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>Are there still some places left on Internet for high-quality discussions? Web forums. There are good ones. They are independent of one another. Most forums I

>Are there still some places left on Internet for high-quality discussions? Web forums. There are good ones. They are independent of one another. Most forums I visit are centered around some subject, so people are bonded enough to be reasonably civil even if they disagree. Most aren't big enough to require much moderation. The best one have zero rules and very little trolling, but those are usually completely devoid of political stuff, since no one wants to spoil the good thing. I think web forums are the best discussion medium developed so far. They support long-format content. They support hypermedia. They allow for offline conversations that don't get "dated" in 2 hours. They don't put thread authors on pedestal, unlike blogs. I've heard there are mail/news groups out there too. Haven't used one aside from newsgroup for D Programming Language, though.

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
I’ve always found forums to be really helpful when searching for a topic but these days when compared to a voting system, forums feel dead or slow to update. I get that the voting system of get to the top is toxic and typically produces poor content but it does seem to work to an extent (for example HN). I guess maybe forums feel a bit too heavy duty with all of the additional user stuff built into the stream of replies instead of having to click them. What if HN didn’t show a number of votes and all the topics ranked based on invisible votes? I wonder if a system that’s more simple like that would carry over to forums to make them feel more modern but true to their roots?
- zrobotics 8y ago
  The trouble is, how often do you see a Reddit discussion show up in a Google search with helpful information? This is a rarity for me, and I don't think it has anything to do with how Google sorts results. The same voting system prioritizes pithy memes and snark comments over helpful discussion. While you might have to wait longer, I would argue that you are far better off asking a question on a dedicated forum vs. a subreddit. Fora have their own problems, but voting systems typically seem to encourage low quality content to gather imaginary points, hacker news is the only site with voting I've seen that stays tolerable.
- gambler 8y ago
  >I’ve always found forums to be really helpful when searching for a topic but these days when compared to a voting system, forums feel dead or slow to update. Voting systems create a lot of bad incentives. They encourage groupthink and filter bubbles. They discourage long-running conversations. I haven't felt that boards are "slow" if there is reasonable amount of new threads and posts per day. The usual trouble with forums is that a lot of admins don't understand how to split one up into boards. They either create way too many, and those sit empty, or not enough, and then it's hard to keep track of conversations. Maintaining the optimal number of boards and optimal average thread size are keys towards a healthy forum that doesn't seem empty, or overwhelming.

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago

I’ve always found forums to be really helpful when searching for a topic but these days when compared to a voting system, forums feel dead or slow to update. I get that the voting system of get to the top is toxic and typically produces poor content but it does seem to work to an extent (for example HN). I guess maybe forums feel a bit too heavy duty with all of the additional user stuff built into the stream of replies instead of having to click them. What if HN didn’t show a number of votes and all the topics ranked based on invisible votes? I wonder if a system that’s more simple like that would carry over to forums to make them feel more modern but true to their roots?

zrobotics 8y ago
The trouble is, how often do you see a Reddit discussion show up in a Google search with helpful information? This is a rarity for me, and I don't think it has anything to do with how Google sorts results. The same voting system prioritizes pithy memes and snark comments over helpful discussion. While you might have to wait longer, I would argue that you are far better off asking a question on a dedicated forum vs. a subreddit. Fora have their own problems, but voting systems typically seem to encourage low quality content to gather imaginary points, hacker news is the only site with voting I've seen that stays tolerable.
gambler 8y ago
>I’ve always found forums to be really helpful when searching for a topic but these days when compared to a voting system, forums feel dead or slow to update. Voting systems create a lot of bad incentives. They encourage groupthink and filter bubbles. They discourage long-running conversations. I haven't felt that boards are "slow" if there is reasonable amount of new threads and posts per day. The usual trouble with forums is that a lot of admins don't understand how to split one up into boards. They either create way too many, and those sit empty, or not enough, and then it's hard to keep track of conversations. Maintaining the optimal number of boards and optimal average thread size are keys towards a healthy forum that doesn't seem empty, or overwhelming.