7 ms·

I find it frustrating that communities are using FB. Notifications and mentions go missing left and right, and its UI is not (yet?) ideal for proper discussions

by manmal 8y ago

I find it frustrating that communities are using FB. Notifications and mentions go missing left and right, and its UI is not (yet?) ideal for proper discussions - I much prefer the plain forums that have always existed. I get that FB is convenient because most people have an account already, but a FB login button would also do the trick for most communities. We surely don’t need a multi-billion company to host events and groups for us. Lock-in (social graph etc) is actually quite low for these features, so I think this is a bit of a desperate move from them.

dlivingston 8y ago
The cost of entry to creating a Facebook community is zero, whereas it is non-zero to host your own. For example, there are local Pokemon Go, Spartan training, and 'local gossip' communities that simply wouldn't exist if Facebook didn't.
- thinkmassive 8y ago
  Forums existed before Facebook and will continue to exist after Facebook. Just because Facebook was seen as the lowest barrier to entry for many groups doesn’t mean they wouldn’t exist without it.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    Lots of things existed in, say, 1996 that were more or less equivalent to modern things on the internet. But the size of the internet was a tiny, tiny fraction of what it is now, so I think it's very plausible that reinventing the wheel was part of growing it and if we went backwards it might indeed mean most of it would stop existing.
eswat 8y ago
At first I thought it was a good thing that I started seeing condo buildings create FB groups to create at least some sense of community. But the ones I’ve seen just end up being an disorganized mess of negative comments that should be directed to condo boards and security themselves. If there is useful information it shouldn’t be locked into a platform like FB either…
gambler 8y ago
>I get that FB is convenient >We surely don’t need a multi-billion company to host events and groups for us This is the crazy part about most "cloud" and "social" things today. Instead of spending money on making core technologies easy to use and accessible to all people we (collectively) fund middlemen who provide usability as a centralized, temporary service. This is exactly like TurboTax, except it's happening with all kinds of IT products and almost nobody cares. For example, there is no fundamental reason why creating your own forum should be significantly more complicated than creating a Facebook account and installing their app on your phone. The only essential pieces of information you need for a forum are universal name/id of some sort (e.g. a domain name), administrative login and administrative password. Maybe not even that. Really, you don't even need login/password if you're okay with using email for authentication. Everything else is made-up bullshit that IT industry refuses to optimize (and, in fact, makes more complicated as years go by). This isn't just about being annoyed by Facebook's bloated UI and glitches. We live in an increasingly information-driven society, so the ability of normal people to own and control their online information is increasingly important.
- jolmg 8y ago
  > Everything else is made-up bullshit that IT industry refuses to optimize (and, in fact, makes more complicated as the years go by). What are these things? I've never used a phpbb host before.
  - gambler 8y ago
    Why don't you try to make one? No, I'm not being sarcastic. The reasons you don't want to try are most likely the same reasons why some non-techie people will not be able to. It's not just about phpbb. My guess is the biggest stumbling block for most people would be domain management. It's hard to say for sure after being immersed in IT for so long. Also, the wast majority of non-tech people I know have no idea what PHPbb even is. So they would have to learn about its existence first. Mind you, I'm talking about a forum you would own, so services like Proboards or Craigslist are out of scope of the discussion.
    - 8y ago
hombre_fatal 8y ago
Forums are nerdy and almost nobody wants to check N number of different forums to keep up with any groups they want to be part of. FB isn't convenient because people have an account that works with "Login with Facebook." It's convenient because it's a one stop shop for your members. Whether FB is ideal is going to vary per community though.
- rad_gruchalski 8y ago
  On the contrary, there is a growing number of people who, when faced with a facebook link, simply move on.
  - bwb 8y ago
    Not many... I quit fb but not totally. I removed all my friends to no news feed or crap. I still use it for groups though.
  - burlesona 8y ago
    This is me. I just tell people sorry, I don’t do Facebook.
  - trustfundbaby 8y ago
    Any facts to back that up or are we just doing anecdotes?
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    I'm beginning to realize that there are a lot of ordinary small businesses that do things through Facebook. I tried asking a mechanic what to do with my car, and they answered...on a weekend! No other form of communication substitutes. The same people don't seem to respond to email, and I prefer written communication to phone calls.
  - dbbk 8y ago
    Perhaps, but it is extremely resilient in certain markets. University for example. Here in the UK societies and social events are all managed through Facebook Groups and Events. There isn't even really an alternative platform.
swozey 8y ago
I loathe forums. Absolutely hate them. I've used them since I was a kid, even to the point of being an SA-Goon and every year on my birthday I'm reminded of the several hundred I've joined over the past 20+ years and they feel like this archaic thing I have to dust off when I dive in. I'm in a lot of Jeep communities and there are a LOT of forums. Local, regional, national, drama-splintered, etc. I want a system that aggregates things I care about to me, not to dig through page after page looking for something interesting, tracking things via email notifications or staying logged in constantly. Kind of like a quasi Reddit/Forum/Twitter mix. Longer form, a great search, the ability to follow tags. The rare time I sign up for a forum nowadays, if my first try username is taken I just don't even join it. I deleted FB last year and this is one of the only real pains I have from doing so. It wasn't amazing for groups anymore but it was better than having to log in to 20 different forums to find out if any of the Jeep groups were going to XYZ event next weekend.
- jolmg 8y ago
  > I want a system that aggregates things I care about to me, not to dig through page after page looking for something interesting, tracking things via email notifications What's the problem with email notifications? I would think that's the ideal decentralized system that aggregates the things you care about. Is the problem that all notifications end up mixed in your inbox? One should be able put up an automated filter that moves incoming mail that matches arbitrary criteria and organizes these mails in folders. In fact, such a filter I believe is created automatically if you use `+` addresses in gmail and probably other email providers.
  - mostlysimilar 8y ago
    I agree, it's strange that this complaint is so prevalent. Forums almost always have a subscribe feature that allows you to subscribe to individual subforums or even individual threads/topics, and they email you directly (even in digest form so you aren't spammed by tons of emails) when there's new content. People often complain that forums are archaic, but they've been around so long they've solved so many problems in really usable ways. I often feel the fetishization of the new blinds people to existing, older solutions that work perfectly well.
the_af 8y ago
> I much prefer the plain forums that have always existed Indeed. Forums were (almost) perfect for me. Unfortunately the communities I was/am part of have switched to facebook, so my preferences don't matter. Facebook groups frustrate me to no end, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
username223 8y ago
> I much prefer the plain forums that have always existed. How many of you remember NNTP, which offered a wealth of clients, each with its own formatting, threading, filtering, sorting, etc.? PHP forums weren't bad, but they were mostly just a mediocre replacement for what we already had. Now I expect we'll get this. Other than Facebook advertisers and shareholders, does anyone want it?
- jolmg 8y ago
  I've never used NNTP, but for the purpose they served I trust it was a more powerful system compared to web forums. I may also be wrong, but I imagine one of the primary reasons web forums became more popular than NNTP was because you only had to click on the blue e icon and click on a bookmark, compared to setting up an NNTP client. In other words, it was more accessible to computer laymen. This is the same case now with web forums vs Facebook. Facebook is more accessible to computer laymen. So, what gives you the confidence to say that "we'll get this"?
  - username223 8y ago
    > So, what gives you the confidence to say that "we'll get this"? As in "we'll get this... shoved down our throats," or "we'll eventually give in to this." I think web forums took off because they could more easily display images (and banner ads). News readers were a bit techie, but could have been made as easy to use as modern mail readers with a bit of effort. Heck, there was even a web interface going back decades (gmane). Imagine the Facebook news feed, but instead of them choosing what you see, you could use a program on your computer to sort, filter, and mark things read. That's what we had 30+ years ago.
jolmg 8y ago
> I get that FB is convenient because most people have an account already, but a FB login button would also do the trick for most communities. More than that convenience, I think it's the convenience of not having to deal with configuring some forum server software and using it. To many people, FB is the internet. Basing a community elsewhere raises the bar of entry for their target community.
jtbayly 8y ago
I also find it very frustrating. How can I get rid of FB while important groups I'm a part of use it? However, the demise of RSS combined with the desire of individuals to share things online without having their own "site," means that there is no place like FB for aggregation of content I'm interested in. I'm still trying to start a forum outside of FB, though. I'm using Discourse. It's a far cry from phpBB.
- amelius 8y ago
  > I also find it very frustrating. How can I get rid of FB while important groups I'm a part of use it? I think the only way to break the lock-in/network effect is: 1. creating a FB scraper; 2. push the scraped content to an alternative (more open) platform; 3. as more people use the scraper, more and more content from FB becomes available in the alternative platform; eventually everybody can move to the new platform. Of course, a scraper is against FB's ToS, but this shouldn't be an impediment. For example, a scraper for YouTube has been available for years, and so far has not been successfully blocked.
  - jtbayly 8y ago
    Have you seen such a scraper anywhere? Seems much harder. Youtube doesn't require you to be logged in to see the majority of content. Plus, you don't want the comments to come along when you scrape YT, whereas on FB, that would be a large part of the point.
    - amelius 8y ago
      No I assume it doesn't exist yet. Indeed, the scraper would require the user to be logged in. Therefore, the scraper should probably be installed as a browser plugin.
- asdff 8y ago
  RSS didn't go anywhere you know. Found this thread from my feeds :)
  - 8y ago
tomatotomato37 8y ago
Forum software has also had a dip in convenience in my opinion; I prefer phpbb over discorse. I don't care about whitespace and infinite scrolling, I need my catalogical organization
- eropple 8y ago
  XenForo is the consensus pick amongst forum folks (admins and users) I know, and it's significantly better than phpBB while not getting weird and silly like Discourse.
  - severine 8y ago
    XenForo is a commercial Internet forum software package written in the PHP programming language using the Zend Framework. The software is developed by former vBulletin lead developers Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan. Thorough review: https://www.forum-software.org/xenforo/review https://www.forum-software.org/xenforo/review
00deadbeef 8y ago
Facebook used to have forum-like discussions in groups and it was so much better back then.

by manmal 8y ago

dlivingston 8y ago

The cost of entry to creating a Facebook community is zero, whereas it is non-zero to host your own. For example, there are local Pokemon Go, Spartan training, and 'local gossip' communities that simply wouldn't exist if Facebook didn't.

thinkmassive 8y ago
Forums existed before Facebook and will continue to exist after Facebook. Just because Facebook was seen as the lowest barrier to entry for many groups doesn’t mean they wouldn’t exist without it.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  Lots of things existed in, say, 1996 that were more or less equivalent to modern things on the internet. But the size of the internet was a tiny, tiny fraction of what it is now, so I think it's very plausible that reinventing the wheel was part of growing it and if we went backwards it might indeed mean most of it would stop existing.

eswat 8y ago

At first I thought it was a good thing that I started seeing condo buildings create FB groups to create at least some sense of community. But the ones I’ve seen just end up being an disorganized mess of negative comments that should be directed to condo boards and security themselves. If there is useful information it shouldn’t be locked into a platform like FB either…

gambler 8y ago

>I get that FB is convenient >We surely don’t need a multi-billion company to host events and groups for us This is the crazy part about most "cloud" and "social" things today. Instead of spending money on making core technologies easy to use and accessible to all people we (collectively) fund middlemen who provide usability as a centralized, temporary service. This is exactly like TurboTax, except it's happening with all kinds of IT products and almost nobody cares. For example, there is no fundamental reason why creating your own forum should be significantly more complicated than creating a Facebook account and installing their app on your phone. The only essential pieces of information you need for a forum are universal name/id of some sort (e.g. a domain name), administrative login and administrative password. Maybe not even that. Really, you don't even need login/password if you're okay with using email for authentication. Everything else is made-up bullshit that IT industry refuses to optimize (and, in fact, makes more complicated as years go by). This isn't just about being annoyed by Facebook's bloated UI and glitches. We live in an increasingly information-driven society, so the ability of normal people to own and control their online information is increasingly important.

jolmg 8y ago
> Everything else is made-up bullshit that IT industry refuses to optimize (and, in fact, makes more complicated as the years go by). What are these things? I've never used a phpbb host before.
- gambler 8y ago
  Why don't you try to make one? No, I'm not being sarcastic. The reasons you don't want to try are most likely the same reasons why some non-techie people will not be able to. It's not just about phpbb. My guess is the biggest stumbling block for most people would be domain management. It's hard to say for sure after being immersed in IT for so long. Also, the wast majority of non-tech people I know have no idea what PHPbb even is. So they would have to learn about its existence first. Mind you, I'm talking about a forum you would own, so services like Proboards or Craigslist are out of scope of the discussion.
  - 8y ago

hombre_fatal 8y ago

Forums are nerdy and almost nobody wants to check N number of different forums to keep up with any groups they want to be part of. FB isn't convenient because people have an account that works with "Login with Facebook." It's convenient because it's a one stop shop for your members. Whether FB is ideal is going to vary per community though.

rad_gruchalski 8y ago
On the contrary, there is a growing number of people who, when faced with a facebook link, simply move on.
- bwb 8y ago
  Not many... I quit fb but not totally. I removed all my friends to no news feed or crap. I still use it for groups though.
- burlesona 8y ago
  This is me. I just tell people sorry, I don’t do Facebook.
- trustfundbaby 8y ago
  Any facts to back that up or are we just doing anecdotes?
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I'm beginning to realize that there are a lot of ordinary small businesses that do things through Facebook. I tried asking a mechanic what to do with my car, and they answered...on a weekend! No other form of communication substitutes. The same people don't seem to respond to email, and I prefer written communication to phone calls.
- dbbk 8y ago
  Perhaps, but it is extremely resilient in certain markets. University for example. Here in the UK societies and social events are all managed through Facebook Groups and Events. There isn't even really an alternative platform.

swozey 8y ago

I loathe forums. Absolutely hate them. I've used them since I was a kid, even to the point of being an SA-Goon and every year on my birthday I'm reminded of the several hundred I've joined over the past 20+ years and they feel like this archaic thing I have to dust off when I dive in. I'm in a lot of Jeep communities and there are a LOT of forums. Local, regional, national, drama-splintered, etc. I want a system that aggregates things I care about to me, not to dig through page after page looking for something interesting, tracking things via email notifications or staying logged in constantly. Kind of like a quasi Reddit/Forum/Twitter mix. Longer form, a great search, the ability to follow tags. The rare time I sign up for a forum nowadays, if my first try username is taken I just don't even join it. I deleted FB last year and this is one of the only real pains I have from doing so. It wasn't amazing for groups anymore but it was better than having to log in to 20 different forums to find out if any of the Jeep groups were going to XYZ event next weekend.

jolmg 8y ago
> I want a system that aggregates things I care about to me, not to dig through page after page looking for something interesting, tracking things via email notifications What's the problem with email notifications? I would think that's the ideal decentralized system that aggregates the things you care about. Is the problem that all notifications end up mixed in your inbox? One should be able put up an automated filter that moves incoming mail that matches arbitrary criteria and organizes these mails in folders. In fact, such a filter I believe is created automatically if you use `+` addresses in gmail and probably other email providers.
- mostlysimilar 8y ago
  I agree, it's strange that this complaint is so prevalent. Forums almost always have a subscribe feature that allows you to subscribe to individual subforums or even individual threads/topics, and they email you directly (even in digest form so you aren't spammed by tons of emails) when there's new content. People often complain that forums are archaic, but they've been around so long they've solved so many problems in really usable ways. I often feel the fetishization of the new blinds people to existing, older solutions that work perfectly well.

the_af 8y ago

> I much prefer the plain forums that have always existed Indeed. Forums were (almost) perfect for me. Unfortunately the communities I was/am part of have switched to facebook, so my preferences don't matter. Facebook groups frustrate me to no end, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

username223 8y ago

> I much prefer the plain forums that have always existed. How many of you remember NNTP, which offered a wealth of clients, each with its own formatting, threading, filtering, sorting, etc.? PHP forums weren't bad, but they were mostly just a mediocre replacement for what we already had. Now I expect we'll get this. Other than Facebook advertisers and shareholders, does anyone want it?

jolmg 8y ago
I've never used NNTP, but for the purpose they served I trust it was a more powerful system compared to web forums. I may also be wrong, but I imagine one of the primary reasons web forums became more popular than NNTP was because you only had to click on the blue e icon and click on a bookmark, compared to setting up an NNTP client. In other words, it was more accessible to computer laymen. This is the same case now with web forums vs Facebook. Facebook is more accessible to computer laymen. So, what gives you the confidence to say that "we'll get this"?
- username223 8y ago
  > So, what gives you the confidence to say that "we'll get this"? As in "we'll get this... shoved down our throats," or "we'll eventually give in to this." I think web forums took off because they could more easily display images (and banner ads). News readers were a bit techie, but could have been made as easy to use as modern mail readers with a bit of effort. Heck, there was even a web interface going back decades (gmane). Imagine the Facebook news feed, but instead of them choosing what you see, you could use a program on your computer to sort, filter, and mark things read. That's what we had 30+ years ago.

jolmg 8y ago

> I get that FB is convenient because most people have an account already, but a FB login button would also do the trick for most communities. More than that convenience, I think it's the convenience of not having to deal with configuring some forum server software and using it. To many people, FB is the internet. Basing a community elsewhere raises the bar of entry for their target community.

jtbayly 8y ago

I also find it very frustrating. How can I get rid of FB while important groups I'm a part of use it? However, the demise of RSS combined with the desire of individuals to share things online without having their own "site," means that there is no place like FB for aggregation of content I'm interested in. I'm still trying to start a forum outside of FB, though. I'm using Discourse. It's a far cry from phpBB.

amelius 8y ago
> I also find it very frustrating. How can I get rid of FB while important groups I'm a part of use it? I think the only way to break the lock-in/network effect is: 1. creating a FB scraper; 2. push the scraped content to an alternative (more open) platform; 3. as more people use the scraper, more and more content from FB becomes available in the alternative platform; eventually everybody can move to the new platform. Of course, a scraper is against FB's ToS, but this shouldn't be an impediment. For example, a scraper for YouTube has been available for years, and so far has not been successfully blocked.
- jtbayly 8y ago
  Have you seen such a scraper anywhere? Seems much harder. Youtube doesn't require you to be logged in to see the majority of content. Plus, you don't want the comments to come along when you scrape YT, whereas on FB, that would be a large part of the point.
  - amelius 8y ago
    No I assume it doesn't exist yet. Indeed, the scraper would require the user to be logged in. Therefore, the scraper should probably be installed as a browser plugin.
asdff 8y ago
RSS didn't go anywhere you know. Found this thread from my feeds :)
- 8y ago

tomatotomato37 8y ago

Forum software has also had a dip in convenience in my opinion; I prefer phpbb over discorse. I don't care about whitespace and infinite scrolling, I need my catalogical organization

eropple 8y ago
XenForo is the consensus pick amongst forum folks (admins and users) I know, and it's significantly better than phpBB while not getting weird and silly like Discourse.
- severine 8y ago
  XenForo is a commercial Internet forum software package written in the PHP programming language using the Zend Framework. The software is developed by former vBulletin lead developers Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan. Thorough review: https://www.forum-software.org/xenforo/review https://www.forum-software.org/xenforo/review

00deadbeef 8y ago

Facebook used to have forum-like discussions in groups and it was so much better back then.