B10[mg]

Sometimes I just don't see why products, websites are getting big. A good example is of course Microsoft's Windows, and Internet Explorer but others I don't get are http://www.marktplaats.nl and last but certainly not least: phpBB.

Why is phpBB so bad? Well, to start off, there are these security issues, but that's not all. There are two more things I really dislike about it:

• No threaded structure
• Bad privacy protection

No threaded structure

The problem usually isn't too big if there are only a handful of people posting and they keep checking the forum every hour or more often. The problem does arise though, when some people don't check in too often and do want to post replies. Consider the following discussion:

John: "Does anyone know a good restaurant in Cairo?"
Dave: "Oh, sure, there's a boat on the Nile, close to the museum.  Great!"
Alex: "There is a pizza joint in Giza, not too far away by cab."
Dave: "Oh yeah, that one is good too."
Alex: "I love the food there."
Sean: "I didn't like the food on that Nile ship..."

Now Sean is talking about the Nile ship, mentioned by Dave before. Wouldn't it be easier to read if Sean's post was located underneath Dave's post, like this?

John: "Does anyone know a good restaurant in Cairo?"
 |-Dave: "Oh, sure, there's a boat on the Nile, close to the museum.  Great!"
 |----Sean: "I didn't like the food on that Nile ship..."
 |-Alex: "There is a pizza joint in Giza, not too far away by cab."
 |----Dave: "Oh yeah, that one is good too."
 \-------Alex: "I love the food there."

In this little discussion, you might not see the benefit of such a system, but what if the discussion went on for weeks and you'd have to get 10+ pages back to see the comment the reply was for?

Bad privacy protection

Now let's take a look at for example http://forum.nedlinux.nl/memberlist.php. I don't know this site, I merely googled and found this forum. As you can see, you are allowed to view a list of all members of that forum and you are even allowed to have their email addresses!

First of all, I don't see the need for a memberlist at all, but if you do want to have one, at least protect the email addresses (I believe this is optional in phpBB (now), but far too few sites do so). Secondly, if you're going to have a memberlist, allow it to be viewed by the members only. Non-members have no need to know who's a member and not.

So, to conclude: stop using it! ;)