5 ms·

Hmm next what, people will abandon Facebook and flock back to thematic PHPBB forums? (I honestly can't wait!)

by Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago

sn41 6y ago
Honestly, I would definitely enjoy that. Somehow the discussion on such boards was much more engaging.
- conjectures 6y ago
  It feels to me like some of that was having the same group of random strangers interacting. Rather than a constant flux of single comments.
  - Scarblac 6y ago
    And threads stick around, rather than disappear after a few days.
    - emptyparadise 6y ago
      Maybe that's why the web feels so different now from how it used to be. It's like being in a house where the walls and furniture shift whenever you aren't looking.
    - DharmaPolice 6y ago
      This is the biggest single change for me. On Reddit I sometimes see a thread which is exactly in line with my interests, I have extensive knowledge of and would love to discuss with people. And then I see it was posted 22 hours ago, and so it's almost pointless replying to it. Old forums had the opposite issue (with threads years old being "necro'd" back to the top, confusing everyone) but at least you could have a discussion over a couple of days.
      - drawkbox 6y ago
        Or you find a 6 months to year old thread, for something like a movie discussion or timeless/semi-timeless topic, and it is locked. Back in the day threads could go for years, there is good (thoughtful discussion across time, changing opinions) and bad (spam, bots) to that but mostly good.
  - mercer 6y ago
    Being able to (usually) personalize your comments I think also played a huge role in fostering community: avatars, taglines, signatures, etc. I wrote my own tagging system for HN and it's hard to describe how much it changed the experience for me. only usernames feels a bit like being in a community where everyone wears the same clothes, uses a vocoder, and covers up their faces. if you squint you might be able to make out the nametag.
    - Grumbledour 6y ago
      This sound interesting. Do you have some more details or maybe even some code somewhere? I would love to find ways to more easily identify users on here. The username, despite my best efforts, I mostly overlook or can't remember. On Forums, with Avatar images, this used to be so much simpler.
      - mostlysimilar 6y ago
        I love to think back on the early social web and consider how much we got right, particularly with forums. Presence and personality via avatars went a long way to feeling like a community in an era when the masses were still figuring out how to do that via technology. I still find chronologically ordered, flat discussion threads to be far superior to nested and vote ordered discussions.
        Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
        > I still find chronologically ordered, flat discussion threads to be far superior to nested and vote ordered discussions Yes, and not in the least because one can answer/reference multiple messages in one post, thus bringing different conversation 'branches' back together. It also provides a nice chronological order to follow the whole discussions, which is hard in nested discussions. However, flat discussions have limits: once you have hundreds of participants, it becomes nearly impossible to follow. I estimate that the limit to more or less comfortably follow flat discussion is ~50 posts/day, or 15-30 more or less active posters.
      - giantrobot 6y ago
oblio 6y ago
The all-mighty account creation hurdle will kill all such initiatives. And to fix this, you'd need buy-in from major tech companies. All of which don't want to solve this problem.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  OpenID 3.0 to the rescue!
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > The all-might account creation hurdle will kill all such initiative. Doesn't federation solve this? You're identified by the server you signed up on.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Federation of what? Which protocol?
- mostlysimilar 6y ago
  > The all-mighty account creation hurdle will kill all such initiatives. I don't understand why people consider this to be such a barrier. In an era where we have browsers that suggest secure passwords, store and fill credentials, and sync credentials between devices... why do we still think of registration as an impossible ask for the average user?
  - oblio 6y ago
    Because the numbers back it up. People flock to Facebook (1 account for many things), Google (1 account for many things), Amazon (1 account for many things), Apple (1 account for many things), Reddit (1 account for many things). Blogs are dying, forums are moribund, small online stores are dying. HNers discussing about Facebook/Google logins in their apps regularly mention that more than half their users use those options, instead of creating an account using their email. Just go ask a bunch of your non-techie acquaintances if they use those web browser features you mention.
viraptor 6y ago
Isn't that what Matrix and Mastodon do? (It is for me) And to some extent Slack/Discord I guess...
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  the chat thing is better done by XMPP, and mastodon... well.. if it ever gains real traction, it'll get swarmed by mob behavior just like Twitter is now.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    I guess we're just doomed to that cycle until some breakthrough. It's like an eternal eternal september, we're going to jump to new services which are temporarily better before everyone uses them.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    The federated architecture is a powerful check on mob behavior. A Mastodon instance that enables the sort of mass harassment and mobbing you routinely see on twitter will just be refused federation by well-maintaned instances, just like Gab has been.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
      I'm not sure breaking the federation is a solution good enough to call it a 'check'. Users who want to disperse outrage of different kinds will just use other instances and will gather in mobs from them. You see, just a hundred mobbers can spoil any real discussion and turn it into a stinking pile.
gocartStatue 6y ago
Those were the days, my friend!
_joe 6y ago
The real throwback would be going back to use newsgroups, and only have competent people posting.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  Probably setting karma limits to allow only high-ranking users write. Plus moderate it to block gaming the system. Right?
  - dagw 6y ago
    One really nice things about newsgroups was that most clients let you write your own scoring rules for posts, meaning I could moderate each group and set "karma limits" based on what I cared about.
jedimastert 6y ago
I used to teach computer literacy for a highschool co-op (home-schoolers would come in once a week) and the school used a free-housed phpbb for everything. The amount of engagement and discussion was actually somewhat surprising
skinnymuch 6y ago
People aren’t remembering the negatives to these. I still use a normal style forum sometimes. Being single threaded is annoying. People keep asking the same questions or repeating the same stuff again and again. No fault of their own. Discovery in a single thread is crazy hard. Finding what you’re looking for in a thread can take a long time. Some one may ask a question your interested in knowing the answer to, but finding people who respond to it is not easy. If you post something in the middle of a [popular] thread, there’s a good chance it barely gets read or noticed. Many of these problems afflict reddit too and Reddit and HN issue of threads being almost dead after a day is really annoying. I have a feeling grass is greener on the other side and people in either case.
- mercer 6y ago
  > I have a feeling grass is greener on the other side and people in either case. That's a bit reductive, perhaps. The way I see it, different styles of 'forums' or 'communities' can foster different types of interactions. it's a bit like how in the 'real world' we might have a gathering where everyone sits in a circle, or small separate tables, or a bar area, or a conference-style 'lecture + hallway-track', etc. each have their advantages and drawbacks.
  - onemoresoop 6y ago
    HN is a perfect exampele of this. With its own peculiarities and all
  - skinnymuch 6y ago
    I wrote that in response to all the people here lamenting for those old style forums again. Specifically for that. Not as a general statement. It’s possible many communities never have get the correct way of interacting ever. With positives and negatives to their choices and alternatives. Which is also what my statement was referring to.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  > People keep asking the same questions or repeating the same stuff again and again Trying to police this destroys the usefulness of a forum too. There is one major forum for a piece of software I use so I had this issue Google lead me to the forum, the thread is old and because it's old it's locked but it doesn't answer the question. I post a new thread after waiting 12 hours for my account to be approved by a mod, the overly zealous mod locks it with a link to the old thread saying there is already a thread about it. Yeah I know there is, but it doesn't answer the problem and I can't post it in to keep it on topic. I now dread when that url shows up in my searches. Building a good useful community and being a good host has some crossover with being a moderator but honestly they're completely different skillsets.
kerrsclyde 6y ago
I've found the quality of discussion on forums vs Facebook is far higher for my hobby (steam powered transport). Post a picture on a forum and get some interesting replies, post a picture on Facebook and just get 101 likes and nothing else.
Grumbledour 6y ago
I occasionally wonder where forums have gone. There are communities still out there, but there seems to be no modern forum software? They have either been around forever or, if a bit newer, do nothing without mbs of JS. Now that activitypub is here, there seem to be half a dozen reddit clones in development. Microblogging and social media are also everywhere, but what about forums? What about topic-centric, lasting conversations instead of hot-topic and people-centric chats with no history?
- dbrgn 6y ago
  https://threema-forum.de/ https://threema-forum.de/ was migrated to "WoltLab Suite Forum" a while ago. I didn't know that software before, but everything seems to work really nicely. Still has the classic forum features but it doesn't feel like it's from 1999. (Note: It's not open source and costs 100€ per year to license. I'm not affiliated in any way, just a user.)
- toyg 6y ago
  > there seems to be no modern forum software? Discourse is pretty modern.
- foxhop 6y ago
  Would you pay $15/mo or $100/yr for a new age forum? (I run Remarkbox and I'm trying to find product market fit)
- giantrobot 6y ago
  For niche areas forums are still doing alright. More general purpose forums sort of melted away and moved to Facebook and the like. Forums require a lot moderation and maintenance. If you don't keep the software up to date they're easy pickings for hackers. Without active moderation they're quickly overrun with spam. For most people forums end up expensive pains in the ass. In terms of ActivityPub, the lasting conversation topic-centric nature of old school forums doesn't really fit in the model of pushing new activity. A hot-topic Reddit clone fits that model much better.
- KajMagnus 6y ago
  > topic-centric, lasting conversations Discourse, Flarum, Talkyard (which I'm developing). GitHub's new Discussions feature? Lemmy? https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy, "Building a federated alternative to reddit in rust" (how does it matter that it's a reddit alternative? it can still be topic-centric etc?)
tomekw 6y ago
IMHO that’s what Discourse is about :)

Hmm next what, people will abandon Facebook and flock back to thematic PHPBB forums? (I honestly can't wait!)

sn41 6y ago

Honestly, I would definitely enjoy that. Somehow the discussion on such boards was much more engaging.

conjectures 6y ago
It feels to me like some of that was having the same group of random strangers interacting. Rather than a constant flux of single comments.
- Scarblac 6y ago
  And threads stick around, rather than disappear after a few days.
  - emptyparadise 6y ago
    Maybe that's why the web feels so different now from how it used to be. It's like being in a house where the walls and furniture shift whenever you aren't looking.
  - DharmaPolice 6y ago
    This is the biggest single change for me. On Reddit I sometimes see a thread which is exactly in line with my interests, I have extensive knowledge of and would love to discuss with people. And then I see it was posted 22 hours ago, and so it's almost pointless replying to it. Old forums had the opposite issue (with threads years old being "necro'd" back to the top, confusing everyone) but at least you could have a discussion over a couple of days.
    - drawkbox 6y ago
      Or you find a 6 months to year old thread, for something like a movie discussion or timeless/semi-timeless topic, and it is locked. Back in the day threads could go for years, there is good (thoughtful discussion across time, changing opinions) and bad (spam, bots) to that but mostly good.
- mercer 6y ago
  Being able to (usually) personalize your comments I think also played a huge role in fostering community: avatars, taglines, signatures, etc. I wrote my own tagging system for HN and it's hard to describe how much it changed the experience for me. only usernames feels a bit like being in a community where everyone wears the same clothes, uses a vocoder, and covers up their faces. if you squint you might be able to make out the nametag.
  - Grumbledour 6y ago
    This sound interesting. Do you have some more details or maybe even some code somewhere? I would love to find ways to more easily identify users on here. The username, despite my best efforts, I mostly overlook or can't remember. On Forums, with Avatar images, this used to be so much simpler.
    - mostlysimilar 6y ago
      I love to think back on the early social web and consider how much we got right, particularly with forums. Presence and personality via avatars went a long way to feeling like a community in an era when the masses were still figuring out how to do that via technology. I still find chronologically ordered, flat discussion threads to be far superior to nested and vote ordered discussions.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
        > I still find chronologically ordered, flat discussion threads to be far superior to nested and vote ordered discussions Yes, and not in the least because one can answer/reference multiple messages in one post, thus bringing different conversation 'branches' back together. It also provides a nice chronological order to follow the whole discussions, which is hard in nested discussions. However, flat discussions have limits: once you have hundreds of participants, it becomes nearly impossible to follow. I estimate that the limit to more or less comfortably follow flat discussion is ~50 posts/day, or 15-30 more or less active posters.
    - giantrobot 6y ago

oblio 6y ago

The all-mighty account creation hurdle will kill all such initiatives. And to fix this, you'd need buy-in from major tech companies. All of which don't want to solve this problem.

Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
OpenID 3.0 to the rescue!
zozbot234 6y ago
> The all-might account creation hurdle will kill all such initiative. Doesn't federation solve this? You're identified by the server you signed up on.
- oblio 6y ago
  Federation of what? Which protocol?
mostlysimilar 6y ago
> The all-mighty account creation hurdle will kill all such initiatives. I don't understand why people consider this to be such a barrier. In an era where we have browsers that suggest secure passwords, store and fill credentials, and sync credentials between devices... why do we still think of registration as an impossible ask for the average user?
- oblio 6y ago
  Because the numbers back it up. People flock to Facebook (1 account for many things), Google (1 account for many things), Amazon (1 account for many things), Apple (1 account for many things), Reddit (1 account for many things). Blogs are dying, forums are moribund, small online stores are dying. HNers discussing about Facebook/Google logins in their apps regularly mention that more than half their users use those options, instead of creating an account using their email. Just go ask a bunch of your non-techie acquaintances if they use those web browser features you mention.

viraptor 6y ago

Isn't that what Matrix and Mastodon do? (It is for me) And to some extent Slack/Discord I guess...

Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
the chat thing is better done by XMPP, and mastodon... well.. if it ever gains real traction, it'll get swarmed by mob behavior just like Twitter is now.
- viraptor 6y ago
  I guess we're just doomed to that cycle until some breakthrough. It's like an eternal eternal september, we're going to jump to new services which are temporarily better before everyone uses them.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  The federated architecture is a powerful check on mob behavior. A Mastodon instance that enables the sort of mass harassment and mobbing you routinely see on twitter will just be refused federation by well-maintaned instances, just like Gab has been.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
    I'm not sure breaking the federation is a solution good enough to call it a 'check'. Users who want to disperse outrage of different kinds will just use other instances and will gather in mobs from them. You see, just a hundred mobbers can spoil any real discussion and turn it into a stinking pile.

gocartStatue 6y ago

Those were the days, my friend!

_joe 6y ago

The real throwback would be going back to use newsgroups, and only have competent people posting.

Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
Probably setting karma limits to allow only high-ranking users write. Plus moderate it to block gaming the system. Right?
- dagw 6y ago
  One really nice things about newsgroups was that most clients let you write your own scoring rules for posts, meaning I could moderate each group and set "karma limits" based on what I cared about.

jedimastert 6y ago

I used to teach computer literacy for a highschool co-op (home-schoolers would come in once a week) and the school used a free-housed phpbb for everything. The amount of engagement and discussion was actually somewhat surprising

skinnymuch 6y ago

People aren’t remembering the negatives to these. I still use a normal style forum sometimes. Being single threaded is annoying. People keep asking the same questions or repeating the same stuff again and again. No fault of their own. Discovery in a single thread is crazy hard. Finding what you’re looking for in a thread can take a long time. Some one may ask a question your interested in knowing the answer to, but finding people who respond to it is not easy. If you post something in the middle of a [popular] thread, there’s a good chance it barely gets read or noticed. Many of these problems afflict reddit too and Reddit and HN issue of threads being almost dead after a day is really annoying. I have a feeling grass is greener on the other side and people in either case.

mercer 6y ago
> I have a feeling grass is greener on the other side and people in either case. That's a bit reductive, perhaps. The way I see it, different styles of 'forums' or 'communities' can foster different types of interactions. it's a bit like how in the 'real world' we might have a gathering where everyone sits in a circle, or small separate tables, or a bar area, or a conference-style 'lecture + hallway-track', etc. each have their advantages and drawbacks.
- onemoresoop 6y ago
  HN is a perfect exampele of this. With its own peculiarities and all
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  I wrote that in response to all the people here lamenting for those old style forums again. Specifically for that. Not as a general statement. It’s possible many communities never have get the correct way of interacting ever. With positives and negatives to their choices and alternatives. Which is also what my statement was referring to.
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
> People keep asking the same questions or repeating the same stuff again and again Trying to police this destroys the usefulness of a forum too. There is one major forum for a piece of software I use so I had this issue Google lead me to the forum, the thread is old and because it's old it's locked but it doesn't answer the question. I post a new thread after waiting 12 hours for my account to be approved by a mod, the overly zealous mod locks it with a link to the old thread saying there is already a thread about it. Yeah I know there is, but it doesn't answer the problem and I can't post it in to keep it on topic. I now dread when that url shows up in my searches. Building a good useful community and being a good host has some crossover with being a moderator but honestly they're completely different skillsets.

kerrsclyde 6y ago

I've found the quality of discussion on forums vs Facebook is far higher for my hobby (steam powered transport). Post a picture on a forum and get some interesting replies, post a picture on Facebook and just get 101 likes and nothing else.

Grumbledour 6y ago

I occasionally wonder where forums have gone. There are communities still out there, but there seems to be no modern forum software? They have either been around forever or, if a bit newer, do nothing without mbs of JS. Now that activitypub is here, there seem to be half a dozen reddit clones in development. Microblogging and social media are also everywhere, but what about forums? What about topic-centric, lasting conversations instead of hot-topic and people-centric chats with no history?

dbrgn 6y ago
https://threema-forum.de/ https://threema-forum.de/ was migrated to "WoltLab Suite Forum" a while ago. I didn't know that software before, but everything seems to work really nicely. Still has the classic forum features but it doesn't feel like it's from 1999. (Note: It's not open source and costs 100€ per year to license. I'm not affiliated in any way, just a user.)
toyg 6y ago
> there seems to be no modern forum software? Discourse is pretty modern.
foxhop 6y ago
Would you pay $15/mo or $100/yr for a new age forum? (I run Remarkbox and I'm trying to find product market fit)
giantrobot 6y ago
For niche areas forums are still doing alright. More general purpose forums sort of melted away and moved to Facebook and the like. Forums require a lot moderation and maintenance. If you don't keep the software up to date they're easy pickings for hackers. Without active moderation they're quickly overrun with spam. For most people forums end up expensive pains in the ass. In terms of ActivityPub, the lasting conversation topic-centric nature of old school forums doesn't really fit in the model of pushing new activity. A hot-topic Reddit clone fits that model much better.
KajMagnus 6y ago
> topic-centric, lasting conversations Discourse, Flarum, Talkyard (which I'm developing). GitHub's new Discussions feature? Lemmy? https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy, "Building a federated alternative to reddit in rust" (how does it matter that it's a reddit alternative? it can still be topic-centric etc?)

tomekw 6y ago

IMHO that’s what Discourse is about :)