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> it needs a git reset hard back to the days when communities were based around forums What's stopping anyone today to have a community around a forum? phpBB s

> it needs a git reset hard back to the days when communities were based around forums What's stopping anyone today to have a community around a forum? phpBB still exists...

xigoi 3y ago
The network effect. Everyone is on Facebook/Twitter/Reddit, so nobody will visit the forum.
- azangru 3y ago
  But then, how can one argue for a git reset hard, if it seems that people are willingly preferring places where everyone is over the places where only someone is?
- aksss 3y ago
  Some forums just got better, IMHO, just from maybe having richer contributions and distilled but still healthy communities with good moderation. Fewer drive-bys, less low quality content. I mean, I consider HN to be more forum than social media and a similar effect can be seen here - kind of a refuge due to relative obscurity and good moderation. That exists in other interest domains as well, with perhaps even more value from smaller and more focused participants.
makeitdouble 3y ago
The friction and the money perhaps. I found the story of Hive (the social network) fascinating in that it was basically that idea of someone jumping in, learning the ropes, building a platform. And getting crushed under how much knowledge and effort, ultimately money, is needed to run a decent platform. Their team was truely incompetent, but looking under the surface they were really a group of a few amateurs trying to do something, and it's only after the backlash that they realized a whole team of well experienced engineers is needed for anything touching user info. I'd imagine trying to run a raw phpBB on the web today would be in the same vein ?
- rightbyte 3y ago
  > experienced engineers is needed for anything touching user info. That is only a problem if you have user info. On classical forums, everything was public if there was no PMs.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    I guess you still need to manage accounts ? Also under GDPR IP address retention can fall under that in your logs depending on how you manage the info, same way analytics would need attention. It should really be more simple, and I wish we'd have more people just building small sites here and there without having to care much about these details.
    - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
      Why on earth would you need to retain IP address or have analytics at all? This scaremongering about GPDR always conveniently forgets that the stuff the GPDR makes scary to do is stuff you should not be doing anyway.
      - chipsa 3y ago
        For regular forums, you need the IP address for helping to protect against SPAM and making sure banned users stay banned. Analytics can help see if you're having issues with the server, or if someone is putting unnecessary load (client-side analytics staying flat, but server-side rapidly increasing, or similar).
        AshamedCaptain 3y ago
        Or you can just rely on manually approving all of the new accounts. It's not like you need to cater to the bunch of new users that have an inmediate need to post _today_ and just cannot wait 1 week for a mod to approve their initial posts. Collecting IP address will not reduce the need for manual moderation, nor even reduce bot spam... (I do admin a topic-specialized technical web forum which has been running for over 20 years, which doesn't even need to ask for cookie consent.. but of course, has never been legally tested, so YMMV)
palad1n 3y ago
I have tried to at various points in the past. What usually happens is that spammers will come and post crap, and those will be 90-99% of all the posts.

> it needs a git reset hard back to the days when communities were based around forums What's stopping anyone today to have a community around a forum? phpBB still exists...

xigoi 3y ago

The network effect. Everyone is on Facebook/Twitter/Reddit, so nobody will visit the forum.

azangru 3y ago
But then, how can one argue for a git reset hard, if it seems that people are willingly preferring places where everyone is over the places where only someone is?
aksss 3y ago
Some forums just got better, IMHO, just from maybe having richer contributions and distilled but still healthy communities with good moderation. Fewer drive-bys, less low quality content. I mean, I consider HN to be more forum than social media and a similar effect can be seen here - kind of a refuge due to relative obscurity and good moderation. That exists in other interest domains as well, with perhaps even more value from smaller and more focused participants.

makeitdouble 3y ago

The friction and the money perhaps. I found the story of Hive (the social network) fascinating in that it was basically that idea of someone jumping in, learning the ropes, building a platform. And getting crushed under how much knowledge and effort, ultimately money, is needed to run a decent platform. Their team was truely incompetent, but looking under the surface they were really a group of a few amateurs trying to do something, and it's only after the backlash that they realized a whole team of well experienced engineers is needed for anything touching user info. I'd imagine trying to run a raw phpBB on the web today would be in the same vein ?

rightbyte 3y ago
> experienced engineers is needed for anything touching user info. That is only a problem if you have user info. On classical forums, everything was public if there was no PMs.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  I guess you still need to manage accounts ? Also under GDPR IP address retention can fall under that in your logs depending on how you manage the info, same way analytics would need attention. It should really be more simple, and I wish we'd have more people just building small sites here and there without having to care much about these details.
  - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
    Why on earth would you need to retain IP address or have analytics at all? This scaremongering about GPDR always conveniently forgets that the stuff the GPDR makes scary to do is stuff you should not be doing anyway.
    - chipsa 3y ago
      For regular forums, you need the IP address for helping to protect against SPAM and making sure banned users stay banned. Analytics can help see if you're having issues with the server, or if someone is putting unnecessary load (client-side analytics staying flat, but server-side rapidly increasing, or similar).
      - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
        Or you can just rely on manually approving all of the new accounts. It's not like you need to cater to the bunch of new users that have an inmediate need to post _today_ and just cannot wait 1 week for a mod to approve their initial posts. Collecting IP address will not reduce the need for manual moderation, nor even reduce bot spam... (I do admin a topic-specialized technical web forum which has been running for over 20 years, which doesn't even need to ask for cookie consent.. but of course, has never been legally tested, so YMMV)

palad1n 3y ago

I have tried to at various points in the past. What usually happens is that spammers will come and post crap, and those will be 90-99% of all the posts.