Hmm next what, people will abandon Facebook and flock back to thematic PHPBB forums?
(I honestly can't wait!)
(I honestly can't wait!)
There are communities still out there, but there seems to be no modern forum software? They have either been around forever or, if a bit newer, do nothing without mbs of JS.
Now that activitypub is here, there seem to be half a dozen reddit clones in development. Microblogging and social media are also everywhere, but what about forums? What about topic-centric, lasting conversations instead of hot-topic and people-centric chats with no history?
Discourse is pretty modern.
(I run Remarkbox and I'm trying to find product market fit)
Forums require a lot moderation and maintenance. If you don't keep the software up to date they're easy pickings for hackers. Without active moderation they're quickly overrun with spam.
For most people forums end up expensive pains in the ass. In terms of ActivityPub, the lasting conversation topic-centric nature of old school forums doesn't really fit in the model of pushing new activity. A hot-topic Reddit clone fits that model much better.
Discourse, Flarum, Talkyard (which I'm developing).
GitHub's new Discussions feature?
Lemmy? https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy, "Building a federated alternative to reddit in rust" (how does it matter that it's a reddit alternative? it can still be topic-centric etc?)
Old forums had the opposite issue (with threads years old being "necro'd" back to the top, confusing everyone) but at least you could have a discussion over a couple of days.
I wrote my own tagging system for HN and it's hard to describe how much it changed the experience for me. only usernames feels a bit like being in a community where everyone wears the same clothes, uses a vocoder, and covers up their faces. if you squint you might be able to make out the nametag.
I would love to find ways to more easily identify users on here. The username, despite my best efforts, I mostly overlook or can't remember.
On Forums, with Avatar images, this used to be so much simpler.
I still find chronologically ordered, flat discussion threads to be far superior to nested and vote ordered discussions.
Yes, and not in the least because one can answer/reference multiple messages in one post, thus bringing different conversation 'branches' back together. It also provides a nice chronological order to follow the whole discussions, which is hard in nested discussions.
However, flat discussions have limits: once you have hundreds of participants, it becomes nearly impossible to follow. I estimate that the limit to more or less comfortably follow flat discussion is ~50 posts/day, or 15-30 more or less active posters.
Being single threaded is annoying. People keep asking the same questions or repeating the same stuff again and again. No fault of their own. Discovery in a single thread is crazy hard.
Finding what you’re looking for in a thread can take a long time. Some one may ask a question your interested in knowing the answer to, but finding people who respond to it is not easy. If you post something in the middle of a [popular] thread, there’s a good chance it barely gets read or noticed.
Many of these problems afflict reddit too and Reddit and HN issue of threads being almost dead after a day is really annoying.
I have a feeling grass is greener on the other side and people in either case.
That's a bit reductive, perhaps. The way I see it, different styles of 'forums' or 'communities' can foster different types of interactions. it's a bit like how in the 'real world' we might have a gathering where everyone sits in a circle, or small separate tables, or a bar area, or a conference-style 'lecture + hallway-track', etc. each have their advantages and drawbacks.
It’s possible many communities never have get the correct way of interacting ever. With positives and negatives to their choices and alternatives. Which is also what my statement was referring to.
Trying to police this destroys the usefulness of a forum too. There is one major forum for a piece of software I use so I had this issue Google lead me to the forum, the thread is old and because it's old it's locked but it doesn't answer the question. I post a new thread after waiting 12 hours for my account to be approved by a mod, the overly zealous mod locks it with a link to the old thread saying there is already a thread about it.
Yeah I know there is, but it doesn't answer the problem and I can't post it in to keep it on topic. I now dread when that url shows up in my searches.
Building a good useful community and being a good host has some crossover with being a moderator but honestly they're completely different skillsets.
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On what you wrote about, a good point too, just not what I was thinking of, I am cool with topics repeating. It makes sense for then reasons you gave.
I don’t remember any forum I used to go to that was really tight and strict with not allowing duplicates. Stackoveflow is what I think of for a place that really hurts the community with its strictness.
That's what FAQ lists are for. Many forums have wiki-like features where FAQ-like information can be stored and kept up-to-date.
And to fix this, you'd need buy-in from major tech companies. All of which don't want to solve this problem.
Doesn't federation solve this? You're identified by the server you signed up on.
I don't understand why people consider this to be such a barrier. In an era where we have browsers that suggest secure passwords, store and fill credentials, and sync credentials between devices... why do we still think of registration as an impossible ask for the average user?
HNers discussing about Facebook/Google logins in their apps regularly mention that more than half their users use those options, instead of creating an account using their email.
Just go ask a bunch of your non-techie acquaintances if they use those web browser features you mention.
If a signup page auto-fills with your email, name, and suggested secure password, and then your browser stores and syncs that information, that's basically as frictionless as clicking a "Sign In With Google" button.