>>1362
The ideal format has always been forums with proper code formatting blocks. I was very sad when people stopped using them and moved on to the *overflow clones and places like github. I too would rather have everyone be anon. A bunch of programming forums used to allow you to post as anon (I should know. I coded the mods to allow it).

I once ran a very large forum for programmers back in the day. We made a lot of mods to support programming discussion and releasing finished projects. We had over a million users. It ran like clock work until the parent company got bought out and they pretty much canned the forum in favor of pushing paid modifications to their software and to shut down discussion about the state of the software (it was getting long in the tooth and the new company didn't seem interested in fixing the problems).

I'm currently developing my own textboard software and I've been thinking about these issues as well. I also want to bring some features usually found on forums (even if some of them might be considered "useless bloat") but I prefer the simplicity of textboards. I don't want to introduce an account system so delegating parts of the moderation process to users might be a good idea.

Of course, any formatting/presentation feature that can help code readability (like code blocks or syntax highlighting) and code sharing is being considered.

>>1372
The issue with no accounts+user moderation is abuse. It's a nice idea. But without some kind of restriction on access it can be a pain. User accounts have a known set of problems. I think it's best to have anonymous but accountable moderation. Full transparency with the ability to roll back any changes. Karma systems don't work.

Pretty much everything else from an old school forum would be nice to have. Never understand why text/imageboards are frozen in 2004. Forums offered a lot more even back then. That's why people used them. The admincp is much nicer and so is how data is stored in the database.

A long time ago I saw someone take some forum software like php and pretty much strip out everything that wasn't on your typical imageboard. Then they modified the post layouts to show attachments in-line. Maybe disabling some stuff on forum software would be easier than building an imageboard engine up. Most of them already support anonymous posting and always have. People just rarely turned it on.

Full anonymity generally seems like a bad idea when tech stuff is involved since it's something that has become synonymous with various scams and other chicanery. The exception would be places like kissu where it's secondary, so there's already a bit of a separation.
Forums are probably a great idea and I'd love to see more people use them, but they're probably harder to establish than an imageboard these days because of the extra steps to become a poster. Well, I guess an imageboard with "accounts" would be similar, but people wouldn't feel like some unknown newbie when someone with an old join date with implied seniority has a different opinion.
Meh... it is a mystery...

>>1375
I just bit this shab.

>>1375
I was suggesting you used an existing forum and strip out all of that kind of stuff. It isn't very hard. On most all you have to do is click a button and delete some stuff from the templates.

Do you know HTML? Most of the time templates are just HTML+pseudo-code. You don't have "join date" and "post count" listed by posts since you just have to delete that portion of the template to hide it. Log-ins are strictly for moderation tasks and/or spam prevention. Anonymous posting can either be really open. Or you can require an account log-in but not reveal the poster's identity to the rest of the board. Or you can do both.

The imageboard engines I've worked with seem very basic and not scripted as well in my experience with them. Every owner is forced to add a lot of stuff and basic features like multiple images per post seem to always be either hard, broken or missing all together. Where as with forum software you can upload multiple attachments by default with a post. Putting the image beside/above the post itself instead of listed as a file underneath is a simple matter of editing the template and maybe some original CSS. Forums typically have more spam prevention tools built in. The moderation system for mods is more robust. Roles are clearly defined along with permissions. Lots of other stuff.

You could take the average forum software. Turn off half the features. Edit a few templates and have a basic imageboard in an afternoon. I don't understand why more people don't take advantage of them instead of using the same few imageboard scripts. Forums typically have better integration with other scripts than imageboards to. It's very easy to take something like mediawiki and share log-ins with the forum. There are already tons of pre-made solutions for things like hosting media or real time chat. Forums usually have integration options with CMSs.

The thread management options are much much better to. The only thing you'd be missing is auto-thread deletion. But that's as easy as adding a cron job with a simple SQL query.

I was surprised by how bad most every imageboard script is until I installed them myself. But I suppose a medium designed for anonymous-first doesn't need the kitchen sink when it comes to user and thread management. So it makes sense.