5 ms·

I miss how every hobby had a forum running on phpBB, SimpleMachines, Invision, etc. HN is great, but it's very point in time. If I find an interesting topic po

by Nerada 5y ago

I miss how every hobby had a forum running on phpBB, SimpleMachines, Invision, etc. HN is great, but it's very point in time. If I find an interesting topic posted over a day ago, it's never getting new replies. It's a snapshot of the thoughts on that topic for that single day, nothing more.

godshatter 5y ago
This is exactly what I want. I don't want something federated, I just want to host a small site on a particular topic and have some moderation control. I don't need it to connect to every other social network, I just want it to be a small island that like-minded people can congregate on to talk that also has more modern features than the old phpbb did.
- rambambram 5y ago
  Also true for me. I'm building something like that, where RSS feeds and RSS readers come together on a small personal website. Not necessarily a group chat or forum, more like a microblog/timeline/webring thing. A lot of individual websites, connected by the technology of modern and traditional internet. Question: Would the absence of a forum (or some sort of group chat) be a deal breaker for you?
  - godshatter 5y ago
    I like the idea of such a thing, if I'm understanding it. A place to write your thoughts and share them with others while being able to see their contributions? I miss the old geocities sites, even as bad as they looked, because you could create what you want and make it available to others and I miss the old webrings where you could discover new things random people created. I am interested in a small forum ability as well, but it doesn't have to be in the same application.
    - rambambram 5y ago
      Good to hear. My ideas for such a thing are based on the same sentiment; the internet as it used to be, and should be (?). I agree that some interactive parts like a forum, or even nested comments like here on HN, are necessary. That's what really makes it a two way street. Me having a website and you having a website (and us subscribing to each other's feed) is more like two one way streets. A webring is also a feature I really like. Good for related - but still random - discovery.
joe_the_user 5y ago
I am still on two different extremely niche forums, one running phpBB (wild skins and all). I sometimes go to other existing forums also. This stuff exists.
rtpg 5y ago
Yeah honestly forums counteract soooo much of the weird incentives that lead to a lot of yelling (yes there is still yelling in forums) I’ve been in two “tiny forums” in the past and honestly I prefer that to the idea of a Twitter clone. Let’s people put in more effort, have real topics (like about events) and isn’t just streams.
- sjg007 5y ago
  It definitely stops the seagull effect where people Just fly in and shit uninformed opinion all over stuff. Not to mention downvotes by the flock.
- usrusr 5y ago
  I'm on a number of "large niche" forums (think posts-per-minute not minutes-per-post) and yeah, lots of yelling. But I'm also on a large Facebook group aiming at the same audience (actually a spin-off of the most ancient of those forums), and it's a night and day difference. On the Facebook group everybody with even the tiniest trace of control is self-censoring themselves into total silence, leaving only the chattiest voices outdoing each other with irrelevant posts. The forums are terrible in their own way, but still so much better. But it's very noticeable how the forum audience is aging, even compared to Facebook which is already the retiree home amongst corporate social media. I can't imagine how lopsided interaction must be on the "influencer platform" generation of social media must be..
worldofmatthew 5y ago
GDPR and the upcoming online safety bill and the EU's digital economy regulations makes it nearly impossible for almost anyone to run a forum. That is now only possible by big tech.
- upofadown 5y ago
  Couldn't the person running the forum simply not abuse their users by not exploiting their personal data for commercial gain? How hard is that?
  - worldofmatthew 5y ago
    GDPR is harder than that, there is a bunch of legal stuff and having to have someone legally responsible to follow the more vague parts of the GDPR. GDPR is not just "not exploiting their personal data for commercial gain" but a lot of busy work with massive fines if you make any mistakes. How is most community forums going to work with that?
    - pjc50 5y ago
      Fines are proportional to turnover, and you don't get fined if you don't have any turnover. People are very scared of GDPR in a way that doesn't reflect the actual enforcement! You do have to avoid leaking, though; it's effectively a requirement to do information security.
      - worldofmatthew 5y ago
        Its a max amount or a percentage of turnover, whichever is higher.
    - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
      I don't buy it -- GDPR is about protection of PII. Don't collect it, you're done. OK, slightly flippant might take half an afternoon of training for all staff. https://gdpr.eu/checklist/ https://gdpr.eu/checklist/
    - 5y ago
account42 5y ago
As much as I like threaded discussion like on HN I think it makes following discussion over a longer period of time almost impossible as you need to look all over the tree for new replies. Even reddit's highlighting of new posts does not really fix that and is s paid feaure anyway (except in the subs you moderate) so won't have any effect on the nature of the community. Maybe having both a threaded view for the first time you want to read through a thread and a more linear view for updates would make sense.
- Alex3917 5y ago
  Scoop places a [new] tag next to comments that have been posted since the last time you refreshed the page, so that you can just Ctrl-F. So there have been popular sites doing this for 20+ years, e.g. Kuro5hin and DailyKos. HN just hasn't had features like this due to being limited by single threaded compute for various reasons. Although if the comments were served via an API, this could now be down in the front end with just the timestamp of when each user last refreshed each page.
Alex3917 5y ago
> I miss how every hobby had a forum running on phpBB, SimpleMachines, Invision, etc. A lot of sufficiently niche hobbies still do. E.g. if you get into rare fruit growing, a lot of the best information is in various Discourse forums.

by Nerada 5y ago

godshatter 5y ago

This is exactly what I want. I don't want something federated, I just want to host a small site on a particular topic and have some moderation control. I don't need it to connect to every other social network, I just want it to be a small island that like-minded people can congregate on to talk that also has more modern features than the old phpbb did.

rambambram 5y ago
Also true for me. I'm building something like that, where RSS feeds and RSS readers come together on a small personal website. Not necessarily a group chat or forum, more like a microblog/timeline/webring thing. A lot of individual websites, connected by the technology of modern and traditional internet. Question: Would the absence of a forum (or some sort of group chat) be a deal breaker for you?
- godshatter 5y ago
  I like the idea of such a thing, if I'm understanding it. A place to write your thoughts and share them with others while being able to see their contributions? I miss the old geocities sites, even as bad as they looked, because you could create what you want and make it available to others and I miss the old webrings where you could discover new things random people created. I am interested in a small forum ability as well, but it doesn't have to be in the same application.
  - rambambram 5y ago
    Good to hear. My ideas for such a thing are based on the same sentiment; the internet as it used to be, and should be (?). I agree that some interactive parts like a forum, or even nested comments like here on HN, are necessary. That's what really makes it a two way street. Me having a website and you having a website (and us subscribing to each other's feed) is more like two one way streets. A webring is also a feature I really like. Good for related - but still random - discovery.

joe_the_user 5y ago

I am still on two different extremely niche forums, one running phpBB (wild skins and all). I sometimes go to other existing forums also. This stuff exists.

rtpg 5y ago

Yeah honestly forums counteract soooo much of the weird incentives that lead to a lot of yelling (yes there is still yelling in forums) I’ve been in two “tiny forums” in the past and honestly I prefer that to the idea of a Twitter clone. Let’s people put in more effort, have real topics (like about events) and isn’t just streams.

sjg007 5y ago
It definitely stops the seagull effect where people Just fly in and shit uninformed opinion all over stuff. Not to mention downvotes by the flock.
usrusr 5y ago
I'm on a number of "large niche" forums (think posts-per-minute not minutes-per-post) and yeah, lots of yelling. But I'm also on a large Facebook group aiming at the same audience (actually a spin-off of the most ancient of those forums), and it's a night and day difference. On the Facebook group everybody with even the tiniest trace of control is self-censoring themselves into total silence, leaving only the chattiest voices outdoing each other with irrelevant posts. The forums are terrible in their own way, but still so much better. But it's very noticeable how the forum audience is aging, even compared to Facebook which is already the retiree home amongst corporate social media. I can't imagine how lopsided interaction must be on the "influencer platform" generation of social media must be..

worldofmatthew 5y ago

GDPR and the upcoming online safety bill and the EU's digital economy regulations makes it nearly impossible for almost anyone to run a forum. That is now only possible by big tech.

upofadown 5y ago
Couldn't the person running the forum simply not abuse their users by not exploiting their personal data for commercial gain? How hard is that?
- worldofmatthew 5y ago
  GDPR is harder than that, there is a bunch of legal stuff and having to have someone legally responsible to follow the more vague parts of the GDPR. GDPR is not just "not exploiting their personal data for commercial gain" but a lot of busy work with massive fines if you make any mistakes. How is most community forums going to work with that?
  - pjc50 5y ago
    Fines are proportional to turnover, and you don't get fined if you don't have any turnover. People are very scared of GDPR in a way that doesn't reflect the actual enforcement! You do have to avoid leaking, though; it's effectively a requirement to do information security.
    - worldofmatthew 5y ago
      Its a max amount or a percentage of turnover, whichever is higher.
  - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    I don't buy it -- GDPR is about protection of PII. Don't collect it, you're done. OK, slightly flippant might take half an afternoon of training for all staff. https://gdpr.eu/checklist/ https://gdpr.eu/checklist/
  - 5y ago

account42 5y ago

As much as I like threaded discussion like on HN I think it makes following discussion over a longer period of time almost impossible as you need to look all over the tree for new replies. Even reddit's highlighting of new posts does not really fix that and is s paid feaure anyway (except in the subs you moderate) so won't have any effect on the nature of the community. Maybe having both a threaded view for the first time you want to read through a thread and a more linear view for updates would make sense.

Alex3917 5y ago
Scoop places a [new] tag next to comments that have been posted since the last time you refreshed the page, so that you can just Ctrl-F. So there have been popular sites doing this for 20+ years, e.g. Kuro5hin and DailyKos. HN just hasn't had features like this due to being limited by single threaded compute for various reasons. Although if the comments were served via an API, this could now be down in the front end with just the timestamp of when each user last refreshed each page.

Alex3917 5y ago

> I miss how every hobby had a forum running on phpBB, SimpleMachines, Invision, etc. A lot of sufficiently niche hobbies still do. E.g. if you get into rare fruit growing, a lot of the best information is in various Discourse forums.