Hosting a forum and a general chat is probably the best choice. Mahbe even a big FOSS platform that can host a lot of forums simultaneously for others, almost like something that already exists and im making a comment using that platform 🧐🧐
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 a user, you’d dial in, sync your newsreader software, and later whenever you want you can go through all the threads in the groups you’re subscribed to and respond at your leisure. Your posts go out next time you sync up.
Could be worth looking at what worked and what failed over the various forms forums have taken over the years – email lists, usenet, web forums, etc.
Hosting a forum and a general chat is probably the best choice. Mahbe even a big FOSS platform that can host a lot of forums simultaneously for others, almost like something that already exists and im making a comment using that platform 🧐🧐
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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.
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A federated forum model? That sounds cool!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet used to be the thing before forums took over. Every decent ISP would host a news server for their users.
As a user, you’d dial in, sync your newsreader software, and later whenever you want you can go through all the threads in the groups you’re subscribed to and respond at your leisure. Your posts go out next time you sync up.
Could be worth looking at what worked and what failed over the various forms forums have taken over the years – email lists, usenet, web forums, etc.
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.
GitHub has the Discussions tab, maybe Gitea and Sourcehut could do the same thing. GitLab probably already has it, that thing is so bloated.
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