Every forum I used before Reddit even existed is still active (hell, PHPBB was updated as recently as November!) and new platforms, like Lemmy, pop up all the time . IDK what the fuck these articles are talking about. Maybe they just don't know how to actually find anything on the web? 🤷🏻‍♂️

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It is a problem, but I think it downplays the reason those platforms got popular.

No admin required. No updating of software to make sure you're not going to get compromised by a vuln.
No account management. You don't have to make a new account, and manage another password for every community you use. Also, no worrying about 1 when somebody like me can't be arsed to update that forum software. I don't want an account for everything.
It's all in one place. You look at your "feed" of things and your stuff with a new post every week is right there with the stuff with new posts every ten minutes.

If you're running a big community you shouldn't be building it somebody else's garden, but you do need to manage the garden yourself and it's not super trivial and maybe your little Final Fantasy XIV group can make do with a corner of Discord and abandon it when it goes real shitty. If you've got 50,000 people, it gets a little trickier.

The Fediverse goes a little way to fixing things, but it's all a trade off. Not having corporations involved is a damn good start though.

[–] RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If game developers would launch their own fediverse instances (maybe with devs + moderators as the only registered users), to which general purpose instances could freely connect, then problems 2 and 3 would be solved for users as well. Imo that would be a far better solution than having game forums on a walled garden platform like discord. That still leaves the devs with problem 1, but they would also regain control of their data + the data would also be searchable with proper search engines. I can dream :)

[–] linuxPIPEpower@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It would be solved for people who are primarily interested in tech and gaming. How about bellow challenges?

Gaming is huge so presumably lots of gamers are interested in the wider world, which is not exactly well represented here compared to the major platforms.

And we can't ignore the inherent complexities of federation. If a user signs up to another instance but for some reason that instance (or game 's instance) is blocked by others or even goes offline, then it will be confusing if not ruining of their experience.

[–] BorisBoreUs@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If a Lemmy-naut is registered with an instance that's defederated from the game company instance, they can always register at an instance that is federated, either in addition to their main or to replace it. The company's instance would likely act as an info hub, but the gamers wouldn't be members of the instance directly, so it would be like any other content that could be opted into. If it became the norm that games or game companies spun up their own instance, it could become a community and marketing tool for the games. But even if the instances themselves retire, the content made is still around and the existing fans could just start channels to continue the community. Companies that arent complete assholes could even assist with transfer to new channels elsewhere.

I think theres an opportunity down the line for a company/companies to form that specialize in helping orgs to spin up instances and sell their them hosting. Hosting is expensive for small groups to manage, but multiple small groups together could make it viable. Plus having the hosting coupled with help overcoming the tech-knowledge barrier could lead to more orgs feeling comfortable spinning up their own instances.

[–] Aux@feddit.uk 0 points 7 months ago (3 children)

The problem with your logic is that now you have to have multiple accounts across the "same bloody Lemmy". That kills the whole purpose of a decentralised approach. Defederation should not be a thing at all.

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[–] Spaniard@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Internet forums will come back when AI overtakes Reddit and Discord goes awry because they go public.

[–] Ironfist@lemmy.ca 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I've been saying it for years. People should have stuck with usenet.

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[–] ramble81@lemm.ee 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I have never once used discord and it makes me wonder how much information I haven’t been able to find, but I’ve managed to get what I need so I don’t know if it was important anyway.

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[–] crossdl@leminal.space 0 points 7 months ago (3 children)

This is unironically on reddit right now. People lamenting a place like Lemmy doesn't exist.

I'm less worried about Discord, honestly.

[–] batmaniam@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Discord is amazing for a step beyond group messages. I have no idea how it got into a roll as a "community tool".

[–] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think it's because it's great for group messages too. SMS/MMS is kinda shit, especially when somebody has an iPhone and their iMessage interferes (seriously, enough of the 'loved an image' spam). IRC gets blocked on a lot of public networks because of its association with piracy, so that makes it less than reliable.

Discord is pretty full featured too, like IRC doesn't do group calls, and getting a group phone call going is a pain. Being able to have different channels is also super nice, because you can have a channel for, idk, birthday party planning to keep it from vanishing in the general daily chitchat. I've used it with roommates to get everybody on board with a grocery list before, because we all had Discord accounts anyways.

It's just useful enough as a community tool.

[–] tomenzgg@midwest.social 1 points 7 months ago

This is the answer.

For whatever complaints one might have about Discord (and they are legion), it does a really good job of packing a bunch of different functionality in one place and with a UI that's super easy to grasp and understand what does what and how that requires very little foreknowledge of what the thing is or its underlying mechanisms.

If I am completely new and pretty blank of what it is, Discord's pretty good at me being able to catch up quickly; it's got a good UI and, following that, functionality for a bunch of things related to communication. And, if I need a quick solution that just gets me going…that's gonna be pretty painless.

[–] skytrim@reddthat.com 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Discord was never 'user-friendly'. It always gave me nerd, incel, neurodiverse, or weirdo vibes so not something I would miss much although I probably qualify as nerd, neurodiverse, and weirdo (but not incel, never that).

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[–] Ilandar@lemm.ee 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Discord is far worse in this context, though. Much of reddit is still publicly visible and is still indexed by some search engines, even if it could be better. Discussions from years ago are still visible and provide useful information to many (this is part of the reason "search term + reddit" became such a popular query template). When communities move to Discord, many of their conversations become completely private to anyone who isn't a member. The conversations move quickly and there is no easy way for people to reference past information. I get that people on Lemmy hate reddit and it's popular to circlejerk about it, but forums being replaced by things like Discord and Telegram that aren't equivalents at all has been much more damaging.

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[–] Obsidian@lemmy.one 0 points 7 months ago (3 children)

If anyone is looking for a pretty good list of forums-

https://aftermath.site/best-active-forums-internet-today?ueid=6310597850b065b278e2b143b21b73b5

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[–] early_riser@lemmy.radio 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I'm getting two points from the article. One is addressed handily by the Fediverse, the other is not.

First the centralized (I prefer to say "urbanized") nature of social media means a handful of companies control all the conversations. The Fediverse is a decent (though not perfect) solution to that problem, and I think everyone on here knows that.

However, the article also talks about the problems with the format of social media, not just who's hosting the platform. On traditional forums, conversations can last for years, but on Reddit, Discord, etc. new topics quickly bury old ones, no matter how lively those old topics are. Sure, you can choose to sort by "last comment" which replicates the traditional forum presentation with topic bumping, but it's not the default, even on Lemmy, so 90% of people won't bother.

I get to know people on traditional forums, even miss them if they leave, but on Reddit, comments are just disembodied thoughts manifesting in the ether. That may be due to the size of the community rather than the format, though.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I believe this is what they call "preaching to the choir".

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