Hello everyone and happy New Year! I hope you all had a great New Year’s Eve and that your hangovers are not too bad this morning… 
And no, for those that know me, this is not going to be the newsgroup stats for 2013… I retired from that job at the same time as the newsgroup was retired… Instead, a small New Year’s “discourse”… 
It’s hard to imagine that the McNeel Discourse forum was launched only 6 months ago… amid much discussion, joy, anguish, love, hate and more… So, where are we now?
In my humble opinion, it’s a very nice success. While there are still some major issues to resolve, I think it is working really well. One of the indicators is a much wider user group that seems to be participating actively, from first time users to seasoned pros. I’m assuming that simply comes from the easier-to-access http format and its visibility. It also seems like a larger group of experienced people are consistently helping out with contributions than I saw on the newsgroup – probably again because the format makes it just easier for them to do so.
I’m pleased that the original proposed hierarchical user privilege structure based on number of posts and/or voting was not implemented; instead the McNeel folk wisely opted for a flat “everyone-is-equal” structure that was also the hallmark of the old newsgroup. There was also much discussion about the sense of “community” on the old newsgroup and fears that it would be lost – I don’t think that has happened. While the atmosphere in here might be a bit less “clubby” than the newsgroup was, it has retained that open, honest and welcoming structure that has been the trademark of the Rhino community since the very beginning. The Discourse platform seems to be a good match for the nature of this forum.
My personal likes:
- All the Rhino-related forums I post on in one place
- My read/unread is up to date no matter where I log in from
(I have at least 4 places I read from) - Post editing (I’m a horrible typist)
- Code snippet formatting
- Drag and drop attachments
- Search function
There are still a couple of serious problems to be overcome:
- Inability to mask categories
- Inability to mark all read
Unfortunately, the above are not under McNeel’s control, instead, we are depending on the Discourse people to implement those… Despite much discussion about it on the Discourse forum itself, it just doesn’t seem to have floated to the top as a priority. @sam As soon as the different language categories come online here, this will become an even more critical problem for us. 
Anyway, back to the original purpose of this post… As I don’t always remember to do so during the “regular season”, I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone here - users, resellers, and McNeel staff alike - for contributing towards making Rhino support the best in the world and for making this community one of the most extraordinary places on the ‘net… I still learn stuff every day, and I feel as home here as I did on the old newsgroup!
I wish everyone all the best for a happy, healthy, productive 2014!
–Mitch
