Yep, i am a 51 year old contractor, begin programming in 1991. Currently in a gig uin the second biggest public university doing some things in an isolated computer (airgapped, monolith, need be done without frameworks because special conditions of the codebases etc... are two laravel-esque 5.6 php codebase of 2017 and a more decente 7.6 php in special servers)

The forum was a success for many reasons but need put the background first and a story itself. The reason why i know how use forums is relevant. Programmer as i said, in 2005 i begin to be stalked by a prehispanic beleiver drug addict who fund a cult.

Sound crazy but They are convinced that I was possessed by an alien, from an invasion led two million years ago by the god Tezcatlipoca. These insane guys somehow got hold of my heritage and tried to impersonate me, and put their newcomers on trial to try to kill me. At the same time I was the moderator of a forum with more than 165,000 messages in egroups. Because of the stalking/harassment I went to invision, and later for prices and technical reasons to mybb (those forums in the end I migrated to wordpress).

As a result of these people's attacks, the forums were much better due to issues of apache logs, IP addresses in each post, granular access levels and I could detect without problems when they tried to enter but due to the level of trust or areas of interest, I ended up creating different groups of access levels in those forums, which made it clear to me that they were useful in my work. Now I explain why.

The main advantage is that we didn't have to install anything. So we could use it anywhere, being a client's site, cybercafe, on vacation, etc. There was no excuse not to use it. I told the people on the team that it allowed me to show their progress and what they needed. If the results came back, they would get a new chair, or a new printer, etc.

As far as I remember, users could only register through the administrator (me), so there was no spam. I gave it as long as HR confirmed that certain things had been verified. The access levels were Not logged in, that is, an visitor, who could be a client, could see FAQ, manuals, pdf for download... or common problems (by the way, our usernames were the initials of our names). Second, users who logged in could see something. Accounting used to ask us for things or sales, so in another subforum, for logged in users, I put the date of requirements in a different category and they had to give the go-ahead right there. The programmers could see the themes, and the management too. They received a response by email, due to the configuration, and the thread functioned as a ticket number. The programmers, in their own category, only saw their own forum or cabinet, as I called it, and a few common ones. If I had to give access to sensitive material that we couldn't send by email, in another forum I would give and remove permissions for the person to download it to their PC. No USB devices or paper in or out of the facilities were allowed. Lastly, my own tech notes, reminders, or whatever were in a category called Admin Only.

From the human point of view the main advantages were centralization, everything was in one place. From the point of view of operational security, everything was governed by access levels, which could be backed up in a single step (I was in a vps cpanel at knownhost), in a secure installation and was also outside the offices, without depending on of access for continuity of operations or the installation of software. From the point of view of scrum Agile it was excellent because you could see what had been done in sprints, in another forum called sprints, and feedback from customers is the basis of AGILE. So in the three main clients there were two forums that ONLY THAT client saw, the programmers and me. One was company X requirements, and the other was company X signed documents. On the outside it was an innocent question-answer site for our forum, but all the control of the operation could be done from there.

When they transferred me to the special operations area, the guy with the electric guitar left early on Fridays to see his children and returned Monday at around two in the afternoon. (divorced engineer, linux user who did nothing on the list of 10 mid-term requirements on the day I was reassigned). They did what they called scrum and agile sessions, but they were anything but that, and they stopped keeping track of what everyone did on a daily basis, and since they didn't solve anyone's problems, everything was going to explode. My main problem when I thought about leaving that place, was that a forum that was not updated could be hacked, so if I left I couldn't leave that sensitive information there. So my email was basically something like "Good afternoon, since Alex has already implemented a new way of working, I think it is neither necessary nor prudent to keep the content of the QA repository any longer, with all its cabinets. I say this because I have not seen that software updates have been run, so I think that since we keep sensitive information and it is no longer being used, it is best to delete that information and its backups, since with Alex's workflow it is not needed. I would appreciate it if you would confirm if I can delete that information, and on the night of the 31st I will remove it from the monthly backups." The next thing is to go to the director, accountant, sales staff and have them sign my email (by protocol we did that sometimes). Alex answered for me delete it, and the rest is history.