As someone who does just that… user numbers speak against it. Forums are “dying” everywhere as people just seem to avoid them. I don’t like it either, but I don’t see a way to reverse this trend either.
I think that federation is the answer, it’s just an answer over a long time rather than an immediate catastrophic paradigm shift.
It might not have taken off yet for message boards, but it’s the only way to allow diversity and self-reliance while also allowing a common community and an aggregated large user base.
That’s the USP of big tech: Go on facebook or reddit and you can join multiple different communities from one place, whereas it’s a unique commitment to be on even a few standalone forums since you routinely have to go to each one. Federate and suddenly you can be in multiple communities that have nothing to do with each other from whichever site you like the design of.
As someone who does just that… user numbers speak against it. Forums are “dying” everywhere as people just seem to avoid them. I don’t like it either, but I don’t see a way to reverse this trend either.
I think that federation is the answer, it’s just an answer over a long time rather than an immediate catastrophic paradigm shift.
It might not have taken off yet for message boards, but it’s the only way to allow diversity and self-reliance while also allowing a common community and an aggregated large user base.
That’s the USP of big tech: Go on facebook or reddit and you can join multiple different communities from one place, whereas it’s a unique commitment to be on even a few standalone forums since you routinely have to go to each one. Federate and suddenly you can be in multiple communities that have nothing to do with each other from whichever site you like the design of.
The fediverse has a bit of a discoverability problem though. It could be part of the solution I guess, but right now it isn’t.
A federated forum model? That sounds cool!
I prefer the forum model to ask questions and drive discussions.
It is fully asynchronous, you don’t need to wait for answers in real time where in a real time chat, all this information is lost in a few moments.
Some chat apps like Element are working on chat with threads so it’s like a forum in a chat. There’s a proof-of-concept on develop.element.io https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/2349
Element doesn’t work in Goanna-based browsers and has not the same speed as a forum.