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For sites that are not forums-first, I think the age of the online forum has pretty much come to an end, for exactly the reasons Pavlina explains. We ran our f

For sites that are not forums-first, I think the age of the online forum has pretty much come to an end, for exactly the reasons Pavlina explains. We ran our forums at Bonanza for about 4 years, and had millions of posts made to them. We spent hundreds (thousands?) of hours of time building tech and training moderators. In spite of the overwhelming effort we put into making them useful and productive, we ultimately had to concede that the folks who sought to undermine our forums had 100x the time that we did, and displayed a level of resolve (creating duplicate accounts/their own forums/blogs to pick apart our decisions) that could have been a huge asset, if not for being dedicated to subterfuge. After seeing all this firsthand for years, I am now solidly of the belief that the Internet and productive forums are hopelessly at odds. I hope Discourse can prove me wrong. But all it takes is a small handful of people to undermine the best technology and intentions. That Paul Graham has been able to keep HN discussions civil for years (even though I've read it causes him great consternation) is an inspiring counterexample. But I can scarcely imagine the number of cycles he and his team probably have to expend to keep the signal-to-noise ratio as high as it is here.

moot 13y ago
I agree that it's a mistake for most sites to have a forum as some ill-conceived appendage (I once exclaimed to a friend that "forums are favelas!" on most sites), but think interest-based communities have a bright future.
- brownbat 13y ago
  Yeah, just disaggregate content and comment. It was stupid to have every local newspaper build a boutique moderation system. We'll have this really figured out when I open a news story in my browser and a second window pops up on my other monitor with a list of comments linked to that article from Twitter, Facebook, G+, HN, Reddit, Digg, or whatever social sites or aggregators I'm into. EDIT: brevity.
  - marvin 13y ago
    That's actually not a bad idea at all, if you are able to do it in a way that works well with the original content. Could be as simple as a Firefox plugin. The big problem is that a lot of people have to adopt it if it's going to work at a large scale (no one participates on an empty comment page). My country's biggest online newspaper recently switched to full-name only comments, which is a dealbreaker for me. It would be great to have an alternative community which isn't subject to each news source's arbitrary moderation policies. I have seen outright censorship many times, and it doesn't feel right to contribute to an online discussion where certain views are removed from consideration. In fact, I feel that the full-name policy is a flawed online discussion strategy, and this would be a good way to solve it.

moot 13y ago

I agree that it's a mistake for most sites to have a forum as some ill-conceived appendage (I once exclaimed to a friend that "forums are favelas!" on most sites), but think interest-based communities have a bright future.

brownbat 13y ago
Yeah, just disaggregate content and comment. It was stupid to have every local newspaper build a boutique moderation system. We'll have this really figured out when I open a news story in my browser and a second window pops up on my other monitor with a list of comments linked to that article from Twitter, Facebook, G+, HN, Reddit, Digg, or whatever social sites or aggregators I'm into. EDIT: brevity.
- marvin 13y ago
  That's actually not a bad idea at all, if you are able to do it in a way that works well with the original content. Could be as simple as a Firefox plugin. The big problem is that a lot of people have to adopt it if it's going to work at a large scale (no one participates on an empty comment page). My country's biggest online newspaper recently switched to full-name only comments, which is a dealbreaker for me. It would be great to have an alternative community which isn't subject to each news source's arbitrary moderation policies. I have seen outright censorship many times, and it doesn't feel right to contribute to an online discussion where certain views are removed from consideration. In fact, I feel that the full-name policy is a flawed online discussion strategy, and this would be a good way to solve it.