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IRC’s problem for deep conversations is that conversations in a chat medium are more ephemeral and that the shorter is better, not unlike Twitter, a format that

IRC’s problem for deep conversations is that conversations in a chat medium are more ephemeral and that the shorter is better, not unlike Twitter, a format that exemplifies why shorter conversations do not give a great medium for longer/deeper conversations. With forums, posts aren’t generally deleted except by maybe an admin if someone has been violating rules, and due to the permanence, people generally spend more time thinking what what they post.

darkpuma 8y ago
With forums you often get a topic that has 500 posts, 480 of which are pure "me too / works for me" noise. Those 500 posts are split into 50 pages of 10 posts each, and page one has the oldest posts. The post with the answer is on page 46 and the pages after that are just 30-40 comments thanking whoever came up with the answer. So if you jump straight to the end then start working backwards, you're looking at maybe 10 or so page loads before you actually find the answer you're looking for. Some forums aren't shit, but all of those cookie cutter PHP forums all seem to be shit.
- nitrogen 8y ago
  And a fair number of those thanks and me too posts are actually SEO spam with a profile link to some other unrelated site...
- canofbars 8y ago
  QA forums are trash and they were totally replaced by stack exchange but general talk forums are still quite good. Private torrent trackers always have forums attached and the quality is usually quite good because its very hard to get a new account if you get banned. From what I have seen, private forums are much more civil but its tough to actually build a community when its so much effort to join.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  This is exactly why HN/Reddit format of tree-structured discussions is superior to linear phpBB forums. They allow for segregating subtopics (on a long forum thread, there are always subtopics and offtopics), letting you ignore the things that are not relevant to you. Were I setting up a discussion forum today, I'd immediately look for something halfway between HN and Reddit. Reddit itself is too much of a PITA to host (we tried in our Hackerspace, but didn't go too far); HN has too little markup and no built-in functionality for storing notifications about replies.
  - eitland 8y ago
    lobste.rs has open source base IIRC and has notifications built in, at least in the public instance.
feb 8y ago
IRC deep conversations do happen and indeed you want persistence for those. Communities which rely on IRC use IRC logs for that. Perl projects use IRC that way and I think the Mozilla guys too.

darkpuma 8y ago

With forums you often get a topic that has 500 posts, 480 of which are pure "me too / works for me" noise. Those 500 posts are split into 50 pages of 10 posts each, and page one has the oldest posts. The post with the answer is on page 46 and the pages after that are just 30-40 comments thanking whoever came up with the answer. So if you jump straight to the end then start working backwards, you're looking at maybe 10 or so page loads before you actually find the answer you're looking for. Some forums aren't shit, but all of those cookie cutter PHP forums all seem to be shit.

nitrogen 8y ago
And a fair number of those thanks and me too posts are actually SEO spam with a profile link to some other unrelated site...
canofbars 8y ago
QA forums are trash and they were totally replaced by stack exchange but general talk forums are still quite good. Private torrent trackers always have forums attached and the quality is usually quite good because its very hard to get a new account if you get banned. From what I have seen, private forums are much more civil but its tough to actually build a community when its so much effort to join.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
This is exactly why HN/Reddit format of tree-structured discussions is superior to linear phpBB forums. They allow for segregating subtopics (on a long forum thread, there are always subtopics and offtopics), letting you ignore the things that are not relevant to you. Were I setting up a discussion forum today, I'd immediately look for something halfway between HN and Reddit. Reddit itself is too much of a PITA to host (we tried in our Hackerspace, but didn't go too far); HN has too little markup and no built-in functionality for storing notifications about replies.
- eitland 8y ago
  lobste.rs has open source base IIRC and has notifications built in, at least in the public instance.

feb 8y ago

IRC deep conversations do happen and indeed you want persistence for those. Communities which rely on IRC use IRC logs for that. Perl projects use IRC that way and I think the Mozilla guys too.