4 ms·

To make this happen, we need better open source forum software. A group of us have been searching for a good self-hosted forum to replace /r/BuyItForLife and ha

• bsder 3y ago
  Define: really bad. I generally find the software is fine. The problem is login/security and spam control. Those are painful things that I really, really, really don't want to have to deal with. Yet they are the vast majority of the issue with self-hosting your own forums. Self-hosted forums are not a technical problem--they are a social problem.
  • tornato7 3y ago
    You're correct. I do think login/security is mostly solved if you're OK using Google/GitHub/Apple login. It's the moderation that's a tough part. Many forums end up with over-eager spam filters or captchas that end up driving away regular users. I do hope that with cost reductions in LLMs we'll be able to have effective AI moderators soon enough.
• baud147258 3y ago
  as an user, xenoforo seemed fine? But then I never had to deal with the admin side of things
  • tornato7 3y ago
    Xenoforo is OK, but it has the same problems of any other forum: - Time-based comment and post ordering means you're reading a lot of spam like "bump" and "first" - If there is more than one conversation in a thread, they don't flow as well as they do in a hierarchy format like on HN/Reddit - Because of user profile pictures, comments take up a lot of space and you can only see 3-4 comments on one screen - Not very mobile-friendly
    • baud147258 3y ago
      bump/first style comments are more a problem of moderation/community culture (personaly, on the 3 forum-based communities I've been part of, I've never met this issue) I agree with the other issues