[policy] Deprecate forum module for removal in Drupal 11

Forums is one of the core skills of Drupal with sites such as Intel and Twitter both using Drupal core forums on their sites. If this moves to contrib I think it will need some serious backing, focus and commitment.

Not to mention d.o.

This isn't major, though.

Restoring status. Major/critical issues block us from committing features to D8, and this discussion doesn't seem worth it. See http://drupal.org/node/45111 for more info.

Well I favour keeping it in core but powering as much of the output as possible with views. The most common gripe with core forum module is that it's too rigid.

I think forum was/is a bit more "maintainable" than trigger that gone. So +1 here.

The only argument to keep it is d.o forum and new maintainer.

I don't think views integration will help to fight with queries and markup that needs total revamp and re-architect.

Regarding Proposed resolution #2: I'm trying to get Artesian going again but it's had an extremely rocky start so don't be relying on that as a contrib replacement until I've made significantly more progress. Advanced Forum is still going under new maintainership but I have no clue of his plans for D8. Also, keep in mind that Advanced Forum builds on top of core forum so isn't a replacement for it.

Michelle

This actually D9 feature
About D8 there's conversion happens in #1951268: Convert /forum and /forum/% to new router, remove forum_forum_load(), forum_get_topics(), create Forum service

Adding older issues to summary

I know the current build is D7, but the work of heylookalive on the Harmony project could be a nice replacement for core. But as with everything it needs more people supporting it.

As far as the #1 statement that d.o., Intel and Twitter are using it. I wonder if that is still the only valid reason of keeping it in core. Perhaps a survey on how many people are actually using the forum system in D8 could help us deciding whether forum is better of as a contrib project then core.

What is the benefit of removing Forum module?
Who benefits?
How can we find out how much of a need for *core* forum functionality still exists?

Also forum is very useful example in core about best practices - core benefits having for code examples

Some rough usage data: #2867597: Top Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 core sub-modules

There are pros and contras.
Pros (move to contrib):
- It does not actually belong in the core module
- There are some features that you could still install

Cons (Leave in core):
- There is currently only this forum, should no developers find the module maintain, it is probably no longer usable anyway
- Other projects based on this (group forum, advanced forum) may have problems with it.
- A top feature is taken out of the program.

btw. I use this module

We're looking at about 95k Drupal 7 sites and 5k Drupal 8 sites with forum module at the moment according to those stats.

I started using the forum module in about 2006/7 and it was one of the reasons I ended up contributing to core, but there are many, many different models which have evolved in the past ten years which aren't hierarchically organised discussion forums/bulletin boards:

- tagged 'discussions' with comments - this is doable in core with node + comment + views + taxonomy, all you miss out on is the hierarchical forum index.
- question/answer sites
- blogs/microblogs + comments
- organic groups (groups.drupal.org nearly but didn't quite manage to replace Drupal.org forums)
- issue trackers

For me having forum in core encourages people to use that particular content model, when some of the other content models are now available via Field UI + Views UI or very stable contrib modules.

What I do think would be useful in core (or even in contrib) is better comment moderation tools, for example the ability to split a set of comments off of one entity into a new entity - this would be useful both for forums and the core issue queue.

@catch please file issue about idea to improve comment module, your idea looks cool

@andypost posted at #2876922: Improved comment moderation (splitting), was mainly an example but do also think it's useful for comment module generally.

I think it would be better to improve core forum and build forum lists using views, to make it more customizable.

As a few have said, you could create a forum in d8 out of the entities we have available to us.

I wished something like Harmony Forum was in core rather than the current version which I have tried to use a few times but never liked how it worked.

If forum was out of core then that would help create new ideas.

I think it's time to revisit this again for Drupal 10.

8 years ago I said this

Well I favour keeping it in core but powering as much of the output as possible with views. The most common gripe with core forum module is that it's too rigid.

But we've gotten nowhere in that time

So yeah let's move it to contrib and try and unblock innovation

Happy to keep maintaining it there

Filed 10.x issue #3199419: Move forum module to contrib

@larowlan Please create a https://www.drupal.org/project/forum to start the process

Let's wait for an rtbc from a product manager first

After that, will do

As I posted in the HAL and aggregator issues, modules in Drupal core that are (a) unmaintained (b) lack an ecosystem / single purpose (c) rarely used are IMHO not well placed in core. Forum is definitely in this group. It is used by less than 5% as per #3158669: [Policy] By default deprecate non-experimental modules that are used by less 5% of sites before the next major version and even the maintainer above says it should go.

Retitle to follow pattern of similar issues.

Gabor has signed off in #31, and the lifecycle patch has landed, so I think we're ready to move to implementation here. Marking RTBC.

If we have a Drupal 9 site that uses the Forum module and want to upgrade to D10 (when that is released). What might the upgrade path be? By the time of D10 release, will the Forum module have been spun out as a contrib module that we 'switch' over to? Or, do we need to 'migrate' to a custom setup kinda suggested in comment #21?

@JackG102: our process for removing core modules and themes is always to make them available as contributed projects. The name will likely be somewhat different due to composer constraints in how projects are found, but otherwise you would be able to use the project from there when updating to Drupal 10.

Excellent, thank you so much for the quick response! I'll keep this in mind.

Since Drupal 10.0.0-beta1 and 9.5.0-beta1 are right around the corner, the Forum module would need to be removed in Drupal 11 (not Drupal 10), correct?

Correct. :)

We can mark the policy issue fixed; the decision has been made to do the deprecation regardless of the specific version. :)