5 ms·

I'm personally sick of making logins to things and the hurdles you have to go through to join some Forums. Verify this, verify that, read a rules post, yadda ya

by swozey 4y ago

I'm personally sick of making logins to things and the hurdles you have to go through to join some Forums. Verify this, verify that, read a rules post, yadda yadda, can't share images because your friend needs an account too. It's a time investment. There was a point once where I must've had 20-30+ accounts to different forums and I'm reminded of them each birthday. Then the general lack of instantaneous responses like I almost always get on reddit, etc. I only use one nowadays, and it's an automobile forum I couldn't get anywhere else.

PaulHoule 4y ago
I find it often takes a few days to get a reply on forums but it is better than the heat death of Reddit. That birthday thing is pretty annoying though.
- jsemrau 4y ago
  What is the "heat death" of Reddit?
  - aquaduck 4y ago
    I assume "heat death" most likely refers to the noisy ("high-entropy") backdrop of shitposts.
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      Image memes. I left proggit as soon as I discovered Hacker News because on proggit the people just can't accept that somebody somewhere might be motivated to program, at least partially, by the money. I went through a phase where Leon Trotsky was my hero but I still think of the people at proggit as "communists".
    - jsemrau 4y ago
      Community rules need to be enforced. Surely, like with every social group, there is a forming, norming, and storming phase.
      - PaulHoule 4y ago
        Reddit has "norms" that make it look like people are communicating (image memes) when really they aren't. Image memes on reddit seem like an unholy marriage of autistic and neurotypical phenotypes that seem to have the disadvantages of both but no real understanding. Somebody feels included by that but personally it drives me away.
- Hamuko 4y ago
  >That birthday thing is pretty annoying though. It's nice that someone remembers, even if it's a PHP script.
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  The birthday thing is a new years salutation thing for me - which is not my birthday - and not that annoying. Many administrators will wonder about that centenarian who frequents the forums, grandpa really kept with the times it seems. In other words I never feed these things real data, why should I? While I can see some of the annoyances with distributed forums I'm willing to live with these to keep the 'net decentralised. Nae lairds, nae kings, we are free men!
reaperducer 4y ago
I'm personally sick of making logins to things and the hurdles you have to go through to join some Forums. A lot of the forums I visit allow you to instantly sign-up and log in with Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple, just like any other service. You may get your first ten posts previewed before they go live, but that's a minor inconvenience for keeping spam down. It's a time investment. If you're not willing to put in the very minor time investment, then you probably don't have much to contribute to the community, and it's better off for everyone if you remain a lurker, anyway.
- KajMagnus 4y ago
  > If you're not willing to put in the very minor time investment, then you probably don't have much to contribute to the community, Sometimes the person wants to post a reply to help someone else, and then a minor time investment can be a big hurdle? So the people in the forum gets less help — they get help only from people who themselves are wondering about something, and so are willing to spend the time to sign up? I think it'd be nice with global identities that worked across all forums. And one could have many, per person. One for work, one for a hobby, another for another...
  - layer8 4y ago
    The point of forums is that it shouldn’t be random strangers posting once only after they found some thread or post in a Google search result. It’s intended for topics that you want to follow regularly.
- bnralt 4y ago
  > If you're not willing to put in the very minor time investment, then you probably don't have much to contribute to the community, and it's better off for everyone if you remain a lurker, anyway. Yeah, I think friction actually makes some things better, since it weeds out the most disinterested individuals and shows the people involved have some desire beyond immediate gratification. Birthdays are a good example of this - in the past, someone who e-mailed you to wish you happy birthday was someone who had decided that you were important enough to them that they'd remember you're day of birth. The act meant something. But with Facebook, everyone gets sent a notification that it's someone's birthday, and many will send birthday wishes no matter how close they feel they are to the person. You come across profiles where it's obvious someone stopped using Facebook years ago, but every year on their birthday the same few people respond to a birthday notification and wish them a happy birthday, oblivious to the fact that they're no longer there. The interesting thing is, introducing an inferior option that has less friction often causes most people who used to be OK with the friction to now decide that it's too much of a hassle. Hence forums might be better, but people who used to use them will now opt for a worse Reddit sub if it's easier. Once Facebook started notifying people of birthdays, most people stopped trying to remember birthdays of people who weren't immediately around them even if those birthdays weren't listed on Facebook. I've read before that small changes in the friction in our environment can have big impacts on our behavior. It's interesting to see this in play, especially with many people choosing convenience over quality.
seydor 4y ago
Reddit is a single forum though, the same themes and banality on every subreddit, even same moderators. A community needs a bubble to grow in sophistication, and subreddits are too porous. Something like Mozilla Persona, easy login tied to an email, was the best solution imho
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  I largely agree. Individual subreddits can have different cultures, but there's always a much larger degree of snide, low-quality posts than there are on most traditional forums (or here on HN, for that matter). Almost all subreddits' quality hovers in the Twitter range. I think this is mostly because anyone can join any subreddit with ease, so even the best moderators have to fight against a vast tide of newcomers pulling the culture toward the Reddit average.
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    I feel like the redesign has blurred some of the boundaries between subreddits as well. On old Reddit subreddits were able to heavily customize the look, which made them feel more like their own separate spaces. Post-redesign, not so much.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      Interesting, I hadn't considered that dynamic.
jsemrau 4y ago
I never found that different logins for different sites had been a problem. Passwords saved in browser made this quite easy. Yes, across devices that is a bit hard, but there are ways around this as well.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  They're not lamenting the storing of credentials; they're referring to the song and dance of "verification" that many web forums employ to maintain some veil of exclusivity. Things like requiring a referral, requiring a bio, requiring you to post in the Welcome subforum, requiring some X accolades before being permitted access to this or that, and so forth...
alexjplant 4y ago
The barrier to entry is a feature, not a bug. It discourages karma farming and low-quality responses that pervade a site like Reddit where a single account grants access to millions of communities on a whim. That being said I also find it infuriating when I click a thumbnail in a forum post and get asked to authenticate. The image is already visible so as far as I'm concerned it's nothing more than a grab for additional user signups.
- dylan604 4y ago
  >That being said I also find it infuriating when I click a thumbnail in a forum post and get asked to authenticate. Because the image is already visible it's nothing more than a grab for additional user signups. This is where I smash ctrl-alt-i and go get what I wanted their modals be damned!
- dceddia 4y ago
  > nothing more than a grab for additional user signups. I think this is a holdover from the olden days when image hosting (and bandwidth) was expensive, hotlinking images was very much a faux pas, etc. Or maybe I just wasn't aware of "the game" back then, but I truly don't remember getting the feeling that forums were trying to juice signup numbers by holding images hostage. When I see that, I think "ugh, get with the times" more than "ugh, another site trying to get my email". That said, I fully agree that it is super frustrating, and I wish they'd turn it off. It's also meta-interesting how the meaning of requiring a signup feels like it has changed. Again, could just be me, but I definitely see "signup required" these days as a grab for data (really, more of a benefit for the operator than the user), whereas in the golden days of forums, it didn't feel like there was spammy intent behind it (and it felt more like a true benefit for the user).
- wvenable 4y ago
  > The barrier to entry is a feature, not a bug. Are you saying the people with enough time to jump through all these hoops are the high-quality people? That doesn't jive with my experience.
  - alexjplant 4y ago
layer8 4y ago
Forums are best for long-form long-term discussions, and they are the only suitable medium for that, apart from mailing lists (and formerly Usenet). The most essential feature for that, besides being able to comfortably display longer posts in context, is to be able to track which portions of which threads you have already read. The ideal is to be able to track read status by individual post, but only email and news (Usenet) clients offer that granularity (and it effectively requires keyboard navigation between posts). The lack of read status support is also why the HN interface is only suitable for short discussions. Instantaneous responses lead to chat-like communication, which is a whole different thing. There’s Discord, Reddit, IRC and the like for that.
- haunter 4y ago
  > able to track which portions of which threads you have already read reddit has this feature too for premium users. Works with every single thread regardless the amount of comments
hammock 4y ago
>I'm personally sick of making logins to things and the hurdles you have to go through to join some Forums. Verify this, verify that, read a rules post, yadda yadda, can't share images because your friend needs an account too. That's how I feel about discord
- antifa 4y ago
  As a forum connoisseur, they perfectly described why I like forums over discord.
account42 4y ago
> and I'm reminded of them each birthday. Wait, people actually fill in their real birthday to sites that have no reason to ask for it other than putting up some kind of show that they are keeping out minors?

by swozey 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago

I find it often takes a few days to get a reply on forums but it is better than the heat death of Reddit. That birthday thing is pretty annoying though.

jsemrau 4y ago
What is the "heat death" of Reddit?
- aquaduck 4y ago
  I assume "heat death" most likely refers to the noisy ("high-entropy") backdrop of shitposts.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    Image memes. I left proggit as soon as I discovered Hacker News because on proggit the people just can't accept that somebody somewhere might be motivated to program, at least partially, by the money. I went through a phase where Leon Trotsky was my hero but I still think of the people at proggit as "communists".
  - jsemrau 4y ago
    Community rules need to be enforced. Surely, like with every social group, there is a forming, norming, and storming phase.
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      Reddit has "norms" that make it look like people are communicating (image memes) when really they aren't. Image memes on reddit seem like an unholy marriage of autistic and neurotypical phenotypes that seem to have the disadvantages of both but no real understanding. Somebody feels included by that but personally it drives me away.
Hamuko 4y ago
>That birthday thing is pretty annoying though. It's nice that someone remembers, even if it's a PHP script.
the_third_wave 4y ago
The birthday thing is a new years salutation thing for me - which is not my birthday - and not that annoying. Many administrators will wonder about that centenarian who frequents the forums, grandpa really kept with the times it seems. In other words I never feed these things real data, why should I? While I can see some of the annoyances with distributed forums I'm willing to live with these to keep the 'net decentralised. Nae lairds, nae kings, we are free men!

reaperducer 4y ago

I'm personally sick of making logins to things and the hurdles you have to go through to join some Forums. A lot of the forums I visit allow you to instantly sign-up and log in with Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple, just like any other service. You may get your first ten posts previewed before they go live, but that's a minor inconvenience for keeping spam down. It's a time investment. If you're not willing to put in the very minor time investment, then you probably don't have much to contribute to the community, and it's better off for everyone if you remain a lurker, anyway.

KajMagnus 4y ago
> If you're not willing to put in the very minor time investment, then you probably don't have much to contribute to the community, Sometimes the person wants to post a reply to help someone else, and then a minor time investment can be a big hurdle? So the people in the forum gets less help — they get help only from people who themselves are wondering about something, and so are willing to spend the time to sign up? I think it'd be nice with global identities that worked across all forums. And one could have many, per person. One for work, one for a hobby, another for another...
- layer8 4y ago
  The point of forums is that it shouldn’t be random strangers posting once only after they found some thread or post in a Google search result. It’s intended for topics that you want to follow regularly.
bnralt 4y ago
> If you're not willing to put in the very minor time investment, then you probably don't have much to contribute to the community, and it's better off for everyone if you remain a lurker, anyway. Yeah, I think friction actually makes some things better, since it weeds out the most disinterested individuals and shows the people involved have some desire beyond immediate gratification. Birthdays are a good example of this - in the past, someone who e-mailed you to wish you happy birthday was someone who had decided that you were important enough to them that they'd remember you're day of birth. The act meant something. But with Facebook, everyone gets sent a notification that it's someone's birthday, and many will send birthday wishes no matter how close they feel they are to the person. You come across profiles where it's obvious someone stopped using Facebook years ago, but every year on their birthday the same few people respond to a birthday notification and wish them a happy birthday, oblivious to the fact that they're no longer there. The interesting thing is, introducing an inferior option that has less friction often causes most people who used to be OK with the friction to now decide that it's too much of a hassle. Hence forums might be better, but people who used to use them will now opt for a worse Reddit sub if it's easier. Once Facebook started notifying people of birthdays, most people stopped trying to remember birthdays of people who weren't immediately around them even if those birthdays weren't listed on Facebook. I've read before that small changes in the friction in our environment can have big impacts on our behavior. It's interesting to see this in play, especially with many people choosing convenience over quality.

seydor 4y ago

Reddit is a single forum though, the same themes and banality on every subreddit, even same moderators. A community needs a bubble to grow in sophistication, and subreddits are too porous. Something like Mozilla Persona, easy login tied to an email, was the best solution imho

throwaway894345 4y ago
I largely agree. Individual subreddits can have different cultures, but there's always a much larger degree of snide, low-quality posts than there are on most traditional forums (or here on HN, for that matter). Almost all subreddits' quality hovers in the Twitter range. I think this is mostly because anyone can join any subreddit with ease, so even the best moderators have to fight against a vast tide of newcomers pulling the culture toward the Reddit average.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  I feel like the redesign has blurred some of the boundaries between subreddits as well. On old Reddit subreddits were able to heavily customize the look, which made them feel more like their own separate spaces. Post-redesign, not so much.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    Interesting, I hadn't considered that dynamic.

jsemrau 4y ago

I never found that different logins for different sites had been a problem. Passwords saved in browser made this quite easy. Yes, across devices that is a bit hard, but there are ways around this as well.

wildrhythms 4y ago
They're not lamenting the storing of credentials; they're referring to the song and dance of "verification" that many web forums employ to maintain some veil of exclusivity. Things like requiring a referral, requiring a bio, requiring you to post in the Welcome subforum, requiring some X accolades before being permitted access to this or that, and so forth...

alexjplant 4y ago

The barrier to entry is a feature, not a bug. It discourages karma farming and low-quality responses that pervade a site like Reddit where a single account grants access to millions of communities on a whim. That being said I also find it infuriating when I click a thumbnail in a forum post and get asked to authenticate. The image is already visible so as far as I'm concerned it's nothing more than a grab for additional user signups.

dylan604 4y ago
>That being said I also find it infuriating when I click a thumbnail in a forum post and get asked to authenticate. Because the image is already visible it's nothing more than a grab for additional user signups. This is where I smash ctrl-alt-i and go get what I wanted their modals be damned!
dceddia 4y ago
> nothing more than a grab for additional user signups. I think this is a holdover from the olden days when image hosting (and bandwidth) was expensive, hotlinking images was very much a faux pas, etc. Or maybe I just wasn't aware of "the game" back then, but I truly don't remember getting the feeling that forums were trying to juice signup numbers by holding images hostage. When I see that, I think "ugh, get with the times" more than "ugh, another site trying to get my email". That said, I fully agree that it is super frustrating, and I wish they'd turn it off. It's also meta-interesting how the meaning of requiring a signup feels like it has changed. Again, could just be me, but I definitely see "signup required" these days as a grab for data (really, more of a benefit for the operator than the user), whereas in the golden days of forums, it didn't feel like there was spammy intent behind it (and it felt more like a true benefit for the user).
wvenable 4y ago
> The barrier to entry is a feature, not a bug. Are you saying the people with enough time to jump through all these hoops are the high-quality people? That doesn't jive with my experience.
- alexjplant 4y ago

layer8 4y ago

Forums are best for long-form long-term discussions, and they are the only suitable medium for that, apart from mailing lists (and formerly Usenet). The most essential feature for that, besides being able to comfortably display longer posts in context, is to be able to track which portions of which threads you have already read. The ideal is to be able to track read status by individual post, but only email and news (Usenet) clients offer that granularity (and it effectively requires keyboard navigation between posts). The lack of read status support is also why the HN interface is only suitable for short discussions. Instantaneous responses lead to chat-like communication, which is a whole different thing. There’s Discord, Reddit, IRC and the like for that.

haunter 4y ago
> able to track which portions of which threads you have already read reddit has this feature too for premium users. Works with every single thread regardless the amount of comments

hammock 4y ago

>I'm personally sick of making logins to things and the hurdles you have to go through to join some Forums. Verify this, verify that, read a rules post, yadda yadda, can't share images because your friend needs an account too. That's how I feel about discord

antifa 4y ago
As a forum connoisseur, they perfectly described why I like forums over discord.

account42 4y ago

> and I'm reminded of them each birthday. Wait, people actually fill in their real birthday to sites that have no reason to ask for it other than putting up some kind of show that they are keeping out minors?