4 ms·

Two other reasons Facebook really doesn't work, at least for me: a) the UI is not that of a proper forum or chat (small amount of characters per row, lack of co

by stinos 9y ago

Two other reasons Facebook really doesn't work, at least for me: a) the UI is not that of a proper forum or chat (small amount of characters per row, lack of controls for embedding content including quoting, content burried in between a ton of no-related content, etc). Actually, in my opinion the UI is abysmal when it comes to conveying information which is more than a picture of video or few words. b) when you're not in a closed group there's virtually an unlimited amount of people you don't even know who ca chime in and want to present their idea (which is almost like you're trying to have a serious discussion in real life and there's constantly a bunch of drunken people interrupting you st start spitting out whatever is on their mind). It just does not work for me for having proper discussions (it does have a ton of other features which do work great, but not that). Reddit is sort of ok, if you find the right community. And many of the forums I already visited before there even was a Reddit or Facebook stil exist nowadays and some of them are even more alive than all those years ago. Most of them are specific (eg. one sport, one music style), the general ones are mostly gone.

maneesh 9y ago
I believe that Facebook Groups are one of the most powerful features of FB, but I agree that the UI is limiting and the admin controls are lacking. Have you found any online communities with excellent interfaces? Ideally open-source?
- nsomaru 9y ago
  I've been testing Discourse out and it seems pretty cool. Really fast UI too.
- supergreg 9y ago
  If you are looking for open source, I think Discourse is the best out there. We tried to move a community from an old phpbb forum to a newer software some years ago and checked several projects and most projects are either unmaintained or old (with old style PHP programming) or new but lack features we needed. We ended up using NodeBB because the person who was going to maintain it was more comfortable with Javascript than Ruby.
- joaovictortr 9y ago
  I'd also recommend Discourse [0], as others already have. You can see it live on the Julia [1] and Rust [2] language forums, for example. [0] https://discourse.org/ https://discourse.org/ [1] https://discourse.julialang.org/ https://discourse.julialang.org/ [2] https://internals.rust-lang.org/ https://internals.rust-lang.org/
  - pugio 9y ago
    One thing that FB groups have going for it (and I agree it's a terrible interface) is that you don't have to click on anything to see posts. Whereas in discourse you only see post titles, and a tiny blurb, the FB group is kind of like a custom group news feed. It's much easier for people to scroll through, and engage with. Unless discourse has an "inline recent posts" view? That would be superb, for users not willing to commit by default to clicking on a post. It's amazing how big a difference that can make, with the scroll-happy click-averse folks trained on Facebook.
    - KajMagnus 9y ago
      Can I ask what are your thoughts about this a bit in between flavor: https://beautiful.demo.ed.community/latest https://beautiful.demo.ed.community/latest — it shows the first parts of each post, + some images. So by just scrolling, one gets a fairly good understanding about what each post is about. But to read everything & discuss, one needs to click. (I'm developing this, and tweaking it a bit, maybe adding a config option so it becomes even more like the Facebook feed, is maybe something I should consider, hmm) If you look at it on a smaller screen, like a mobile, it'll look a little bit even more like Facebook, ... but maybe more text from the posts should be included.
    - stinos 9y ago
      On one side I agree, it's easier to just keep on scrolling. On the other hand: having 'unread posts sice last visit' titles only acts as a filter from which it's easy to discard uninteresting things. And I'm not afraid to miss out since after years of 'training' on the internet we're probably all very quick at seperating the interesting from the less interesting by a couple of cue words. Moreover, often I have days or even weeks between visits and if that would all be available inline it would be a wall of text without oversight. But yes if you want it the Facebook way and regularily visit and don't mind having to scroll through uninteresting stuff instead of being able to skip it at a glance, it could be pretty interesting to have this added as an option next to the standard way.
- EGreg 9y ago
  https://github.com/Qbix/Platform https://github.com/Qbix/Platform Roll your own!
- stinos 9y ago
  As a user I just like standard forum software as established years ago. Not too much frills, just works. Think vBulletin, phpBB, Discourse, SMF. Actually there's not a lot of difference between them, and there's not many which are really bad. Don't have any experience as an admin though.
  - cpach 9y ago
    SMF = https://www.simplemachines.org/ https://www.simplemachines.org/ (In case anyone wonders)
  - ateesdalejr 9y ago
    I agree on SMF. I am on quite a few forums that use it and like its UI very much.
- KajMagnus 9y ago
  People here mention Discourse — here's new community software inspired by Discourse; it's called EffectiveDiscussions: (for now at least) https://www.effectivediscussions.org/ https://www.effectivediscussions.org/ It also includes chat features from Slack, and features from HackerNews (threaded comments) and StackOverflow (question-answers), + some improvements over HN & SO: https://www.effectivediscussions.org/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-improved-3-things https://www.effectivediscussions.org/-32/how-hacker-news-can.... (I'm developing it.)
- gt_ 9y ago
  Something brought Facebook Groups to a period of gradual decline and I haven’t forgiven them for it. Even more frustrating is I cannot put a finger on what changed them, but it seems the ones I liked a lot all just got bigger? Or, they feel bigger and less like a community somehow.

by stinos 9y ago

maneesh 9y ago

I believe that Facebook Groups are one of the most powerful features of FB, but I agree that the UI is limiting and the admin controls are lacking. Have you found any online communities with excellent interfaces? Ideally open-source?

nsomaru 9y ago
I've been testing Discourse out and it seems pretty cool. Really fast UI too.
supergreg 9y ago
If you are looking for open source, I think Discourse is the best out there. We tried to move a community from an old phpbb forum to a newer software some years ago and checked several projects and most projects are either unmaintained or old (with old style PHP programming) or new but lack features we needed. We ended up using NodeBB because the person who was going to maintain it was more comfortable with Javascript than Ruby.
joaovictortr 9y ago
I'd also recommend Discourse [0], as others already have. You can see it live on the Julia [1] and Rust [2] language forums, for example. [0] https://discourse.org/ https://discourse.org/ [1] https://discourse.julialang.org/ https://discourse.julialang.org/ [2] https://internals.rust-lang.org/ https://internals.rust-lang.org/
- pugio 9y ago
  One thing that FB groups have going for it (and I agree it's a terrible interface) is that you don't have to click on anything to see posts. Whereas in discourse you only see post titles, and a tiny blurb, the FB group is kind of like a custom group news feed. It's much easier for people to scroll through, and engage with. Unless discourse has an "inline recent posts" view? That would be superb, for users not willing to commit by default to clicking on a post. It's amazing how big a difference that can make, with the scroll-happy click-averse folks trained on Facebook.
  - KajMagnus 9y ago
    Can I ask what are your thoughts about this a bit in between flavor: https://beautiful.demo.ed.community/latest https://beautiful.demo.ed.community/latest — it shows the first parts of each post, + some images. So by just scrolling, one gets a fairly good understanding about what each post is about. But to read everything & discuss, one needs to click. (I'm developing this, and tweaking it a bit, maybe adding a config option so it becomes even more like the Facebook feed, is maybe something I should consider, hmm) If you look at it on a smaller screen, like a mobile, it'll look a little bit even more like Facebook, ... but maybe more text from the posts should be included.
  - stinos 9y ago
    On one side I agree, it's easier to just keep on scrolling. On the other hand: having 'unread posts sice last visit' titles only acts as a filter from which it's easy to discard uninteresting things. And I'm not afraid to miss out since after years of 'training' on the internet we're probably all very quick at seperating the interesting from the less interesting by a couple of cue words. Moreover, often I have days or even weeks between visits and if that would all be available inline it would be a wall of text without oversight. But yes if you want it the Facebook way and regularily visit and don't mind having to scroll through uninteresting stuff instead of being able to skip it at a glance, it could be pretty interesting to have this added as an option next to the standard way.
EGreg 9y ago
https://github.com/Qbix/Platform https://github.com/Qbix/Platform Roll your own!
stinos 9y ago
As a user I just like standard forum software as established years ago. Not too much frills, just works. Think vBulletin, phpBB, Discourse, SMF. Actually there's not a lot of difference between them, and there's not many which are really bad. Don't have any experience as an admin though.
- cpach 9y ago
  SMF = https://www.simplemachines.org/ https://www.simplemachines.org/ (In case anyone wonders)
- ateesdalejr 9y ago
  I agree on SMF. I am on quite a few forums that use it and like its UI very much.
KajMagnus 9y ago
People here mention Discourse — here's new community software inspired by Discourse; it's called EffectiveDiscussions: (for now at least) https://www.effectivediscussions.org/ https://www.effectivediscussions.org/ It also includes chat features from Slack, and features from HackerNews (threaded comments) and StackOverflow (question-answers), + some improvements over HN & SO: https://www.effectivediscussions.org/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-improved-3-things https://www.effectivediscussions.org/-32/how-hacker-news-can.... (I'm developing it.)
gt_ 9y ago
Something brought Facebook Groups to a period of gradual decline and I haven’t forgiven them for it. Even more frustrating is I cannot put a finger on what changed them, but it seems the ones I liked a lot all just got bigger? Or, they feel bigger and less like a community somehow.