classic" Elgg--I don;t recall how this works in Elgg 1.0, which I haven't used too much yet.) Elgg and Drupal treat forum content as CMS content--they don't segregate it. The difference between comment threads and forum threads is really just a difference in how content is rendered and displayed on the screen. In Elgg 0.9x you can actually switch between blog/comment views and forum/thread views and render the same content either way. In Joomla or Wordpress, comments are segregated content attached to content articles, and forums are a totally separate system or subsystem.

I think the integrated approach to forums in Drupal and Elgg is really good because it allows for CMS and forum functions together under one content and user management system that is very extensible and scalable. But while this has advantages--the "forum content" is fully integrated and accessible or subject to other CMS features--it also has disadvantages--you're limited to the features the core or forum extensions offer. So apart from bridging in standalone, forum software to Drupal whose functions and content will be more segregated from the CMS, you could modify the existing forum module or create a new one with more robust features and you'll have a very good foundation to work with.

The larger question here is whether a "forum" is a unique application beyond the scope of a web content manager's functions. It seems that CMS development has typically assumed the answer to that question is yes. I believe this is an under-examined assumption based an an old/deadtree media concept of publishing that mimics the workflow and regimes of "content authority" seen in newsrooms. MovableType, Wordpress, Joomla--most CMSes have fixed author-editor-publisher roles and permissions that control content production and face outward at the world. Social networking and "web 2.0" reverses this or simply dispenses with it. So I would argue that a "forum" is simply another way to render manged content, and it is actually a (maybe the) preferred interface for interactive, user-created content.

The social roles and relations, the assumptions that get made and are directed by interactive media interfaces, are different from articles, to comments, to forum posts. You will get different results--in terms of kind, quality and quantity--depending on which interfaces you offer or emphasize. It definitely seems that average users will produce content more freely and make use of an interactive environment that has a forumlike interface. This kind of interface is the oldest and perhaps the most intuitive form of networked, online, interactive communication/content production. (Think BBSes and Usenet.) Forums seem to be associated in most people's minds with informal, casual, colloquial communication--you don't have to worry about the official and more formal obligations of "writing an article" when you start a thread, and you are not necessarily commenting on an official article or someone else's writing, which puts you in a subordinate position where discussion is limited to the scope of the article.

For all these reasons, I think web content management software that aims to have community/socialnetoworking/user-create content capacities should follow and exploit the conceptual/information architecture of systems like Drupal (or Elgg) and regard forum and comment displays and functions as an essential part of core content management. It's a good foundation, and where it's lacking, it should be improved upon.

Content Management functions have nothing to do with a forum. Most traditional small to mid-sized businesses need a CMS but no forum. If you just want to blog with Drupal, you probably don;t want a forum. If Drupal is intended as a CMS, a forum module should clearly be outside the basic core distribution, or there should be a lightweight distribution without it.

Is Drupal intended as a CMS? I believe it has always been something different and more in a social-worky way. If social media eclipses the CMS/WCM then a forum in the core will be more justifiable. Businesses that don't want a forum could legitimately be told they don't understand their business and audience.

The simplest, most immediate problem is that for those who want a forum, the native Drupal option is weak, and it is tedious to supplement it with other modules due to the poor organization of this site. There's no one-stop shop page. Perhaps this is remedied over at Acquia.