Talkyard

Forum software, with chat, and anonymous comments.

• Thoughtful discussions.  Insightful comments rise to the top.
• Upvote ideas.  Sort by votes.
• Question-Answers.  Discuss, select an answer.
• Chat channels.  Pretty basic features.
• Blog comments.  Listen to your readers.

How does it compare with other software?   Find out here.
Self-Hosting:  See talkyard-prod-one
Demo:  https://insightful.demo.talkyard.io
Discussion forum:  https://forum.talkyard.io
Documentation:  https://docs.talkyard.io (incomplete)
Development:  That's this repo! See: docs/developing-talkyard.md

Features

Good comments rise to the top

Find the interesting stuff, also in big discussions.

Tags with values

Create your own tags with values, list and sort by value.

For example, a priority tag: tags:priority:desc>2 is:open, here: https://forum.talkyard.io/-/search?q=tags:priority:desc%3E2+is:open

Upvote ideas

Anonymous comments

So e.g. students can post embarassing questions. Or for anonymous feedback, etc.

Chat

Notifications via email, as of now.

Users online

Avoid mistakes

There's a Disagree button.

Big discussions

Find new replies by clicking Recent in the sidebar, when you return to a discussion a day later.

Jump to the parent comment and back:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fc1b34d7-75e3-4baf-95e1-8de364cdfdf2

Topic list

Blog comments

Like Disqus — but no ads, no tracking. Configure in the Admin Area | Settings | Embedded Comments. Read more here: https://blog-comments.talkyard.io

Old Code

Old code from before January 2015 is available here: https://github.com/debiki/debiki-server-old. That repo, squashed, is in this repo.

License

Copyright (c) 2010-2026 Kaj Magnus Lindberg and contributors.

Talkyard is licensed under AGPLv3 or later, see LICENSE.txt.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the above-mentioned licence texts for more details.