6 ms·

More evidence that "millions of people in the same room" isn't a sustainable model for online communities. I've been feeling for years that some kind of "chain

More evidence that "millions of people in the same room" isn't a sustainable model for online communities. I've been feeling for years that some kind of "chain of trust" and/or "X degrees of separation" reputation model is basically inevitable for broad-scale online social communities.

al_borland 7mo ago
I wonder if the old forum model would work. Instead of these mega-forum-platfroms, there are just small communities with a niche focus at their own URL. I suppose bots could find forums that use the most popular software and still make accounts and spam, but it would be much more obvious and less fruitful for someone to spam deck builders in Vancouver (something I saw often on Digg) on a forum that is focused on aquariums owners in the midwest.
- gzread 7mo ago
  Spammers don't care if it's fruitful - they just run software that finds every forum and spams it. That's why you can block so many by asking "is an elephant big or small?" on the sign-up form.
- rchaud 7mo ago
  Old forums still exist and work just fine without any CEOs pontificating about "community". I'm on plenty of niche interest boards built on PHPbb, Xenforo and Discourse. Chronologically ordered discussions, RSS support, no algorithmic "For You" bullshit. Build it and they will come.
  - al_borland 7mo ago
    I was on a lot of them 20-ish years ago. They all shutdown with the advent of Facebook Groups. I tried spinning up a Facebook Group to keep the crew together, as we had talked daily on one of those forums for nearly a decade, but it didn’t see much action and died out. A friend tried to start a new forum a few years ago based on his current hobby. It had some decent traction and even led to in-person events, but seemed cyclical based on the season, and I noticed about a year ago he shut it down. I’m currently on one old school forum, but I’m not super into the niche, so my visits are infrequent.

al_borland 7mo ago

I wonder if the old forum model would work. Instead of these mega-forum-platfroms, there are just small communities with a niche focus at their own URL. I suppose bots could find forums that use the most popular software and still make accounts and spam, but it would be much more obvious and less fruitful for someone to spam deck builders in Vancouver (something I saw often on Digg) on a forum that is focused on aquariums owners in the midwest.

gzread 7mo ago
Spammers don't care if it's fruitful - they just run software that finds every forum and spams it. That's why you can block so many by asking "is an elephant big or small?" on the sign-up form.
rchaud 7mo ago
Old forums still exist and work just fine without any CEOs pontificating about "community". I'm on plenty of niche interest boards built on PHPbb, Xenforo and Discourse. Chronologically ordered discussions, RSS support, no algorithmic "For You" bullshit. Build it and they will come.
- al_borland 7mo ago
  I was on a lot of them 20-ish years ago. They all shutdown with the advent of Facebook Groups. I tried spinning up a Facebook Group to keep the crew together, as we had talked daily on one of those forums for nearly a decade, but it didn’t see much action and died out. A friend tried to start a new forum a few years ago based on his current hobby. It had some decent traction and even led to in-person events, but seemed cyclical based on the season, and I noticed about a year ago he shut it down. I’m currently on one old school forum, but I’m not super into the niche, so my visits are infrequent.