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> Make forums great again please For that to happen, someone's going to need to write some great (and ideally open-source) forum software -- something that's a
by duskwuff 5y ago
> Make forums great again please
For that to happen, someone's going to need to write some great (and ideally open-source) forum software -- something that's as engaging to use as the centralized alternatives like Reddit and Discord. Most of the classic forum packages like phpBB have fallen by the wayside; more modern solutions like Discourse or Invision fail to hit the mark for various reasons.
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y agoHow about the software running HN?
- duskwuff 5y agoIt does a great job on HN, but I don't think it would be a good fit for most communities. Too spartan.
- 878654Tom 5y agoReddit and HN also kill long-term discussions. When a submission is 1 day old, it dies. If you want to have a conversation about a timeless topic Reddit and HN are fairly bad. With forums you sometimes have threads of over 100 pages that started in 2015 or older where people are still talking about the same thing and newcomers can diagonally read through the pages and see the progress of something.
- duskwuff 5y agoIt doesn't even have to be a discussion, per se. One common fixture in old-school community forums are participation topics -- open-ended, low-effort topics like "what music are you listening to" or "what did you have for lunch today" that can give people a low-commitment way to be active in a community. Link-centered forums like HN or Reddit don't handle this well.
- blackearl 5y agoQuite a few big forums running xenforo
- hombre_fatal 5y agoThey already exist and have their uses. Competing with Reddit just isn't one of them.