Agreed. Small, decentralised communities should be the way forward. We could cal...

asynchronous · on Dec 15, 2022

I miss forums. Discord has replaced forums in most of the communities I cared about and it’s been for the worse.

Mezzie · on Dec 15, 2022

I hate this, and I like Discord.

Discord is a replacement for IRC/chat/AIM/other synchronous and informal conversation.

It's not a replacement for forums, archives, or formal communication.

Grimburger · on Dec 15, 2022

Dealing with opensource projects via discord is a nightmare. One I use regularly decided to escape the walled garden and move to github discussions and it's been such a boon for search. Discord is a repetitive nightmare of doing support I don't know why projects use it.

The discord server still exists but questions generally don't get answered as much or if they do it's usually a link to github discussions.

prox · on Dec 15, 2022

So how do you combine social network + forum? What does that look like?

bcrosby95 · on Dec 15, 2022

There is/was already a social network for that - Ning.

Back when social network platforms became A Thing they adopted OpenSocial - they had a news feed, notifications, etc - but each social network was completely isolated. I haven't taken a look at Ning since I worked on social networking apps about 12 years ago, so I have no clue how they've evolved since then.

squarefoot · on Dec 15, 2022

Heh, I just thought of an even smaller solution called newsgroups ;#)