i would like to know if site admins considered any other forum systems/soft.?
if not i suggest to take a look at Flarum. and chekout examples also.
in my opinion when decision is made to move from old forum, its old look, feel, charm, minimalism should have been kept in tact as much was possible.. along with new backend stack to manage site effectively.
but looks like decision was purely based on moving to new things, like Discourse.
thats why many users are still confused navigating the forum.
