Both this forum and the ask.fedora.project forum have recently changed their names. Clearly, since several functions (change the background color from blinding white, for instance) neither was ready for prime change. In fact, I can’t think of a single reason to change the names of the forums except to frustrate the users. That’s not good for Fedora, Linux or KDE.
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What do you mean “change their names”. Isn’t this new, and a replacement from the old KDE forums?
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so here’s the reason: this way you can still read all the old posts
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This one’s more dynamic and lively, I like it way more than the old forum. 
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Hi, you could install Dark Reader extension to your browser, and enjoy reading all and every site in the color scheme you prefer, regardless of whether they support dark mode officially or not.
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Yes, I did and thank you for the tip. But I would like to reiterate my original point, which is that there have been (too) many unnecessary and frustrating changes to a number of forums. This is one of them.
(Or you could use Opera and enable the Force Dark Mode feature)
You don’t even need to do anything fancy. Discourse has a built in dark theme, just turn it on in your Preferences.
As for the address of the forum. I imagine one of the reasons the name forum.kde.org name wasn’t used is so the many sites that linked to posts on it still work.
As for the user side of things it’s really not a big change to update a bookmark.
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I think you’re slightly missing the point, Justin. At the same time the kde forum changed it’s name to discuss.kde.org, the fedora forum changed it’s name to discussion.fedoraproject.org. I’m older now and have been using “finger memory” for years (yea unto decades) to type in the names of sites I review often, even daily. I used to type in “fedora” or “kde”. Now I have to memorize discuss vs. discussion when the browser (in this case, Firefox) wants to finish the name for me? I re-iterate, It’s frustrating.
For me, it takes ‘kde d’ for the correct site to be listed…
I have been using KDE’s forums et al since forever, and I have only seen changes twice. The previous one in 2008, and the current one. Though I admit I can’t recall what the older forum was, if it even existed, officially.
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Eventually if and when once the old forum is archived after the transition period, we can make forum.kde.org redirect here. But obviously we can’t do that until such an archiving happens, right? forum.kde.org can’t point both here and also to the old forum.
If we had moved the content at forum.kde.org elsewhere and made this new forum live at forum.kde.org, don’t you think we’d get complaints that the same URL now randomly leads to a totally different forum, with none of the old forum history? I strongly suspect we would.
So I’m wondering what exactly you would have preferred for us to do.
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This is not merely a name change, this is a platform change from phpBB to Discourse.
I am not part of the KDE team nor was I involved in the decision to make these changes but I do agree with the decision. The old forum was based on phpBB and I have both used and administrated phpBB forums over many many years and sadly phpBB just didn’t keep up with being a competitive platform. phpBB has not had a feature release in a few years and has not had a major release in about a decade. On the other hand, Discourse is frequently updated including new features and core components.
So the first reason is to implement a better platform for the forum.
The second reason I can think of is that they chose to use a different name because of the YEARS of data on the existing Forum and getting rid of that data would be a mistake. This way they can create redirects for all the threads to go to the archive whereever it is placed and then have the main forum subdomain to redirect here while not waiting on the launch of this until the time the archive is ready causing massive downtime.
This is not accurate. Fedora implemented Discourse and the new Fedora Discussion name on January 12th, 2021 so well over 2 years ago.
I understand that Fedora using Discussion and KDE using Discuss will possibly create a name collision for you in your browser but there is a much better solution in my opinion especially since you use Firefox.
I recommend creating a bookmark of each forum and then creating your own keyword to memorize and use for quick launching. For example, this forum could be “kdef” or “kded” and Fedora’s could be “fedf” or “fedd” . . . or whatever else you want it to be.
This approach can also be used to future proof your experience because if this kind of change ever happens again all you need to do is change the url in the bookmark and the keyword quicklaunch will be exactly the same eliminating any future headache.
I know this may not be something you are familiar with in doing in Firefox but I created a video that shows exactly how to do this so check that out if you want to try out this solution.
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Great info, Michael!
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Your post made a ton of sense on how to “future-proof” personal workflows when organizations make platform changes, and the “keyword for bookmarks” is something that I generally knew of but didn’t really think of putting into practice like this - thanks!
One heads up - I suspect what the OP here is referring to, on the point that you responded to in that quote, is the Fedora Project merging its “Project Discussion” and “Ask Fedora” Discourse instances into one single site, hosted on the discussion.fedoraproject.org instance (Ask Fedora and Project Discussion are now Categories within Fedora Discussion).
That change happened within the last couple of months - however, ask.fedoraproject.org continues to function just fine as a bookmark, it merely redirects to the Ask Fedora Category of the new site.
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Wouldn’t this break links from third parties?
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Exactly!
Unles one ported every discussion from the old forum to tne new one and setup redirections from old-style URLs to new-style.
I think putting the new forum under a new subdomain was the sensible choice.
Edit: s/right choice/sensible choice/, no answer will be right for everyone, as experienced by the OP.
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I do not see either the benefit having a new name. I mean there is nothing wrong with, but there was not much point in it either.
The decision has been made, and it is fine. Generally, said Discourse is not for “casual users”. The categories give a flood of topics. Casual users will not read through, nor page back and forth. This also means less time spent at the forum and less participation. I agree that it is feature rich and may even replace the mailing list, but that is not the whole criteria for a good communication tool. I agree that for developers it maybe a very good solution.
Good luck with Discuss!