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Forums are awful UX - really bad, it's why all this other stuff exists. I don't like discord either and don't like the model of megacorps sucking up all our co

Forums are awful UX - really bad, it's why all this other stuff exists. I don't like discord either and don't like the model of megacorps sucking up all our communication and locking it away while creating a massive privacy risk and centralized control. I think HN and subreddit UX is far superior to forum threads. I'm also bullish on urbit as a solution to this core issue of solving this in a way that doesn't centralize ownership while also enabling a UI that doesn't suck. Asking people to use forums will not succeed. As far as their complaint about real time vs. static, I agree - but I think subreddits are just a better model for this anyway.

noasaservice 5y ago
Urbit a solution?!? Hardly! Urbit is a digital fiefdom made by a neo-fascist whom coded that arbitrary limits at the base of the protocol. I cant get far enough away from that garbage.
- fossuser 5y ago
  Its design is interesting and the non-zero cost of IDs make sense as a way to build reputation and eliminate spam: https://media.urbit.org/whitepaper.pdf https://media.urbit.org/whitepaper.pdf I'm no fan of CY's neo-reactionary politics, but he's also no longer involved in the project and they're not relevant to the problems the design solves. Similarly I think the 2008 monetary policy around QE was an incredible success, but I still think Bitcoin is worthwhile and interesting despite the fact Nakamoto thought the bailouts were a bad idea. It's possible to look at these things separately imo. (John Nash, Bobby Fischer, etc. - long list of people that do worthwhile things but may believe things I don't agree with). Simpler less technical intro: https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit
tester756 5y ago
I hardly disagree "HN" comment chains may be better (but that's debatable) than forum's linear discussions, but HN "news" model (front page oriented) is terrible and everything that falls from front page is automatically dead, end of topic. Forum discussions can last weeks, months or even years meanwhile everything that's 2 days old is dead on HN, here's no discussion once something disappears from front page.
- fossuser 5y ago
  Yeah - I don't disagree with you on that. It's the threading model I think is superior - the forum pages model where you get hundreds of slowly loading pages and horrible quoting, signatures, etc. make it unusable for me.

noasaservice 5y ago

Urbit a solution?!? Hardly! Urbit is a digital fiefdom made by a neo-fascist whom coded that arbitrary limits at the base of the protocol. I cant get far enough away from that garbage.

fossuser 5y ago
Its design is interesting and the non-zero cost of IDs make sense as a way to build reputation and eliminate spam: https://media.urbit.org/whitepaper.pdf https://media.urbit.org/whitepaper.pdf I'm no fan of CY's neo-reactionary politics, but he's also no longer involved in the project and they're not relevant to the problems the design solves. Similarly I think the 2008 monetary policy around QE was an incredible success, but I still think Bitcoin is worthwhile and interesting despite the fact Nakamoto thought the bailouts were a bad idea. It's possible to look at these things separately imo. (John Nash, Bobby Fischer, etc. - long list of people that do worthwhile things but may believe things I don't agree with). Simpler less technical intro: https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit

tester756 5y ago

I hardly disagree "HN" comment chains may be better (but that's debatable) than forum's linear discussions, but HN "news" model (front page oriented) is terrible and everything that falls from front page is automatically dead, end of topic. Forum discussions can last weeks, months or even years meanwhile everything that's 2 days old is dead on HN, here's no discussion once something disappears from front page.

fossuser 5y ago
Yeah - I don't disagree with you on that. It's the threading model I think is superior - the forum pages model where you get hundreds of slowly loading pages and horrible quoting, signatures, etc. make it unusable for me.