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> * discord just doesn’t scale well, because it lacks good threading and discussion-organizing features and that’s okay, for the most part, because it’s an inst

> * discord just doesn’t scale well, because it lacks good threading and discussion-organizing features and that’s okay, for the most part, because it’s an instant messaging app, not a customer support forum, not a wiki, not a documentation repository, not a zulip, etc. Sure, but tell that to all of the gaming forums that got sunset in favour of discord because discord "is the place gamers go", or because they don't want to invest in content moderation. Think of the years of lost accessible content, gone forever, now locked behind a walled garden that only ever treats content as ephemeral discussion that goes stale as soon as it is uttered. I declare a conflict of interest in this post: I make forum software :)

mumblemumble 5y ago
I miss forums. Even used to run one myself. And I think they will come back, because they are better able to support slower, more thoughtful discussions. But I also think there's a reason the pendulum swung away from them. For a social space, that aspect of permanence is a double-edged sword. It also means that your embarrassing moments are preserved for all posterity, and probably even Googleable. That creates some baseline anxiety in some people who are aware of that phenomenon, and I suspect that that is a part of the reason why flamewars were more common back in the day. But, perhaps more insidiously, that permanence can become an engine of gatekeeping. It was so frustrating to watch the old guard on the forum I read unwittingly chase away newcomers with their endless links to old discussions. They thought they were being helpful. What they were trying to say is, "Here's some content that might interest you." But what was being heard was, "We don't need to talk about this thing you want to talk about because we've talked about it 4 times already." And so a new generation of people naturally gravitated toward places where those sorts of things don't - can't - happen.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  > For a social space, that aspect of permanence is a double-edged sword. It also means that your embarrassing moments are preserved for all posterity, and probably even Googleable. This is only an issue because we've normalised telling everyone the internet what you look like, what your name is and other info about yourself. In the ye olden forum days there was just "hemi_dude420" who know every fucking thing about a certain brand of car. You had no idea where he lived, what he did, what his name was or whether he was a he at all. And we didn't care. Nowadays people want to build their personal brand and insist on plastering their face, name and contact info everywhere.

mumblemumble 5y ago

I miss forums. Even used to run one myself. And I think they will come back, because they are better able to support slower, more thoughtful discussions. But I also think there's a reason the pendulum swung away from them. For a social space, that aspect of permanence is a double-edged sword. It also means that your embarrassing moments are preserved for all posterity, and probably even Googleable. That creates some baseline anxiety in some people who are aware of that phenomenon, and I suspect that that is a part of the reason why flamewars were more common back in the day. But, perhaps more insidiously, that permanence can become an engine of gatekeeping. It was so frustrating to watch the old guard on the forum I read unwittingly chase away newcomers with their endless links to old discussions. They thought they were being helpful. What they were trying to say is, "Here's some content that might interest you." But what was being heard was, "We don't need to talk about this thing you want to talk about because we've talked about it 4 times already." And so a new generation of people naturally gravitated toward places where those sorts of things don't - can't - happen.

theshrike79 5y ago
> For a social space, that aspect of permanence is a double-edged sword. It also means that your embarrassing moments are preserved for all posterity, and probably even Googleable. This is only an issue because we've normalised telling everyone the internet what you look like, what your name is and other info about yourself. In the ye olden forum days there was just "hemi_dude420" who know every fucking thing about a certain brand of car. You had no idea where he lived, what he did, what his name was or whether he was a he at all. And we didn't care. Nowadays people want to build their personal brand and insist on plastering their face, name and contact info everywhere.