This is a moot question, because the only thing that matters is engagement.
Internet forums:
-
Are (mostly) specialized.
-
Don’t have S&P 500-level advertising.
-
Don’t constantly ping your phone by default.
-
Don’t incorporate “dark patterns” in the UI.
-
Don’t have AI-based algorithmic feeds.
-
Have rules for posting, which slows down posting.
People didn’t give up on them; their attention got sucked away to other things. And nothing could have changed that, no matter how much they improved.
Not that I have any high horse to stand on.
For a few years, I’ve been telling myself I will become active in a few still-extant forums again (like DPReview and SpaceBattles). I never did.
-
Yes please. I despise the trend to put everything in video format that seems to constitute “discussion” these days, along with a crappy comments section full of trolls, trash talkers, and “experts”.
Someone’s text description with a half dozen crappy photos is often 10x better than some 2-3 people having a BS session over a 15 minute video (like and subscribe!) to do 5 minutes of actual work on the subject you’re interested in.
Forum mods generally kept discussion on track, reeled in people who were deviating too far or kicked out trolls and assholes, and forums dedicated to a subject were a wealth of knowledge and attracted experts and experience.
Sure, there’s a few of those places left, and probably even a few /r/ that might have actual decent content and mods, but those tend to be the exception and not the rule.
What I miss in the transition from forums to Reddit and Lemmy is the longer forum discussions that could go on for years. They had their issues, they regularly went off topic and resulted in insults being traded and trolling but they also got to a depth that we don’t see anymore. They were much better for getting to the detail of a thing and with Reddit/Lemmy being so focussed on today the entire discussion is gone tomorrow. The tree format is better for the branching discussion but its also got a real depth limit.
We lost something important when most of the forums shuttered. I really miss usenet for that as well, it alas didn’t evolve with the increase in spam but it could have been something still in use if it had.
I remember when reddit implimented the thread auto lock after some time, it all went downhill from there.
Bring back crappy forums? Why just not continue using all the good forums that we never stopped using?
They’re crappy, because they’re not centered in one place, multiple registrations needed, no addictive algorithm.
I can’t tell if you’re sarcastic or not. :P
I meant it as sarcastic, but way too many people I know left the fediverse because of this. Sometimes because they run into obnoxious people, but mostly those.
Well. I’m honestly surprised that people even go beyond Facebook to be honest. :(
All mine dries up with Reddit.
Buddy, we’re on one right now.
not really, much more like Usenet.
No.
Bless your heart
This is social media. Not forums.
Lemmy, Mbin, PieFed, etc, are literally just forums with voting. In fact, even some old PHPbb stuff had voting. If you think forums aren’t social media, I have news for you…
Huh. After all the Discord shite with face verification shite, me and my community (The Gamers’ Tavern) moved across to a forum first platform which also has live chat, and it has been an absolute breath of fresh air.
Bring back more forums imo
You got me excited because this sounds amazing but it’s not open source… :/
Erm. It is.
https://www.discourse.org/open-source
Edit: join us and check it out yourself, if you like. We talk all things FOSS, Linux and gaming: discourse.gamerstavern.online
Oh nice. I just looked at the main site and the pricing page. No mention of open source anywhere there. The pricing page mentions a “free version” but also ask me to enter my email to find out more.
The license is GPL3. But they don’t seem to want people to know that…
So I’m not really sure what the deal with the paid plans is. Are you just paying for them to handle hosting? Or are some features restricted unless you pay (the software is not fully open source)?
Yeah, you’ve more or less got it- you pay if you want them to host it. But the open source is just that, in that you can entirely self host the software on your own machinery. That’s exactly what we do. The only cost for us here being the cost of renting the server (Hetzner in this case).
So, for anyone wanting to create an account with our instance, it’s entirely free ☺️
Nice. I might pop in and check it out. Ive been looking for something like this.
That being said, looking over the source now that I know it’s open… I’m seeing a very concerning amount of evidence that this project is heavily vibe coded. The is an absolute cacophony of
SLOP.mdfiles in the repo.Really making me question the future of this project. Looks like the project started before vibe coding was a thing but the slop ship sailed quite some time ago.
FWIW, I’m not anti-ai for programming use but this to me looks very extreme, very disorganised, very concerning.
Which platform, please?
Discourse. Plenty of plugins and customisation to play about with. Self hosted, too.
Can check it out at discourse.gamerstavern.online if you like.
I used to waste so much time on ADVrider. It still exists but its a shell of its former self.
When considering a car purchase, I would first look at a forum dedicated to that car. You would find common issues easily, along with solutions.
Id love to, and have been looking at different options. They all have a pretty steep monthly price point.
What I still miss from uunet is the concept of 'I’ve already read this ’ going back to old threads is tedious because I keep re-reading the same things I did last time.
Why haven’t more added ActivityPub & joined the fediverse or threadiverse?
They aren’t aware or they don’t care enough to add it?
Never used forums much other than necessary to be honest.
The threadiverse is way better than crappy old web forums, and the centralized popular ones as well.
It has the potential to be, but it needs more communities and more people working to grow them into active places.
Threadiverse? Is that a spelling mistake?
No, it’s the part of the Fediverse that uses this thread-based format
I see. Thanks!
Show me a forum<->nntp proxy.
