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Bring back crappy forums

tedium.co

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Re: Bring back crappy forums

#131

Post by ErroneousBosh »

doginasuit wrote: post #33

> We tried the forum thing. We wanted something else. Not necessarily because it was better, though sure, maybe it was. But because it was different. I don't think the novelty explains very much, the digg/reddit comment tree format is a clear improvement in the sense that it makes it easier to find and track interesting discussions. I always liked the aspect that you could follow a coherent back and forth where the p…

> the digg/reddit comment tree format is a clear improvement in the sense that it makes it easier to find and track interesting discussions

I think it makes a distinction between "thing that we are discussing with multiple conversations", and oldschool forums where each thread is "thing that we are having a conversation about".

Are there any self-hostable forums that work like digg/reddit/HN?

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#132

Post by tpoacher »

postalcoder wrote: post #123
doginasuit wrote: post #33

> We tried the forum thing. We wanted something else. Not necessarily because it was better, though sure, maybe it was. But because it was different. I don't think the novelty explains very much, the digg/reddit comment tree format is a clear improvement in the sense that it makes it easier to find and track interesting discussions. I always liked the aspect that you could follow a coherent back and forth where the p…

The downside with reddit-/hn-style comment is that, while they provide a superior UI for discussions, the liveliness of the discussions have a shelf life of a day. It makes it's hard to get a high quality discussion about new/breaking topics. What I mean is that, for new products, the threads that get the greatest discussion liquidity are those where not a single person knows a thing about it. So you'll get hundreds…

I agree for the most part, though it's worth pointing out that HN specifically has a mitigating characteristic in this case, which is that repeat posts are not moderated away, and are in fact encouraged.

Case in point, one if today's top posts is on knoppix. Definitely not early adopter material! :)

I agree more generally though. While I understand the benefits of a 14day response window, it really does destroy the ability to find a thread that is useful in a more anachronistic manner.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#133

Post by curtisblaine »

What are the open source, easily hostable forum platforms available in 2026? I remember I looked at the oss web-based self hosted chat platforms not long ago and I found they were all either abandoned or had crippling limitations if you didn't pay for the closed version. I wonder if that's the same for forums.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#134

Post by graemep »

davb wrote: post #122

I used to participate in a bunch of forums across an range of topics and in recent years considered starting one myself but with the OSA (Online Safety Act) in the UK, it’s not worth the personal risk.

Me too. They have huge advantages but you need to spend what Ofcom calls a negligible amount (not more than a few thousand) to set up and ideally set up a company to limit liability.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#135

Post by someonebaggy »

rplnt wrote: post #84
lazystar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

BYOND forums used tree comments in chronological order with an unread marker

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#136

Post by someonebaggy »

davb wrote: post #122

I used to participate in a bunch of forums across an range of topics and in recent years considered starting one myself but with the OSA (Online Safety Act) in the UK, it’s not worth the personal risk.

At some point surely we have to start openly defying the OSA and similar acts. What jury will convict someone for operating an online forum about sharks and not ensuring every user is older than 13?

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#137

Post by gattr »

Good news, amateur astronomy is still done on web forums - they're the place for newcomers to acquire knowledge, and for technical discussions among the more advanced. (Modern social media tend to be rather used for outreach to the lay public.)

Places like Cloudy Nights, Stargazers Lounge, Solarchat, and your country's biggest local-lang forum.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#138

Post by 8-prime »

possibleworlds wrote: post #68

There is no need to “bring back” forums, there are plenty that already exist. You just need to participate in them if that’s what you want.

With how many times I have seen the "forum" for a community be a Discord server I would say that there has been a noticable shift away from independently hosted forums. Which is what I would associate with a "proper" forum.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#139

Post by apexalpha »

gnoll_of_gozag wrote: post #104
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!

how actually good is it at russian? online russian is just over halfway full of esoteric slang, multilingual puns and references

I mostly frequent forums hosting stuff westerns forums wont such as firmwares and roms.

Its perfectly fine for me, really. Sometimes I read nonsense in English and thats probably slang in Russian, yeah

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#140

Post by someonebaggy »

eleventen wrote: post #36
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main thing is the old forums were sorted by recency (how new a post was or how recently it was replied to) rather than some AI-driven engagement mechanism. They were structured (you'd have several rooms for different topics on the same forum).

I'm not aware of any "AI-driven engagement mechanism" for subreddits. You can sort by new, top, hot, best. Hot/Best are opaque heuristics, but they function reasonably and you aren't forced to use them. And for most communities, tags function as adequate topic groupings. You're rewarded for participation with fake nonsense points, same as all the forums of yore.

"best" and "hot" are opaque algorithmic feeds and the only way to see the currently active discussions. "new" shows you posts that have no discussions yet and "top" shows you ones whose discussions have concluded.
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