We're looking for a new forums tech. Input welcome.

• ability to post news (eg releases)
• focus on answering questions so we have little duplicate questions
• great search
• responsive design

We want to replace the forum because of

• bad search-engine
• much duplicated questions
• no possibility to mark duplicate questions
• no possibility to mark off-topic questions (like basic questions how to configure apache or similar)

URL: http://discourse.org<br > Demo/Example: http://community.nethserver.org/

Pro:

• ability to post news (eg releases)
• great, real time search
• responsive design
• tagging to mark questions as duplicate/off-topic/answered
• Full Forum Software (with Topics,...)
• Supports GitHub Login!

Contra:

• not focused on asking/answering questions
• not good at reducing duplicate questions

URL: http://stackexchange.com<br > Demo/Example of integrated version: http://askubuntu.com/

Pro:

• Question Portal
• tagging to mark questions as duplicate/off-topic/answered
• nice points system and all that for participants answering questions

Contra:

• Not self-hosted (by ownCloud - on the servers of StackExchange)
• Not responsive

URL: https://askbot.com/<br > Demo/Example: https://ask.fedoraproject.org/

Pro:

• Question Portal
• Self-hosting possible
• GPL3
• helps prevent duplicate questions
• tagging to mark questions as duplicate/off-topic/answered
• nice points system and all that for participants answering questions
• responsive

Contra:

• not so nice for conversations
• not so good with announcements (would have to be tag, we might have to hack the software to show a certain tag on top)
• no sub boards (but tags)

URL: https://www.woltlab.com<br > Demo/Example: https://community.woltlab.com/

Is there any difference to phpBB? Both are similar forum softwares, so replacing one with another doesn't make any sense?

Yes. I think so. Because it looks more modern and is responsive ;)

Pro:

• responsive

Contra:

• not a question board

apps.owncloud.com includes an question portal.

Pro:

• focus on answering questions so we have little duplicate questions

Contra:

• no ability to post news (eg releases)
• not so great search
• no responsive design