7 ms·

I want to bring back old school distributed forum communities but modernise them in a way that respects attention and isn’t a notification factory. Mastodon is

I want to bring back old school distributed forum communities but modernise them in a way that respects attention and isn’t a notification factory. Mastodon is a pretty inspirational project but the Twitter influence shows, I miss the long form writing that was encouraged before our attention spans were eroded. Not at all close to solving it, but it’s been on my mind for a long time. Would love to hear if there are others like me out there and what you imagine such a community to look like.

ted0_2021 5y ago
I'm very interested in this space too. I want to start a project that explores different ways to communicate on the web. The current state of Facebook and Twitter are not the best way in my opinion.
- codingclaws 5y ago
  You may be interested in my open source forum: https://github.com/ferg1e/peaches-n-stink https://github.com/ferg1e/peaches-n-stink It's basically an experimental communication platform. Right now I am building Internet forum style communication but I want to expand to other communication mechanisms later.
buro9 5y ago
I tried this, got quite far. Will go a little further when I have spare cycles for it. Example: https://www.lfgss.com https://www.lfgss.com based on code you'll find on GitHub under microcosm-cc
6510 5y ago
I see a great blog one time where the author was writing a book in the first post. All following postings were dressed up change logs with many interesting and useful comments. You don't want the notification factory but if its a single post that gets updated you don't get any feed updates at all. Reading the same book again and again looking for the updated sections is also not much fun. Dropping a comment in the long list of comments under it doesn't really create a discussion. (specially not without feed updates) You could design the publishing tools so that it "forces" the user into that pattern. People could work on multiple books or long reads but start with a crappy draft or just a bunch of links.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  I'm writing a crappy book, and was thinking of using Pijul (https://pijul.org/ https://pijul.org/) to do exactly this! I'd like a better solution, though.
lonk11 5y ago
I am building a project (https://linklonk.com https://linklonk.com) that does information discovery in a way that respects your attention. In short, when you upvote content you connect to other people upvoted that content and to feeds that posted that content. So to get your attention other users need to prove to be a good curator of content for you. I'm planning to do a "Show HN" post next week for it and would appreciate any feedback that I could address before it. We have about 4 active users and a couple more would be great.
- ammar_x 5y ago
  Seems good but the UI can be improved IMO. I have two questions please: - Is there a list of all the feeds used by LinkLonk? - How many users are there today?
  - lonk11 5y ago
    Do you have any specific suggestions on how to UI? Small tweaks would be most appreciated as I could implement them before the upcoming Show HN post. To answer your questions: 1. The list of all feeds used by LinkLonk is not publicly accessible through the website. They are feeds that users explicitly submitted through https://linklonk.com/submit https://linklonk.com/submit or feeds that LinkLonk parsed from the meta tags of the links that users submitted. 2. The number of active users has been about 4 for the last few months. I'm hoping to get it to 10 this year.
- dmje 5y ago
  Really like this idea, something I've been thinking about for a while. Will join and give the tyres a kick :-)
  - lonk11 5y ago
    Thanks! It looks like 13 people signed up, which is really encouraging. I wrote about the performance tuning I did in preparation to the Shown HN post: https://linklonk.com/item/277645707356438528 https://linklonk.com/item/277645707356438528 If you have any feedback please add a comment to that post.
jaxx75 5y ago
Looking forward to see where you go. I used forums primarily for my automotive hobbies, but they all seemed to have died around 2013-2015 as Facebook groups took over. Still, forums are often the best place to find good information. I worry about the day that Facebook solves the search and weekly "repeat topic" problems that are the only thing holding it back. It's a shame phpbb, vbullettin and other big players in the space were too slow to adapt to mobile.
- OJFord 5y ago
  > It's a shame phpbb, vbullettin and other big players in the space were too slow to adapt to mobile. Was that a problem? My memory is that everything used 'Tapatalk' for mobile, perhaps before the first iPhone even (I recall using it on an iPod Touch).
  - eropple 5y ago
    It was, and it was pretty terrible.
  - samtho 5y ago
    I used to volunteer my time to a very major forum software. Tapatalk at the time had a very strange business model of having a plug-in/add-on that was free to the forum owner but charged for the app that the end user used. This was, even at the time, traditionally backwards from the current user interaction model: path of least resistance to engagement. It was unpopular among forum admins as they would rather buy a license for it like you would with vBulletin, Xenforo, Invision Power Board - including the people who ran open source ones like phpBB, SMF, et al. While I understand Tapatalk have changed their business model since then, the damage was already done as the Facebook started to wholesale eat forums’ lunch as far as userbase. The biggest problem is that we never turned forum interactions into a protocol like we did with at the application level (smtp/pop, http, irc, xmpp) or on top of http like RSS, podcasts, or just plain, standardized REST APIs. This could have enabled multiple clients (like browsers) to appear and may have prevented facebooks swift dominance with online communities. Everyone wanted to own their forum’s experience, but this stubbornness caused the fiction for users to sign up to be greater and greater. Platforms like Disqus attempted to solve this by creating an embeddable service to just drop comments in a context like a blog post, but this ultimately gave users almost no value it they were just in a shouting match against bots with generic messages laden with spam. Facebook unified the experience for users, where the user could, with an account+app that they already had, browse and join groups and engage in discussions and become apart of communities in a way that forums could not possibly compete with.
101008 5y ago
Is this a software problem? There are a lot of open sources (with their differences) platforms. From old forums, to more modern, etc. I think the problem is that people don't want or don't know how to use a forum. This is based in my experience: - Old people: They started to use internet recently so they are used to social networks (Facebook, Instagram), and newspapers websites. - Young people: Hard to make them use the browser, if there isn't an app (Instagram, TikTok), you are lost. If they want to discuss a topic, mostly Twitter through hashtags, YouTubers or Discord. - Adult people: This is where some of them may use a forum, but you have to be lucky enough to find adult people who use internet many years ago, and they know what is a forum. If you find a 30 or 40 years old who started to use internet 5 years ago (which happens), you are lost. And on top of that, you need to compete against Reddit and their own subreddits. (Edited to format)
- csydas 5y ago
  >- Young people: Hard to make them use the browser, if there isn't an app (Instagram, TikTok), you are lost. If they want to discuss a topic, mostly Twitter through hashtags, YouTubers or Discord. I disagree on this take. GenZ can do long-form discussion and they use forums frequently, but for specific discussion(s). Content consumption is done via forever-scroll apps because it's good to kill time; Tiktok, Instagram, etc match this well because it's just a stream of things to have fun with. But GenZ is making great "longford" content on many traditional platforms, even blogging. The difference, as I understand it, is their approach to engagement. GenZ has seen Facebook arguments and said "no thank you". Twitter discourse also isn't really a thing -- people disagree and Tweet at people, but Twitter isn't like a forum thread and there's no way to ensure your content is associated with the content you want to respond to, so it's not effective to communicate in responses. Reddit is kind of a mystery for me as I just don't frequent it at all, but I don't get the impression that GenZ is posting frequently. GenZ has platforms that work best when you make a statement, not where you open a discourse; Twitter is too fast/broad to respond to all comments and find real content to respond to, video content just isn't great for back and forth and becomes time consuming for lighter topics. Viewers will make whatever statement they want, but the validity of the video is based on how far a concept is spread; I'd actually position GenZ is very good at concisely expressing its idea in a simple and condensed format, and responses are not at an individual, but an idea. But, they will go to Tumblr/Medium/other long-form post when the medium is appropriate. This is one thing I like about a lot of GenZ content because they tend to be VERY good about choosing the right format for their argument; that many don't have much more to express besides tweets/tiktoks isn't an indictment of GenZ, it's praise. Think of the forums you maybe still lurk around and how many comments are just complete garbage/non-sequiturs; for forums such a post are enough to derail a topic/distract because we feel obligated to a degree to respond, but filtering noise is part of the skill of using more modern platforms. Forums are kind of contrary to this, and also are bogged down by the before-mentioned Facebook-argument issue and the preferred platforms not really being strongest for direct rebuttals. Again, there are times when you'll see GenZ use forums or other long-form posts, but it tends to be more controlled or on 'forums-but-not-really' forums like Tumblr. Forums have their purpose and use; but we have __many__ alternatives that make forums defunct, as some topics/ideas are far better expressed on Tiktok or Twitter, and whatever followup we end up with.
wazoox 5y ago
Did you try Diaspora?
MaxBarraclough 5y ago
From your summary I'm not sure I understand what exactly your project sets out to do. People are still able to run their own independent blogs, after all. Are you thinking of blogging federation of some sort?
paulsutter 5y ago
Be sure to add cryptographic signatures on the postings and up/downvotes (also with signatures). Then many people can develop content ranking and blocking, and who knows someone may get it right
kodablah 5y ago
I have spent a good bit of time thinking here too, on two primary parts. First, in my mind the difference between reddit, FB, twitter, HN, forums, etc is really just configuration. Abstracting just a tad bit higher, you can include Slack and other realtime options. I just want a curated gRPC API that implements it with pluggable auth and let others figure out discoverability and network (not activity api and not with an already built network, just persistence and auth). End to end encryption is important IMO too (even for large groups) so the host can have plausible deniability. Second, you have to solve for hosting/network in distributed fashion without over-complicating server democratization and discoverability/naming like p2p often does. I see 2 options: 1) self hosted on at-home workstation using Tor onion service (get NAT busting for free) knowing you need an offline friendly implementation or 2) one-click easy reselling of cloud instances and domains from inside the app (this also provides a funding model). I know of many p2p options for solving these problems, but I think we dont need to complicate at that level. As for the quality of the communities themselves, a self-hosted megaphone instead of perverse share/like broadcast incentives of companies today will automatically improve discourse (at a potential cost of creating echo chambers).
- fartingflamingo 5y ago
  > First, in my mind the difference between reddit, FB, twitter, HN, forums, etc is really just configuration. The big boys are dopamine reinforced network effects incorporated by means of software tech. So forget about aiming for Homer Simpson. You'll have to be happy with a small, but productive minority. Enough valuable people would rather die than use FB for niche purpose X. Start by convincing them...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
minhmeoke 5y ago
One idea is to use some more obscure/techie protocol like Gemini [1] to create a self-selecting group of bloggers that are drawn to and choose to participate in the community, and at the same time keep spammers, commercial interests, and other unwanted influences out. [1] https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ Earlier discussion at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042424
flir 5y ago
The people I want to talk to are on facebook groups (my hobbies seem to be "old people" hobbies). I think you're suffering from network effects. Sooooo..... StackOverflow solved it by starting with a vertical the founders had a lot of social juice in, and spreading in to other verticals. Possibly also by focusing very tightly on "questions and answers". So my suggestion is "overfocus". If the big platforms have a weakness, it's that they're generic one-size-fits-all solutions. Solve one problem (Q&A, show off my project, discussion, news aggregator) for one vertical really well, then expand. An example off the top of my head might be collaborative note-taking for a class. 6510's "write a book in public" platform is also a fantastic idea at first glance. (But skip the distributed bit - customers don't care about your architecture, and whatever USP a distributed platform has can be emulated by a centralised platform. Centralised always wins).
- jordwest 5y ago
  Great point about starting with a specific vertical. Creator communities (youtubers etc) is an area I had been thinking to focus on, though this space is mostly dominated by Discord at the moment. > Centralised always wins My dream isn’t necessarily to win in a financial/monopolistic sense, but rather to build a compelling enough alternative to the centralised systems that have lost their way thanks to incentives that aren’t aligned with the community. Facebook, reddit, disqus all started out with good intentions to connect people, but have been slowly eroded by incentives to suck user attention. So it may not the best business strategy, but I think such software should live or die on whether the community enjoys using it and is willing to (financially) support the continued existence, rather than how much attention can be siphoned into ads. In other words, small niche communities where a few members don’t mind contributing financially rather than huge communities that rely on network effects and centralisation.
  - flir 5y ago
    I've thoguht about this for a couple of days, and I want you to understand I'm coming from a place of kindness - I want you to succeed. Ok, so. The problem you're trying to solve is "build a community that is prepared to contribute financially to the running of the site" (correct me if I'm wrong). Distributed is one possible solution to this problem. You're in love with that solution and its time to murder your darlings. Sit down, brainstorm five other possible solutions, and honestly assess which one solves your problem best. I think you'll have a hard time beating a subscription model.
birbs 5y ago
I think Discord is then modern form of this. It’s really a great product.
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  Isn't Discord just chat (aka IRC)? Every time I try to get on Discord, it seems chaotic and confusing. Like chat, I guess it depends on who the users are at the moment you happen to use it. Forums are a much better approach to information sharing IMO.
  - birbs 5y ago
    Discord is chat in a sense. But community forums are also a form of chat. You shouldn’t confuse a technical implementation (e.g. Discord or IRC) with the end product (e.g. fostering community discussion).
ransom1538 5y ago
I worked in forums for 4 years. It is the worst most unprofitable business you can get into. The best you can do is show low quality ads or use crappy affiliate programs. The more ads used the less the users like the forum. Forum users love being anonymous. So you provide no value to advertisers that want age,sex,location. Advertisers also HATE forums due to their ad being shown on user generated content. Drama: There are always personal attacks on moderators, posting of illegal material, threats, police involvement and constant human curation. If you build centralized forum software every forum owner works day and night to use something cheaper and get away from your control. Don't even bother offering host your own software (non centralized). "OH i know React I can build a vBulletin clone." No. No you cannot. vBulletin has been working on this software for 20 years and they offer it for $300.
dtjohnnymonkey 5y ago
Reddit is building something like this https://www.reddit.com/community-points/ https://www.reddit.com/community-points/
spurgu 5y ago
A bit late to the party but I've been thinking about this too. One of the main problems with platforms like FB and Reddit is that the posts/discussions are shortlived. They bubble up to the top in the feed when they're fresh and active but then die off and are replaced by the next thing that craves your attention. Forum posts are sorted in chronological order, grouped into categories. Browsing through the feed you can see what topics are being actively discussed, or you can search for past discussions on a topic you like, and resurrect and old thread if you find a good one, and it gets a new life. I like this model. One concept I've thought about is something like Reddit, where anyone can create and manage subs, but which wouldn't have the same kind of karma whoring and short attention span issues, i.e. posts/threads would live forever and not get locked after 6 months or whatever Reddit does, and posts would be sorted by activity rather than ADD points. I've found so many good X years old Reddit threads with super interesting discussions which I would've liked to jump in and resurrect but can't. Of course an immediate problem that comes to mind is spam. If posts with new comments are lifted to the top it invites spam bumps and thus moderation. And/or it could be combined with some sort of karma system (reputation, account age etc). And, since this wouldn't be a specialized forum you'd need to make sure you could cater to various different kinds of communities, i.e. have good multimedia sharing capabilities (for those communities only wanting to share images/videos/memes), code formatting and syntax highlighting, maybe LaTex etc...

ted0_2021 5y ago

I'm very interested in this space too. I want to start a project that explores different ways to communicate on the web. The current state of Facebook and Twitter are not the best way in my opinion.

codingclaws 5y ago
You may be interested in my open source forum: https://github.com/ferg1e/peaches-n-stink https://github.com/ferg1e/peaches-n-stink It's basically an experimental communication platform. Right now I am building Internet forum style communication but I want to expand to other communication mechanisms later.

buro9 5y ago

I tried this, got quite far. Will go a little further when I have spare cycles for it. Example: https://www.lfgss.com https://www.lfgss.com based on code you'll find on GitHub under microcosm-cc

6510 5y ago

I see a great blog one time where the author was writing a book in the first post. All following postings were dressed up change logs with many interesting and useful comments. You don't want the notification factory but if its a single post that gets updated you don't get any feed updates at all. Reading the same book again and again looking for the updated sections is also not much fun. Dropping a comment in the long list of comments under it doesn't really create a discussion. (specially not without feed updates) You could design the publishing tools so that it "forces" the user into that pattern. People could work on multiple books or long reads but start with a crappy draft or just a bunch of links.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
I'm writing a crappy book, and was thinking of using Pijul (https://pijul.org/ https://pijul.org/) to do exactly this! I'd like a better solution, though.

lonk11 5y ago

I am building a project (https://linklonk.com https://linklonk.com) that does information discovery in a way that respects your attention. In short, when you upvote content you connect to other people upvoted that content and to feeds that posted that content. So to get your attention other users need to prove to be a good curator of content for you. I'm planning to do a "Show HN" post next week for it and would appreciate any feedback that I could address before it. We have about 4 active users and a couple more would be great.

ammar_x 5y ago
Seems good but the UI can be improved IMO. I have two questions please: - Is there a list of all the feeds used by LinkLonk? - How many users are there today?
- lonk11 5y ago
  Do you have any specific suggestions on how to UI? Small tweaks would be most appreciated as I could implement them before the upcoming Show HN post. To answer your questions: 1. The list of all feeds used by LinkLonk is not publicly accessible through the website. They are feeds that users explicitly submitted through https://linklonk.com/submit https://linklonk.com/submit or feeds that LinkLonk parsed from the meta tags of the links that users submitted. 2. The number of active users has been about 4 for the last few months. I'm hoping to get it to 10 this year.
dmje 5y ago
Really like this idea, something I've been thinking about for a while. Will join and give the tyres a kick :-)
- lonk11 5y ago
  Thanks! It looks like 13 people signed up, which is really encouraging. I wrote about the performance tuning I did in preparation to the Shown HN post: https://linklonk.com/item/277645707356438528 https://linklonk.com/item/277645707356438528 If you have any feedback please add a comment to that post.

jaxx75 5y ago

Looking forward to see where you go. I used forums primarily for my automotive hobbies, but they all seemed to have died around 2013-2015 as Facebook groups took over. Still, forums are often the best place to find good information. I worry about the day that Facebook solves the search and weekly "repeat topic" problems that are the only thing holding it back. It's a shame phpbb, vbullettin and other big players in the space were too slow to adapt to mobile.

OJFord 5y ago
> It's a shame phpbb, vbullettin and other big players in the space were too slow to adapt to mobile. Was that a problem? My memory is that everything used 'Tapatalk' for mobile, perhaps before the first iPhone even (I recall using it on an iPod Touch).
- eropple 5y ago
  It was, and it was pretty terrible.
- samtho 5y ago
  I used to volunteer my time to a very major forum software. Tapatalk at the time had a very strange business model of having a plug-in/add-on that was free to the forum owner but charged for the app that the end user used. This was, even at the time, traditionally backwards from the current user interaction model: path of least resistance to engagement. It was unpopular among forum admins as they would rather buy a license for it like you would with vBulletin, Xenforo, Invision Power Board - including the people who ran open source ones like phpBB, SMF, et al. While I understand Tapatalk have changed their business model since then, the damage was already done as the Facebook started to wholesale eat forums’ lunch as far as userbase. The biggest problem is that we never turned forum interactions into a protocol like we did with at the application level (smtp/pop, http, irc, xmpp) or on top of http like RSS, podcasts, or just plain, standardized REST APIs. This could have enabled multiple clients (like browsers) to appear and may have prevented facebooks swift dominance with online communities. Everyone wanted to own their forum’s experience, but this stubbornness caused the fiction for users to sign up to be greater and greater. Platforms like Disqus attempted to solve this by creating an embeddable service to just drop comments in a context like a blog post, but this ultimately gave users almost no value it they were just in a shouting match against bots with generic messages laden with spam. Facebook unified the experience for users, where the user could, with an account+app that they already had, browse and join groups and engage in discussions and become apart of communities in a way that forums could not possibly compete with.

101008 5y ago

Is this a software problem? There are a lot of open sources (with their differences) platforms. From old forums, to more modern, etc. I think the problem is that people don't want or don't know how to use a forum. This is based in my experience: - Old people: They started to use internet recently so they are used to social networks (Facebook, Instagram), and newspapers websites. - Young people: Hard to make them use the browser, if there isn't an app (Instagram, TikTok), you are lost. If they want to discuss a topic, mostly Twitter through hashtags, YouTubers or Discord. - Adult people: This is where some of them may use a forum, but you have to be lucky enough to find adult people who use internet many years ago, and they know what is a forum. If you find a 30 or 40 years old who started to use internet 5 years ago (which happens), you are lost. And on top of that, you need to compete against Reddit and their own subreddits. (Edited to format)

csydas 5y ago
>- Young people: Hard to make them use the browser, if there isn't an app (Instagram, TikTok), you are lost. If they want to discuss a topic, mostly Twitter through hashtags, YouTubers or Discord. I disagree on this take. GenZ can do long-form discussion and they use forums frequently, but for specific discussion(s). Content consumption is done via forever-scroll apps because it's good to kill time; Tiktok, Instagram, etc match this well because it's just a stream of things to have fun with. But GenZ is making great "longford" content on many traditional platforms, even blogging. The difference, as I understand it, is their approach to engagement. GenZ has seen Facebook arguments and said "no thank you". Twitter discourse also isn't really a thing -- people disagree and Tweet at people, but Twitter isn't like a forum thread and there's no way to ensure your content is associated with the content you want to respond to, so it's not effective to communicate in responses. Reddit is kind of a mystery for me as I just don't frequent it at all, but I don't get the impression that GenZ is posting frequently. GenZ has platforms that work best when you make a statement, not where you open a discourse; Twitter is too fast/broad to respond to all comments and find real content to respond to, video content just isn't great for back and forth and becomes time consuming for lighter topics. Viewers will make whatever statement they want, but the validity of the video is based on how far a concept is spread; I'd actually position GenZ is very good at concisely expressing its idea in a simple and condensed format, and responses are not at an individual, but an idea. But, they will go to Tumblr/Medium/other long-form post when the medium is appropriate. This is one thing I like about a lot of GenZ content because they tend to be VERY good about choosing the right format for their argument; that many don't have much more to express besides tweets/tiktoks isn't an indictment of GenZ, it's praise. Think of the forums you maybe still lurk around and how many comments are just complete garbage/non-sequiturs; for forums such a post are enough to derail a topic/distract because we feel obligated to a degree to respond, but filtering noise is part of the skill of using more modern platforms. Forums are kind of contrary to this, and also are bogged down by the before-mentioned Facebook-argument issue and the preferred platforms not really being strongest for direct rebuttals. Again, there are times when you'll see GenZ use forums or other long-form posts, but it tends to be more controlled or on 'forums-but-not-really' forums like Tumblr. Forums have their purpose and use; but we have __many__ alternatives that make forums defunct, as some topics/ideas are far better expressed on Tiktok or Twitter, and whatever followup we end up with.

wazoox 5y ago

Did you try Diaspora?

MaxBarraclough 5y ago

From your summary I'm not sure I understand what exactly your project sets out to do. People are still able to run their own independent blogs, after all. Are you thinking of blogging federation of some sort?

paulsutter 5y ago

Be sure to add cryptographic signatures on the postings and up/downvotes (also with signatures). Then many people can develop content ranking and blocking, and who knows someone may get it right

kodablah 5y ago

I have spent a good bit of time thinking here too, on two primary parts. First, in my mind the difference between reddit, FB, twitter, HN, forums, etc is really just configuration. Abstracting just a tad bit higher, you can include Slack and other realtime options. I just want a curated gRPC API that implements it with pluggable auth and let others figure out discoverability and network (not activity api and not with an already built network, just persistence and auth). End to end encryption is important IMO too (even for large groups) so the host can have plausible deniability. Second, you have to solve for hosting/network in distributed fashion without over-complicating server democratization and discoverability/naming like p2p often does. I see 2 options: 1) self hosted on at-home workstation using Tor onion service (get NAT busting for free) knowing you need an offline friendly implementation or 2) one-click easy reselling of cloud instances and domains from inside the app (this also provides a funding model). I know of many p2p options for solving these problems, but I think we dont need to complicate at that level. As for the quality of the communities themselves, a self-hosted megaphone instead of perverse share/like broadcast incentives of companies today will automatically improve discourse (at a potential cost of creating echo chambers).

fartingflamingo 5y ago
> First, in my mind the difference between reddit, FB, twitter, HN, forums, etc is really just configuration. The big boys are dopamine reinforced network effects incorporated by means of software tech. So forget about aiming for Homer Simpson. You'll have to be happy with a small, but productive minority. Enough valuable people would rather die than use FB for niche purpose X. Start by convincing them...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

minhmeoke 5y ago

One idea is to use some more obscure/techie protocol like Gemini [1] to create a self-selecting group of bloggers that are drawn to and choose to participate in the community, and at the same time keep spammers, commercial interests, and other unwanted influences out. [1] https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ Earlier discussion at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042424

flir 5y ago

The people I want to talk to are on facebook groups (my hobbies seem to be "old people" hobbies). I think you're suffering from network effects. Sooooo..... StackOverflow solved it by starting with a vertical the founders had a lot of social juice in, and spreading in to other verticals. Possibly also by focusing very tightly on "questions and answers". So my suggestion is "overfocus". If the big platforms have a weakness, it's that they're generic one-size-fits-all solutions. Solve one problem (Q&A, show off my project, discussion, news aggregator) for one vertical really well, then expand. An example off the top of my head might be collaborative note-taking for a class. 6510's "write a book in public" platform is also a fantastic idea at first glance. (But skip the distributed bit - customers don't care about your architecture, and whatever USP a distributed platform has can be emulated by a centralised platform. Centralised always wins).

jordwest 5y ago
Great point about starting with a specific vertical. Creator communities (youtubers etc) is an area I had been thinking to focus on, though this space is mostly dominated by Discord at the moment. > Centralised always wins My dream isn’t necessarily to win in a financial/monopolistic sense, but rather to build a compelling enough alternative to the centralised systems that have lost their way thanks to incentives that aren’t aligned with the community. Facebook, reddit, disqus all started out with good intentions to connect people, but have been slowly eroded by incentives to suck user attention. So it may not the best business strategy, but I think such software should live or die on whether the community enjoys using it and is willing to (financially) support the continued existence, rather than how much attention can be siphoned into ads. In other words, small niche communities where a few members don’t mind contributing financially rather than huge communities that rely on network effects and centralisation.
- flir 5y ago
  I've thoguht about this for a couple of days, and I want you to understand I'm coming from a place of kindness - I want you to succeed. Ok, so. The problem you're trying to solve is "build a community that is prepared to contribute financially to the running of the site" (correct me if I'm wrong). Distributed is one possible solution to this problem. You're in love with that solution and its time to murder your darlings. Sit down, brainstorm five other possible solutions, and honestly assess which one solves your problem best. I think you'll have a hard time beating a subscription model.

birbs 5y ago

I think Discord is then modern form of this. It’s really a great product.

wintermutestwin 5y ago
Isn't Discord just chat (aka IRC)? Every time I try to get on Discord, it seems chaotic and confusing. Like chat, I guess it depends on who the users are at the moment you happen to use it. Forums are a much better approach to information sharing IMO.
- birbs 5y ago
  Discord is chat in a sense. But community forums are also a form of chat. You shouldn’t confuse a technical implementation (e.g. Discord or IRC) with the end product (e.g. fostering community discussion).

ransom1538 5y ago

I worked in forums for 4 years. It is the worst most unprofitable business you can get into. The best you can do is show low quality ads or use crappy affiliate programs. The more ads used the less the users like the forum. Forum users love being anonymous. So you provide no value to advertisers that want age,sex,location. Advertisers also HATE forums due to their ad being shown on user generated content. Drama: There are always personal attacks on moderators, posting of illegal material, threats, police involvement and constant human curation. If you build centralized forum software every forum owner works day and night to use something cheaper and get away from your control. Don't even bother offering host your own software (non centralized). "OH i know React I can build a vBulletin clone." No. No you cannot. vBulletin has been working on this software for 20 years and they offer it for $300.

dtjohnnymonkey 5y ago

Reddit is building something like this https://www.reddit.com/community-points/ https://www.reddit.com/community-points/

spurgu 5y ago

A bit late to the party but I've been thinking about this too. One of the main problems with platforms like FB and Reddit is that the posts/discussions are shortlived. They bubble up to the top in the feed when they're fresh and active but then die off and are replaced by the next thing that craves your attention. Forum posts are sorted in chronological order, grouped into categories. Browsing through the feed you can see what topics are being actively discussed, or you can search for past discussions on a topic you like, and resurrect and old thread if you find a good one, and it gets a new life. I like this model. One concept I've thought about is something like Reddit, where anyone can create and manage subs, but which wouldn't have the same kind of karma whoring and short attention span issues, i.e. posts/threads would live forever and not get locked after 6 months or whatever Reddit does, and posts would be sorted by activity rather than ADD points. I've found so many good X years old Reddit threads with super interesting discussions which I would've liked to jump in and resurrect but can't. Of course an immediate problem that comes to mind is spam. If posts with new comments are lifted to the top it invites spam bumps and thus moderation. And/or it could be combined with some sort of karma system (reputation, account age etc). And, since this wouldn't be a specialized forum you'd need to make sure you could cater to various different kinds of communities, i.e. have good multimedia sharing capabilities (for those communities only wanting to share images/videos/memes), code formatting and syntax highlighting, maybe LaTex etc...