D7UX Microproject - Missing Critical Forum Functionality

You might want to talk to those of us who have been actively working on this for some time rather than re-inventing the wheel. I just happened to catch this issue when I looked at the global tracker or I would never have known about it.

Michelle

Well, to be honest, I find this post rather insulting. I have put 1.5 years into making Drupal's forums better and I'm not exactly low profile in the community. Plus, we have the DruBB project going that involves some pretty big names. So to just stumble on this issue randomly was like a slap in the face.

If you want to know what needs doing, why not have your UX expert come talk to us? We need to get DruBB done pretty quick but there's still going to be lots of room for improvement. I don't know if targetting 7.x is realistic for the bulk of it but I had intended to give it a good try in D8.

I'm leaving the house soon but will be around later this afternoon if you want to talk specifics.

Michelle

Dear Drupal friend

I do not know if this is the right place

The few important things missing in the
drupal forum when compared with vbulletin
or wordpress bbpress

Paginated comments - that show page numbers like [1,2,...3]
besides the topic name in the topic list

Brief preview of the thread on hover over the topic title in the list

Some forums even offer reply on hover which saves time

Let Anonymous authors post new thread in any name they wish
provided it is not registered

For many of us Drupal forum as it is
is just unusable without these features

VBB or invision and even wordpress now allows
forum users to have a social profile
with profile comments without having to install
anything extra

+1 subscribe.

Leisa, there is definitely a large body of work and discussion already existing on the topic. I don't have time to dig up everything that's been written, but Forum Improvements is a good place to start. Also, Social Networking Sites has a lot of good info on it, although you have to dig a bit.

Finally, look in Michelle's profile for any thread to do with forums. That will help you turn up most of the major discussions on the topic. She's probably the most knowledgeable in the community with respect to social networking, the forums, and the shortcomings of these modules.

Finally, I would suggest core forum be more or less left alone until D8 - AFAIK, D7 is aimed for September(ish), and the battles and politics that accompany major core changes will probably drag out much longer than we have.

I'd be happy to help out, though I'm not up for fighting the battles needed to get stuff into core for D7. I am trying to get forums working well with contrib first and then will tackle the huge task of breaking them up into bite sized pieces needed to get into core for D8. If your UX person wants to attempt that for D7, I can work with him and point out areas that are more easily broken up.

In the future, you might want to talk with folks in the community to find out who's already doing what. It may be open source, and there aren't territories in the sense that folks are only allowed to work on certain things, but there are certainly areas being covered by certain people and launching an iniative without talking to them is going to ruffle feathers. This post is rather like making an issue about getting a better content lister into core without talking to merlinofchaos. ;)

So, despite the rocky start, I am interested in anything that will improve Drupal's forums so you can put me down as a mentor.

Michelle

With apologies to ronia, who just had the misfortune of being the first example, #6 is the sort of thing you're likely to get with an issue like this. All the issues s/he mentioned have already been taken into consideration. The first is already done in contrib and the others are in issues. I'd be very surprised at this point if someone commenting in this issue came up with an idea for what's needed that we dont' already know about.

Michelle

Michelle, I'm not sure which "battles needed to get stuff into core for D7" you are talking about. Do you feel that they are resistances in improving the core forum module?

Dear Michelle

Thank you. If all the issues
I mentioned are on the way to be done
it is great news.

Will they be there for D7?
Will they have backport to D6?
Knowing time frame is important
beacuse certain websites are time bound
and they have to pick up whatever is
ready those featurewise - drupal, vbb
wordpress whatever

Many new users like me will be stumbling on this
thread as Forum is an important thing.

So the page
that lists all the issues I mentioned are being developed
can kindly be linked from the opening post
itself.
That will help many new comers.

Dear Drupal Friends

I looked into the links.

I do not find any links to :

Paginated comments - that show page numbers like [1,2,...3]
besides the topic name in the topic list

Reply on hover which saves time

Anonymous authors post new thread in any name they wish
provided it is not registered

When I clicked on the link #303544: Add popup preview of topic http://groups.drupal.org/node/303544
I find PAGE NOT FOUND error message

Maybe this should really be a "micro-project".

Turning Drupal into a full-featured forum won't be happening in D7. There's just too much to be done. Still there's room for improvement that could go into core. Stuff that's been in contrib for quite a while. I'm thinking of flat comments and giving it a forum appearance (Author Pane) for example.

Maybe Michelle and the team from DruBB could point out a couple of Issues that would have a large impact and won't be too hard to implement.

That wont raise drupal to the top forum-packages. But it would at least make it a more viable option.

Greetings.

Yura Filimonov, the invited usability guy, here.

I think we can make improvements to the core forum module in D7, we only need to get started and see what can be done.

We can:
- identify the most demanded features
- take them to the core
- make them easy to use
- add specific features to make the forums easy to use
- make sure the newly added features work well together

I'm not sure we can or need port Advanced Forums to the core, but I suspect there are other useful modules that are needed in the core, such as Quote. Javascript "Hyperlink" and other buttons might work, too.

I.e., what Jan (#14) said :)

Michelle, are there any forum elements that need usability work and/or users have complained about them being hard to use/understand a lot?

ronia, the complete Advanced Forum list does contain
"Includes a pager along with the title on each multipage topic."

It probably wasn't seen in the demo, because the amount of comments per page is higher, than 40 (just a guess, though).

Other features you listed are probably not the highest priority for us at the moment, but I'm sure they'll be considered. Personally, I haven't seen them in VB or Invision Board (then again, I must admit I most among hang around the minimalistic webmasters [graphic/AJAX designers]).

By the way, ronia and others, there's a master list of Drupal forum features, which lists VB/phpBB features and checks them against existing core/contrib modules. I do think we need to take into account the Invision Board, too, however, because it does have some nifty features (I'm an experienced VB and IB user).

It's late here, so I'm going to bed, but I'll get back and say something comprehensive tomorrow.

hahhhh
let's see

Subscribe.

@Damien (#10): No, I don't think there's resistance to improving core forum in general. But getting patches into core is a lot more involved than saying "here's this improvement, please apply". Some of the battle is necessary, like making sure the code is solid and conforms to standard, but there's also a lot of bikeshedding. Even the simplest changes can provoke endless debate. Meanwhile, contrib can simply add a new feature and move on. So my energy is going towards contrib this time around until we have a solid Drupal forum solution that people can use right now. At that point, I had intended to give a good look at what can be moved to core and start working on pushing them through. But that will be D8 because it's not happening in the next 2 months. (Not by me anyway, this new effort could change things)

@ronia (#11): Anything done in contrib will be available in D6. Anything done in core will not be available until D7 is released, which looks to be early next year.

@leisa (#12): I actually started a thread not long ago to try and see if there were any new ideas while I was making the spreadsheet. There were some, but most repeated ones we already knew. The trouble with asking newcomers what they want is they often don't know what is already here. And they certainly don't know what's already been discussed in great detail. I agree that it's an enthusiasm dampener but I'm not sure that it can be helped. It's going to be true in pretty much any situation that those who come into a conversation last are likely to repeat what has already been said. I'm sure there's room for innovation in forums to some extent but, really, most of what folks want in a forum has already been done by the big players already and we are just playing catchup.

@Jan (#14): Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Webchick was after me not long ago to try and get some of AF into core. But trying to untangle things and break them up into patches is a huge job. There are very few features that aren't dependent on other features. Mark read is one, views on topic lists is another. There's probably more but I'll need to take some time to think about it to find them.

@taron13 (#15): One problem is the most demanded "feature" is for it to "look like a forum". This is mostly theming and so something that is difficult to get into core. Beyond that, there are a lot of small features that are provided by various contributed modules that all work together to make a nice forum.

The biggest problem you're going to run into is getting people to agree on what features to add to core. One I thought would be a no brainer is adding a "views" column to the topic list. And, yet, I get people asking for help on how to remove it from AF.

My personal opinon is that core forum shouldn't have a lot of bells and whistles. If anything, it should be stripped down into even more of an API so contrib doesn't have to work so hard to undo things. I would like to see it split up into an API module and a UI module that is replaceable. Then there are those who are the exact opposite and want to see, basically, phpbb in its entirety in the core forum module, which would duplicate dozens of contrib modules.

About the only thing that most people agree on (and there are some that don't) is that Drupal needs better forums. Defining what, exactly, that means is very difficult. Getting stuff into core means getting lots of people to agree. In contrib, you can have a few people with a vision who get to work and come up with something that many people like.

Since this mini project was Dries's idea, I'd really like some input from him on what he wants added to core.

Michelle

Dear Michelle,

Thanks for the huge effort.
Though I did not find all the features I said and one link is
not working for me, I have seen the massive
list in spreadsheet made by you. Kudos!

You have said that "One problem is the most demanded "feature"
is for it to "look like a forum". "

However very recently forums like VBB seem to breaking from
the forum looks nad they have more drupalish look in the sense
that name and other related info appear in a horizontal space.
This horizontal space is above each post or comment
and much unlike the boxy look with right or left side bar.

@ronia: Where did you find that link that isn't working? As for putting the author pane on top, that's very easily done: http://couleeregiononline.com/forums/count-million .

Michelle

Dear Michelle,

http://groups.drupal.org/node/1779/advanced-forum
When you click on #303544: Add popup preview of topic http://groups.drupal.org/node/303544
there is error message - Page Not found

Oh, all the links there are bad. They are linking to g.d.o instead of d.o. That's very old anyway. I haven't kept the Forum Improvments group up to date like I hoped I would be able to.

Michelle

Dear Michelle,

Yep! Exactly that look.
Sorry to post #6

I think you already have a complete
forum. Only if you allow Anonym authors
to use their own name, see message
preview on hover and a quick new post form
one will not ask for more.

Dear Michelle,

I admit I have not seen or tried it before.

If you have already made this
I think the title of this issue cannot be
"missing critical forum function"

May be you should change it
to Ongoing Enhancments.

@ronia: The point of this issue is to get things into Drupal 7 core. What I have done with forums in not in core.

Michelle

Michelle, thanks for all you have done in improving Drupal forums through your Advanced Forum module (http://drupal.org/project/advanced_forum), especially the theming improvements! I hope that you don't become discouraged by the fact that people are asking for things that already exist in contrib.

For my part, I'm inclined to suggest what I suggested in #488686: Missing Critical Blog Functionality: drop the core Forum module and add forums back through a distribution/install profile. That way, developers wouldn't be burdened by the legacy of design decisions made in the core Forum module. If Drupal "distributions" are featured prominently enough on Drupal.org when 7.x is released (or in the coming months, since it takes a while for contrib to catch up with core sometimes), then people won't be confused by the fact that core doesn't have a module called "Forum" in it. Just have the infrastructure in place in core (improvements to comment system, WYSIWYG, etc.) and the actual theming/view "glue" needed to make a Drupal-based forum can be supplied by the install profile.

UPDATE: misplaced parenthesis made me even harder to understand than usual :)

Things that IMO could be improved in core forums:

1. Search - linking to a node as a result is useless if it has 100 pages of comments. No idea if this can be fixed by a beginner though.

2. Give page numbers with the forum topic name in the listings. This can probably expanded to all listings in, say, tracker, but its more important in forums where when taking part in a conversation you do not want to keep going to the first page and then clicking last page. You want to be able to click last page from the forum topic listings. (This is done in advanced_forum, so the code only needs to be moved into core)

3. Comment theming needs to be improved in the core themes/themes in general. Having decent themed comments can make any thread instantly feel more forum like.

4. By default get RID of the previous/next topic links. They may be useful for people who need to go through all the topics such as moderators, but for msot not only are they are a nuisance, they can be confusing.

(I guess that is enough to subscribe to this issue? :) )

Michelle: the point of this issue is not to get things in core. It's a ux design excercise. Taron13 researches current state of, wishes for, features in, do's and won'ts etc. Analyze this and you can get beyond bikeshedding and find trends and start sketching towards a recommendation for what should be in core forums.

Anybody: screenshots and short bullet lists (steps, features, links, wishes?) would be best I think:

Core forum misses:
-
-
-

Ideally, core forum would:
-
-
-

And then maybe look into:
Practically achievable for D7 would be…
-
-
-

Links to screenshots:
-
-
-

Taron13: or whatever questions you have of course :)

@EvanDonovan: Maybe, if distributions become the norm for Drupal. I don't see that happening any time soon.

@yoroy: So are you saying that Taron13 isn't actually going to write any patches and try to get them into core? That the whole point of this is simply to make a list? I sure hope I'm misunderstanding you. Unless someone is willing to push these changes into core, there's really not much point in discussing this until D8's thaw.

Michelle

Leisa and I have tried hard to make the real objective of these ux microprojects clear in the template for these particular issues:

Objective of this microproject:
To evaluate Drupal's current core forum features with the competitive offerings and make recommendations and designs for and missing critical functionality (where critical = required to ensure an adequate feature set for forums to ensure a competitive offering)
…
Note that we do not expect the output of every microproject to be implemented or implementable. Any usability gains from this process are a boon to D7, but getting more UX people into the Drupal community and finding ways for them to work more effectively with developers are our core goals.

In that case, I guess you're done. We already know what stand alone forums have that core doesn't. I don't see what more talk will get us if no one is willing to do the actual coding until Drupal 8. In the mean time, we'll continue to make forums kick ass with contrib.

Michelle

@Michelle: "I don't see that happening any time soon." After looking at the g.d.o Forum group a bit, it looks like you're right. This is discouraging to me, though, since it seems like install profiles would make it possible.

You've been in the Drupal community for a while; do you have any sense of why distributions haven't caught on? It seems to me that if we Drupallers are always telling Drupal newbies who complain about the capabilities of core, "Well, just download Pathauto, CCK, Views, etc." that we would want to make it easier for them to find a distribution that had these things already in place.

I guess the other thing that is an inspiration to me in this regard is Acquia Drupal. Acquia offers a distribution of Drupal with certain contrib modules included, so it seems like it might be good for Drupal.org to do so also.

@yoroy: I like the idea of these microprojects, largely because I sense a disconnect between the end users who make feature requests in forums and the developers who discuss patches in issue queues. If we can provide a good context for people who are familiar with the CMS market in general, but who aren't familiar with the ins-and-out of the Drupal architecture, to discuss how Drupal could learn from the UX of other systems, that would be great.

@EvanDonovan: I'm not actively involved with the projects, just a passive observer, but I believe the main problems are 1) install profiles are currently hard to write and 2) the d.o infrastructure doesn't support distributions. Once it becomes simple to put together a site and generate a distribution from that, I think we'll see more of them. Right now, the only way to really do it simply is to use a database dump or the demo module and doing that can get you roasted ;)

Another problem, too, is that you can't add a distribution to an existing site. If you have a site already and want to add forums, you're back to adding modules one at a time. There are other movements in this area like patterns and spaces and features but they are all works in progress.

I think we'll get there someday. It's a goal for a lot of people and would make things much easier for new users. But it's still a ways off. In the mean time, we do the best we can with the tools we have because people need to make sites now and can't wait for someday.

Michelle

Michelle, thanks for the response. I think I understand now. Perhaps I should stop using the word "distribution" or even "install profile", because what I'm thinking of is really much simpler than what is outlined in Dries' original post about install profiles (http://buytaert.net/drupal-distributions). Really all I was thinking of was a tar.gz that had some contrib modules already in sites/all/modules, and (possibly) some install profile code to activate those modules by default. I assumed that was what Acquia was doing with Acquia Drupal, but I may be wrong.

Anyway, my concept for distributions would be that they would just be for getting people started with Drupal by giving them a few of the best contrib modules (Pathauto, Views, etc.). And they would come in different "flavors" for people who had specific needs (like a Blog one that had a Blog module + some Views pre-defined in code, or a Forum one with a Forum module + some Views). In the end, it wouldn't matter which one you initially downloaded because you could add modules to it the usual way (through Drupal.org, or through the plugin manager, if that makes it in).

The kind of distributions I'd like to see would really just be custom tar.gz files, with possibly a few lines of install profile code to enable the contrib modules. From a development standpoint, I don't think that would be too hard to make, although I didn't think about how the project* module would generate the tar.gz files. To the end user, it wouldn't mean they were getting a different, impossible-to-upgrade version of Drupal. They would've just clicked on a different download link on Drupal.org.

If this doesn't happen for Drupal 7, that's fine. I'm not saying we should remove Forum module from core if that would make it difficult for people to realize that Drupal can support forums. My initial reaction was just that Forum, and other specific applications of a CMS, might be better maintained in contrib than in core, but that if a Forum "distribution" could be downloaded on Drupal.org people evaluating Drupal would still get the sense that it could handle forums "out-of-the-box". Of course, that would require a contrib Forum module to be ready when 7.x core was ready, or soon after.

Maybe we should have three categories: core (things everyone needs like User and Filter, things almost everyone needs, like Node, as well as things that are critical for usability, like WYSIWYG), "pseudo-core" (things people usually need in practice, like Views and Pathauto, and (possibly) particular content types, like Blog or Forum), and contrib (the "nice-to-have" addons). I know that when I was starting out with Drupal, that was how I viewed things anyway. I just wish that Drupal.org (& possibly a new Drupal install itself) would've made it more clear what contrib modules I needed to download to get the things that I needed to build the site I wanted.

I've just changed my username from taron13 to Yura Filimonov (it turns out, it doesn't mess with the profile URL).

I've re-read the microproject desc and it does seem that most of the work had already been done by Michelle here.

So here's what I suggest we need to do:
- combine all the main forum features with the exception of trivial features (from the Michelle's master list, features of all the contrib forum-related modules and other requests)
- conduct a poll among the Drupal community on drupal.org and make sure it's noticed to get the necessary data
- see how to make them easier to use
- collect feedback on suggested improvements

As I mentioned, in my opinion, it'd help to run a multi-choice poll (max 7 choices) with all the main and usable forum features to get the opinion of the community. We'll also need to make sure the poll is noticed by most of the forum users (core, vB, AF, etc) to get their input. From what I've seen, critical features are spread over Advanced Forum and contrib modules.

Michelle, would you like to compile the list described above? If not, I can do it by Jun 16th (this Tuesday). But I don't have a permission to create a poll here. Anyone has or knows someone who has an ability to create a poll on drupal.org? If not, we'll need to create a poll at d7ux.org.

By the way, another strong factor that influences choices for community platforms is hacker-proof security. Does everyone think Drupal is reasonably safe or not? In my mind, it largely depends on the admin (and contrib modules). I haven't seen anyone mention security, when discussing forum features.

And no, I can't develop modules. I am not a developer. I am a good Drupal/forum user and usability person in terms of this project. However, it seems the code will be contributed by Aquaia:

To help, Acquia will start contributing a significant amount of its engineering resources. Starting this week, we'll contribute two or three people full-time until the end of the summer! Probably a combination of Gábor Hojtsy, David Rothstein, and Paul Lovvik. Jeff Noyes and Jason Reed will assist with user testing and design. Also, after talking to Mark Boulton, he has agreed to contribute one week a month of Tim Millwood's time (a Drupal developer that they have on staff) from now on to code freeze.

As for whether these changes will go in D7, here's another quote:

It's easy to throw up our hands and say that it's impossible, that we should wait for Drupal 8, or whatnot. However, maintaining the status quo is simply not an option. Drupal 8 won't be used in production for, probably, at least another two years. As I wrote before, I don't want to compromise on Drupal 7's usability.

Few projects win by maintaining the status quo. Projects that win are those that go ahead and always improve. It is OK to be afraid about the work that is ahead. If you're not scared, you're not doing the right thing. Both winners and losers have fear, but all winners have faith. We can do this -- we've done it before.

I have never seen a poll here on drupal.org. I don't even know if the poll module is enabled. Whenever offical surveys have been done, they have been offsite.

I am not going to have much time before Tuesday and, frankly, getting the DruBB project done has higher priority to me than creating a poll. I agreed to help with this because I thought you were planning on tackling the patches and am disappointed to find that this is just more talk with a vague idea that maybe someone from Acquia will work on it. I'm trying not to be difficult here but I'm struggling to be helpful with what I consider a waste of time.

If you have specific questions for me, I'll try to answer them. Otherwise I'm going to spend my time actually getting these features written rather than talking about them.

Michelle

Dear Michelle,

Thank you so much.
The actual features are needed first.

Most of the user interface for
the visitors to our site like
post a new post, reply etc are OK

What is missing is the features.
VBB allows anonymous posters
to post with their own names.

Its great to know you are rapidly
building up this features.
We need this first.

Note that we do not expect the output of every microproject to be implemented or implementable.

So what's the point then?

Dear ronia,

You might consider sponsoring Michelle's time if the feature is a critical requirement for you. ;-)

Dear Gurpartap,

There are several other priorities
I have. Sponsoring is a good idea
no doubt.

But drupal forum awfully lacks
answers or help which I need -
even when I wanted to sponsor.

You can see this http://drupal.org/node/471038

Dear ronia,

It's a good idea to contact someone you know who can do something you need to get done.

But we are getting off topic here. Just a bit of search for Drupal service providers will help you. Often details (more than brief), fetch more replies.

Thanks!

Just as I had predicted back when the highly paid Usability team was brought on to save Drupal. Everything we've done is wrong and the only way to save Drupal is to have the highly paid people tell us ( but not you know provide patches or anything ) how to fix it all. Never mind that Michelle and others have worked hard for the last couple of years, Usability experts are on the job.

@devtrash: If you don't like the idea of the Usability microprojects, then you don't have to participate. You can say that you think the approach is flawed without bashing Leisa and the others who have worked so hard on this.

devtrash, microprojects had just started and one of the goals is to learn and improve ways of communication with the Drupal community to get as much feedback as possible, so the end result is close to what community wants *and* is much easier to use, than what module developers designed and didn't have much time for.

If you have any ideas how to improve our communication with you and other developers/users, feel free to suggest anything.

Sure. I'm gonna go start an issue describing how to do just that.

Dear microteam

Here is an urgent and critical missing forum function
which needs solution on warfoooting.

Quote is a very frequently used function
in all forum and boards.

In Drupal this breaks the site and renders
the pages unusable

http://drupal.org/node/422038

Please see this and post a microsolution.

Not much activity in 10 days or so but I'd like to post my thoughts:

1. Wait for Michelle's DruBB efforts to be complete.
2. Forum should not be a core feature of Drupal but all done through contrib
3. The latest tools from developmentseed.org, called Features, to me is the solution to packaging up contrib 'Features', exporting them to a module that can then be installed into a Drupal site.

A few thoughts on that last post...

1) It's not my effort but rather a collaboration. :)

2) I don't think forum should be taken out of core. But I think adding more to it is the wrong direction. I think it should serve more as an API and behave like the "core" of the forum with contributed modules on top much like Drupal core is for sites in general.

3) Last time I checked, Features was more about modules with export capabilities than bundling actual modules. There's a lot of work in this area but nothing is quite ready yet. Something to bundle all the modules together with DruBB to configure it is the ideal goal but it's going to take time to get there.

Michelle

@justageek:

I initially proposed the same thing as you in regard to taking Forum out of core. But Michelle made a good argument a few posts up & I like her suggestion of making the Forum module more of an API/"glue". But, of course, that implies that we have an idea of what we're gluing together, which, for D7 at least, isn't the case. Maybe we could see what kind of functionality the various contrib Forum modules rely on and see where we could make hooks/core functions that they could share.

@ronia (in re: #47):

Sorry, but this isn't intended to be a tech support thread, but rather a brainstorming thread about the direction of core Forum in D7. See Gurpartap's post in #42 in regard to getting support. Posting separate issues in the queue for each bug you have is the best way to get them fixed, I promise :)

@leisa or @Michelle, can you sum up core forum's plan, if any?

(so far)

@Gurpartap: As far as I can tell, you're the only one working on core forum. So the plan is up to you. Code is gold and all that... :)

Michelle

@ Gurpartap Singh - I doubt there is any "plan" out there, especially with only 6 weeks to feature freeze, but if possible, what I would like to see:

1. #147045: Forum: Link to last post in 'Last post' column
2. #515034: Mark all forum topics read
3. Topic pager added to topic listings - can probably be borrowed and forward ported from Advanced forum
4. Maybe a statistics block - something like what other forums have, but this can be built on top of the current new users block or something similar to extend it.
5. A theme in core that themes comments like most forums do (and has a similarly themed node-forum.tpl.php) - but this one is pie in the sky and probably not gonna happen.

AF has #4 and it's fairly portable. AF has #5, too, but the styles are very tied into AF and not something easily taken out. For that, you might have better luck looking at the Sky theme. Jacine has done a lot for theming the forums without AF.

Michelle

from the above list:

4. #544304: Create a forum statistics block

Bah so many goodies to do. Not able to push stuff because the issue process demands a lot of time and they chew my skull well at the end. Would like to see anyone interested to participate. These are easy ones to get intro Drupal if one knows PHP.

That's why I stay in contrib. :) Advanced Forum can make progress a lot faster than core forum.

Michelle

yes it can, but I do think we should try to get some stuff in over the next few weeks - anything in there will not need to be duplicated in contrib.

I am a lousy coder, but I will give the things a shot to see where I can get to.

Guess this needs a better defined vision and scope. For Drupal 8

Given #1898812: [policy] Deprecate forum module for removal in Drupal 11 and #3199419: Move forum module to contrib, I take this issue should be closed as outdated.

Forum is approved for removal. See #1898812: [policy] Deprecate forum module for removal in Drupal 11

This is now Postponed. The status is set according to two policies. The Remove a core extension and move it to a contributed project and the Extensions approved for removal policies.

It will be moved to the contributed extension once the Drupal 11 branch is open.