alt Hacker NewsBring back crappy forums
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> 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 people carrying the conversation tend to change with each comment. Even with all its problems, I can't think of another format that can match it in terms of sharing the spotlight among a diverse set of voices.
I could never really get into the twitter format because it seems to be about a particularly spicy take followed by long string of replies to that take, at least without additional clicks that completely change the context. Its single virtue seemed to be its departure from anonymity which allowed it to be a showcase for voices that were already influential within society.
The oldschool forum format requires a lot more scrolling and superfluous content that is unrelated to the discussion, and it is hard to go back to once the wave of nostalgia passes.
I run a forum site. It's been going on for 23 years now, and over that time, it has reflected the country's technology adoption history.
We still have new signups every day and a community that helps others when needed - not only online but in real life too.
The structured discussions and the focus on topics make this type of site a lot easier for some people when compared to platforms like Discord.
This post is timely, considering reddit is going to start requiring login for old.reddit.com which they announced in the past few days
I miss forums. When they were in their heyday I was an active participant in anywhere from a couple to half a dozen, shifting with whatever happened to be my hobby at the time. And local forums based around hobbies like music and photography were a great way to meet people in person because you already had something in common to start things off.
It was also a place to find really in depth information on a topic. I remember doing research for my multi-day hikes and outdoor travels by browsing the threads in the stormfront survival subforum (note: I do not condone what they represent, but lots of them were paranoid and preparing for "the coming race war" and they just had good prepping and survival info).
To me Reddit and HN have filled the void left by the decline of forums, but it's not the same. Perhaps the thing I miss the most is the ability to have avatars and custom signatures and titles to give your online persona a little bit of personality and flair.
I have a lot of sympathy with this. I use some topic specific old school web forums and they feel better all round than the discord channels/forums.
I suspect it's an age/attitude thing. The implicit "My forum my rules" autocracy shows its upsides on a well curated space: trolling and spam dealt with rapidly.
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!
Oh how I miss old school forums. It’s crazy to me how communities are wholesale embracing discord, which just is not the right form factor at all for anything but ephemeral real time chat. I remember engaging in threads on real forums for literally years. It was so great
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 they don't.
I'm sympathetic to forums just because I think if someone likes something they shouldn't need to join a potentially social media site with potentially toxic designs and sub-communities. But these are negative internalities that people mostly ignore.
Many still exist just many of us make them private or physical community oriented. Making a forum openly public and especially allowing search engines is just asking for high interaction moderation, defending against well funded groups and a myriad of unstables. Few have the level of masochism and perseverance required for that. Hats off to team dang for pulling that off here.
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.
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.
One thing about these old school forums is they are something you host yourself (directly or paying a server somewhere), and this requires but knowledge on doing so, and time to do its maintenance (beyond moderation and stuff). Additionally, I don’t think simple machines and phpbb development has kept as strong as the people trying to spam it.
I'm not sure I understand the difference between "crappy forums" and subreddits. They have all the same features. Tags function as sections. You can sort threads chronologically. Karma.
I suspect there's no actual difference, the author just liked the sort of people who were willing to deal with the traditional "crappy forum" interface for the sake of connecting around some niche hobby, and it provided enough friction to promote adherence to the community's culture.
There are just more people on the internet now. The problem always boils down to some version of Eternal September.
Not crappy by any means, but, till date, Elixir forum (elixirforum.com) simply has the best mix of knowledge, etiquette and discussions on any and most topics around Elixir. I hope they never retire it ever. I still feel the community support whenever I participate there. People genuinely are also interested in what you're working on, etc. I could never get this from Reddit.
the thing "crappy" forums had that modern platforms killed: you were talking to the same ~200 regulars, not performing for an algorithm — small and stable beat big and optimized.
No, bring back NetNews/NNTP. This spreading of communities over dozens of (commercial) services is annoying. And don't get me started about open source projects using WhatsApp groups as their main place to discuss things.
Forums are communities which are curated. If it has a good owner, it will nurture good discussions. Because they have to adhere to rules. Or be banned. There was a tech magazine forum in India which was crazy cool. Learned a lot from it.
But most forums go through a learning process. Way too many great discussions and it gets popular. And then some new/old idiots will start pushing the lines which will lead to over moderation. But once we are done with a couple of this fiascos, the forum will settle down and become a lot better and worth staying.
But this can be off-putting to all the parties involved. So we went to the wild west which is social media where I chip in and leave as u please. And you can talk sh*t as u please as well. You are not invested and don't have to be.
I am still invested in Archlinux forums. Although not very active. And was super active in Manjaro Linux forums until Phillip went super hostile against the users and I moved to Arch. It used discourse.
As am exploring BSD these days, I am in FreeBSD forums and unitedbsd.com - lurking. And UnitedBSD uses flarum.org which I think is the best forum software available as of now. Definitely better than Discourse.
We should have more forums. Coming to think of it, I learn more in forums than from social media communities.
I think they lost something too.
I'm still active on a UK car forum called PistonHeads. But the user base changed. We lost the calm, car-focused, informative nature of it.
The main website is still oriented around cars but the forum became overwhelmed with people who only came to post about politics. And their posting was more aggressive and confrontational rather than knowledge seeking or sharing. I can't prove it, but I'm certain some accounts are paid to promote / undermine political parties and causes. The product promotion has a harder time getting through though. And at least it's not Instagram or Tiktok.
The internet as a whole just isn't what it was.
For spaceflight, https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com is still alive and kicking (although it has branched out and is super active on Youtube now).
The best forums still have users and traffic. For instance, for Toyota Land Cruiser owners, the best information has always been at ih8mud. Reddit doesnt hold a candle to Mud for the depth of information available (for that community.)
Internet is now past 6 billion people. What % do you think know what a forum is? What % of television users know what a transistor is or even an antenna? What % of phone users know what a dial tone is or a party line? As time marches on people use technology differently. There is no going back. The users do not get to decide what they are going to use, that is for the producers to tell us. Bring on the new color TV I'm ready to be jacked in. Industry leads the way.
I run a small forum and am also the moderator of some small subreddits. I must say the toxicity of sub reddits is so much higher, and people on the old "crappy" forum are so much more polite. I don't know why this is, but maybe because the users flocking to old school forums are maybe a bit older?
They're still around, and the signal to noise ratio is much improved as the more prolific spammers moved away to social media.
I'm a lurker on a couple of automotive forums and a watch forum and they're doing quite nicely.
absolutely love forums! It's also a kind of a rite of passage for devs to create a forum if you are learning new language (back in the days) - an advanced version of "Create your first blog" type of thing?
A while back ago, I created HN Plus (hn[.]plus) (for some reason it gets blocked) - anyway, wanted to give people a way to create their own HN clone - still being used today and it was a very interesting exercise to replicate all the niche features of HN.
2 of the best from my high school days are still around, though I barely even lurk anymore.
Quality vs. Quantity.
The forums I still go to are hyperspecific, and yes, the experience is crappier. But because of that, only the diehards frequent them, meaning you generally get better, smarter discussions.
poster must not have heard of letsrun.com
Reddit, Quora, Twitter, Pinterest won.
Now facebook is trying to build a new app.
The major reason social media won out is they treated themselves as a proper business that made scale plays. What forums obsessed over the user onboarding process? What forums obsessed over marketing and user acquisition? What forums were tracking user churn and how to prevent it? What forums responded to the user demand for mobile apps?
The issue is that these sites primarily were ran by people who wanted to build a community as opposed to wanting to build a forum platform. So really social media were actually competing against the forum companies and forums companies failed to modernize and failed to compete against social media ability to recommend new communities to users.
The problem with crappy forums is that young people don't know how they work.
And forums with only old people die. Because people just tend to die.
That's why I made my 20+ year old niche agricultural forum a hybrid: a social media like feed plus a traditional forum. It fits the huge amount of image posts better as well. Of course I ran into some user revolt redesigning it this way, but users mostly like it.
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They are called Reddit or Discord these days.
And many (many many) crappy forums were hosted on crappy free sub domain hosting, so theres little difference moving to a subreddit or discord.
I remember sending a request for a database export to jconserv and getting nothing, just before the website started to fall apart. Later finding out that the owner just walked off or died or something.
I think the nostalgia here is misplaced. No one took the forums from us. They're still around. They're just not fun to use unless you're already invested in the community and its lore. And truth to be told, I don't want to become a part of the furnace enthusiasts community, set up an account, read ten pages of rules, and then get chastised by a moderator for posting in the wrong sub-forum just because I have a furnace maintenance question.
I think there are greater tragedies playing out on the internet than people preferring Reddit to phpBB.
Speaking of a crappy forum: I packaged phpbb for Docker because there was no good image after Bitnami went under. But not sure what to do with it. Didn't even put it on our hosting site yet. Is this useful for something beyond nostalgia and fun?
https://github.com/pikapods/docker-phpbb/pkgs/container/dock...