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Bring back crappy forums

tedium.co

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Re: Bring back crappy forums

#81

Post by winterbourne »

I run an active forum in the DIY space, and another site that aggregates new build threads from hundreds of niche forums. Forums for people building cars, motorcycles, boats, airplanes, cabins, musical instruments, etc.

The classic forum format and tight-knit communities are ideal for what are called "communities of practice": like-minded people who get together to help each other build/create/make/do something. A well-moderated build thread is best suited to a classic linear non-threaded posting format, and that's why thousands of niche DIY forums still exist.

Pining for the forum heyday is common on social media now, but for niche DIYers, that participation is still a daily ritual.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#82

Post by andrepd »

lazystar wrote: post #74
keiferski wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forums are good in the way that they force everyone to mostly stay on a single topic of discussion. A bit like having one TV news channel that everyone is forced to watch and discuss. You can have tangents but it’s largely discouraged. The Reddit Digg style doesn’t have this and is yet another example of the culture fracturing into a thousand little things rather than one single narrative everyone can talk about. I g…

the biggest issue with reddit/digg/hackernews style comments is how top comments can be gamed for profit. old forums had the problem of "first" and "bump" comments, but steering the conversation was harder.

Exactly. The "tree" part you can argue whether it's good or bad. The "upvote" part is universally bad. The fact that upvotes bump comments while downvotes will completely hide then... It's just terrible for discussion, and the reason reddit consistently devolves into echo chambers with everybody agreeing with everybody and piling on whoever doesn't.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#83

Post by rplnt »

DevDesmond wrote: post #72
jancsika wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The oldschool forum format requires a lot more scrolling and superfluous content that is unrelated to the discussion On the other hand, the flatness and default chronology of those scrolls provide a reliable WYSIWYG experience the Reddit trees lack. E.g., forum noob reads scrolls and sees X% of $bad. Forum noob posts new scroll prepared to get tolerable level of $bad (or hopefully less). Forum noob2 then comes and…

On the other hand, comment trees encourage shallow content highjacking the top comment thread with little to no regard for preceding comments.

You can have both threaded discussions and chronological ordering of top level comments. It works really well.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#84

Post by rplnt »

lazystar wrote: post #74
keiferski wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forums are good in the way that they force everyone to mostly stay on a single topic of discussion. A bit like having one TV news channel that everyone is forced to watch and discuss. You can have tangents but it’s largely discouraged. The Reddit Digg style doesn’t have this and is yet another example of the culture fracturing into a thousand little things rather than one single narrative everyone can talk about. I g…

the biggest issue with reddit/digg/hackernews style comments is how top comments can be gamed for profit. old forums had the problem of "first" and "bump" comments, but steering the conversation was harder.

There's another option. Combining both threads and chronological order.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#85

Post by thaumasiotes »

apexalpha wrote: post #77

Many people are not aware that this is mostly a English internet thing. I still frequent a few forums in Dutch and Germen. Still around, still modded by volunteers, still great. Since AI essentially solved translation I even frequent Russian forums again. Still rocking PhpBB often!

> Since AI essentially solved translation I even frequent Russian forums again.

I'm struggling with the connection between these two things. It sounds like you used to frequent Russian forums before AI essentially solved translation. That being the case, you are surely able to understand the Russian forums. So what changed?

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#86

Post by lclee1 »

apexalpha wrote: post #77

Many people are not aware that this is mostly a English internet thing. I still frequent a few forums in Dutch and Germen. Still around, still modded by volunteers, still great. Since AI essentially solved translation I even frequent Russian forums again. Still rocking PhpBB often!

[dead]

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#87

Post by Gigachad »

donatj wrote: post #42
kjshsh123 wrote: post #27

Social media won because it's better for the consumer and producer. For the producer, it's free infrastructure but it's also advertising. Having a large subreddit means your game getting recommended to others and potentially being seen being introduced to more people. For the consumer, these social media sites do usually do provide a better experience in showing people what they want to see and keeping away stuff the…

Does this hold true in the modern age though? I haven't seen a single thing I wanted to see on social media basically since COVID. It's all famous people, posturing, and things I never followed. Entirely crap I don't care about. At this point I open Facebook like once a day. I used to go on Instagram to see my friend's pictures, now there's nothing of my friends on there and I'll just spam and AI slop... All I want i…

Discord is absolutely what has replaced forums and old social media. Twitter/Facebook/etc are entirely short form content and ragebait bots. Discord is where people are going to talk to their friends and discuss games/software/hobbies.

>there's a major gap in the market for an actual "social" network.

The problem is there is basically no money in it and it's hard build an engaged audience anymore because people attention spans are completely occupied by short form video and content creators now. Every minute of time people are willing to spend on their phones is currently used up so you are fighting against platforms that are much better at taking a slice of that pie.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#89

Post by Gigachad »

Robotbeat wrote: post #32
kjshsh123 wrote: post #27

Social media won because it's better for the consumer and producer. For the producer, it's free infrastructure but it's also advertising. Having a large subreddit means your game getting recommended to others and potentially being seen being introduced to more people. For the consumer, these social media sites do usually do provide a better experience in showing people what they want to see and keeping away stuff the…

Social media is more addictive. That's a huge reason it won.

I was discussing with a friend how I'm saddened that all the independent art websites basically died out. While they still exist, they are a shadow of their former selves while the viewers and artists all moved to Twitter, a website that is absolutely horrible as a replacement.

But it's just impossible to compete with the fact all eyeballs have been moved to social media so you are either on it or you aren't seen. Even if as a viewer you have to scroll past 20 political bots for every one genuine art piece you see.

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