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>Is that no longer the web? I don't think so >It seems pretty easy to find communities these days. Outside of HN and a few niche subreddits, I can't think of

>Is that no longer the web? I don't think so >It seems pretty easy to find communities these days. Outside of HN and a few niche subreddits, I can't think of many. Most good communities I'm part of are off the web on things like Discord which isn't addressable by search engines.

shiroiushi 2y ago
Discord is honestly one of the worst things to happen to the internet, and I'd blame Gen-Z for most of its popularity since they seem to have no idea why the internet was created in the first place.
- hmcq6 2y ago
  In my opinion, you're shooting the messenger. Why does Gen-Z like Discord? No advertising, no enshittification, just a simple solution to a common problem. It's just modern AIM, but AIM wasn't blamed for "killing" forums. AIM and forums coexisted because they serve different purposes.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    >AIM and forums coexisted because they serve different purposes. That's the problem with Discord. As an AIM replacement, it's fine, because no one cares about being able to access other peoples' ephemeral private chats. But when large communities discuss things, it's very useful for that information to be publicly available and accessible from a search engine, and Discord prevents that, locking it all away from any outsiders. If your group really wants to be secret and private for some reason, I guess that's fine, but if you're a group discussing, for instance, bicycle maintenance tips, why do you want to keep others from seeing this helpful info? And why do you want to keep others out? Specialty subreddits don't have this problem.
    - hmcq6 2y ago
      So where do you suggest people post that is zero cost and advertisement free? These communities were pushed onto discord because there isn't a better place for them. The regional live music discord I'm in would be much better served by being on a web forum but running a forum costs money. Or they could use facebook but not everyone in the community has/wants a facebook account. Not everyone uses reddit/twitter/insert your favorite social media. > why do you want to keep others from seeing this helpful info? How paranoid would one have to be to think people are moving to discord to be malicious? The garden doesn't have walls to keep you out, the walls are to keep the advertisers/bots out.
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        >So where do you suggest people post that is zero cost and advertisement free? These days, Reddit seems to be the best option available (unfortunately). Back during better days, we had lots of independent forums running software like PhpBB, which served this purpose well. For some reason that I don't really understand, back then (when computers were less powerful and efficient than now) that worked well enough, but now everyone's screaming about hosting costs and how expensive it is to run even a single bulletin board on the internet so they turn to Discord when they don't like Reddit. Why hosting costs apparently weren't such a big deal 15-20 years ago with crappier hardware and much less storage space, I honestly don't know.
        xnorswap 2y ago
        Part of the problem is that 20 years ago they weren't being scraped 24/7.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        n_ary 2y ago
        > Why hosting costs apparently weren't such a big deal 15-20 years ago with crappier hardware and much less storage space, I honestly don't know. Back in the so called "golden days", I actually hosted a forum with a friend. His uncle offered his old office PC(bought at a bargain) and internet with fixed IP for us to tinker with. Our tiny forum has local kids and some "supervising adults" doing moderation. Many of our international members were mostly on dialup, so even if we didn't have lovely CDN, the slowness was accepted as normal thing. We did not face much spamming, grifting and any trouble makers were policed out immediately by moderators. In present days, I am very afraid to put something online, because if the moderators are not vigilant, I could very well expect a police letter by a week or two asking about certain type fo contents and my infra provider banning or null routing my forum. It was easy back in days, now the risks are too high and trouble makers have more resources than well intent folks.
  - GuB-42 2y ago
    > No advertising, no enshittification It is starting to change, for me, Discord has being going downhill for a couple of years. Client updates are becoming more common and more buggy, as if we were on a beta channel. Marketing for Nitro is becoming more agressive, and now, there are "Quests", which are essentially ad banners for games.
- n_ary 2y ago
  If my memories are not too deteriorated, I find the Discord communities akin to IRC communities, except with more memes and emojis.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    I think this sounds accurate. And, on the surface, there's nothing wrong with a modernized, glorified IRC network, but it should be obvious to anyone here that this is utterly useless as a store of useful information that can be archived and indexed and searched by others later. It's like two guys sitting next to each other at a bar and striking up a conversation, and one tells the other a great tip he figured out for how to fix a very particular issue with his car. That's nice, but the other guy just got lucky he met someone with this knowledge, and all the other people with that same issue are out of luck and won't learn this valuable nugget of info because there's no record of it anywhere.
  - jjav 2y ago
    IRC wasn't run by a proprietary company that demanded your phone number to read the channels. So discord is basically the exact opposite of IRC (and everything else in the open Internet).
bonoboTP 2y ago
There has to be a barrier, a kept gate. Back "then", simply access to the internet was enough of a filter to get a good signal-to-noise ratio. Today it's something else, such as knowing discords through word of mouth, knowing groups on other platforms, etc. If you're not getting through this knowledge filter, you need to try harder or accept not being in there. HN can remain public and high quality due to strong moderation and an "ugly", text-only, imageless, emojiless UI that scares away "noise"-people.
- dwoldrich 2y ago
  This comment was very well-written. And, it stirs up thoughts about what works and what doesn't. "What abouts" like that one battle royale game (that failed) that coupled advancement to being a good sport and respectful to others, and it kindof worked. Could that kind of "good sport" thing be engineered into public forums somehow. But in the end, all my feeble "what if's" collapse, and I end up agreeing with you.

shiroiushi 2y ago

Discord is honestly one of the worst things to happen to the internet, and I'd blame Gen-Z for most of its popularity since they seem to have no idea why the internet was created in the first place.

hmcq6 2y ago
In my opinion, you're shooting the messenger. Why does Gen-Z like Discord? No advertising, no enshittification, just a simple solution to a common problem. It's just modern AIM, but AIM wasn't blamed for "killing" forums. AIM and forums coexisted because they serve different purposes.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >AIM and forums coexisted because they serve different purposes. That's the problem with Discord. As an AIM replacement, it's fine, because no one cares about being able to access other peoples' ephemeral private chats. But when large communities discuss things, it's very useful for that information to be publicly available and accessible from a search engine, and Discord prevents that, locking it all away from any outsiders. If your group really wants to be secret and private for some reason, I guess that's fine, but if you're a group discussing, for instance, bicycle maintenance tips, why do you want to keep others from seeing this helpful info? And why do you want to keep others out? Specialty subreddits don't have this problem.
  - hmcq6 2y ago
    So where do you suggest people post that is zero cost and advertisement free? These communities were pushed onto discord because there isn't a better place for them. The regional live music discord I'm in would be much better served by being on a web forum but running a forum costs money. Or they could use facebook but not everyone in the community has/wants a facebook account. Not everyone uses reddit/twitter/insert your favorite social media. > why do you want to keep others from seeing this helpful info? How paranoid would one have to be to think people are moving to discord to be malicious? The garden doesn't have walls to keep you out, the walls are to keep the advertisers/bots out.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      >So where do you suggest people post that is zero cost and advertisement free? These days, Reddit seems to be the best option available (unfortunately). Back during better days, we had lots of independent forums running software like PhpBB, which served this purpose well. For some reason that I don't really understand, back then (when computers were less powerful and efficient than now) that worked well enough, but now everyone's screaming about hosting costs and how expensive it is to run even a single bulletin board on the internet so they turn to Discord when they don't like Reddit. Why hosting costs apparently weren't such a big deal 15-20 years ago with crappier hardware and much less storage space, I honestly don't know.
      - xnorswap 2y ago
        Part of the problem is that 20 years ago they weren't being scraped 24/7.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - n_ary 2y ago
        > Why hosting costs apparently weren't such a big deal 15-20 years ago with crappier hardware and much less storage space, I honestly don't know. Back in the so called "golden days", I actually hosted a forum with a friend. His uncle offered his old office PC(bought at a bargain) and internet with fixed IP for us to tinker with. Our tiny forum has local kids and some "supervising adults" doing moderation. Many of our international members were mostly on dialup, so even if we didn't have lovely CDN, the slowness was accepted as normal thing. We did not face much spamming, grifting and any trouble makers were policed out immediately by moderators. In present days, I am very afraid to put something online, because if the moderators are not vigilant, I could very well expect a police letter by a week or two asking about certain type fo contents and my infra provider banning or null routing my forum. It was easy back in days, now the risks are too high and trouble makers have more resources than well intent folks.
- GuB-42 2y ago
  > No advertising, no enshittification It is starting to change, for me, Discord has being going downhill for a couple of years. Client updates are becoming more common and more buggy, as if we were on a beta channel. Marketing for Nitro is becoming more agressive, and now, there are "Quests", which are essentially ad banners for games.
n_ary 2y ago
If my memories are not too deteriorated, I find the Discord communities akin to IRC communities, except with more memes and emojis.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  I think this sounds accurate. And, on the surface, there's nothing wrong with a modernized, glorified IRC network, but it should be obvious to anyone here that this is utterly useless as a store of useful information that can be archived and indexed and searched by others later. It's like two guys sitting next to each other at a bar and striking up a conversation, and one tells the other a great tip he figured out for how to fix a very particular issue with his car. That's nice, but the other guy just got lucky he met someone with this knowledge, and all the other people with that same issue are out of luck and won't learn this valuable nugget of info because there's no record of it anywhere.
- jjav 2y ago
  IRC wasn't run by a proprietary company that demanded your phone number to read the channels. So discord is basically the exact opposite of IRC (and everything else in the open Internet).

bonoboTP 2y ago

There has to be a barrier, a kept gate. Back "then", simply access to the internet was enough of a filter to get a good signal-to-noise ratio. Today it's something else, such as knowing discords through word of mouth, knowing groups on other platforms, etc. If you're not getting through this knowledge filter, you need to try harder or accept not being in there. HN can remain public and high quality due to strong moderation and an "ugly", text-only, imageless, emojiless UI that scares away "noise"-people.

dwoldrich 2y ago
This comment was very well-written. And, it stirs up thoughts about what works and what doesn't. "What abouts" like that one battle royale game (that failed) that coupled advancement to being a good sport and respectful to others, and it kindof worked. Could that kind of "good sport" thing be engineered into public forums somehow. But in the end, all my feeble "what if's" collapse, and I end up agreeing with you.