> the forum experience is far from dead
If you find a forum for a given subject, it is almost always an authoritative source filled with experts. This is especially true in engineering disciplines.
It's unfortunate that Reddit and social media took over and led to their decline, because it's suboptimal setup in so many ways.
- Reddit in the large is a high noise, low signal monetization chamber. Some subreddits have good moderation, but that doesn't stop the spill over and drama.
- You can't assume much about any given Reddior, and you won't typically form relationships or associations with them. It's pretty much pseudonymous.
- Reddit doesn't focus on authorship. It doesn't allow inclusion of images, media, or carefully formatted responses in threads.
- Reddit corporate is the authority and owner of all content. They can change the rules at any time, and that's a fragile and authoritarian setup for human discourse.
- Reddit corporate is constantly changing the UI and engaging in dark patterns to earn more money. This flies in the face of usability.
Forums should make a comeback. It would be better if each community had real owners and stakeholders that had skin in the game rather than a generic social media overlord that is optimizing for higher order criteria that sometimes conflict with that of the community.
But forums have problems too. They should be easier to host, frictionless to join, easy to discover, and longer lived.
Another way to think of this: every major subreddit is a community (or startup) of its own and could potentially be peeled off and grown. You'd have to overcome the lack of built-in community membership and discovery, but if you can meet needs better (better tools for organizing recipes, community events, engineering photoblogs, etc.), then you might be able to beat them. Reddit can't build everything, just like Facebook couldn't.