I don't know why people just can't use plain old forums. I've got a lot help from KVR (a forum for music making) since I started learning DAW. It works fine.
If authentication is a problem then just let users login with their discord/twitter/reddit accounts?
Is it the lacking of "one-click setup" forum services?
I don't know, why didn't people use Google+ instead of Facebook? or Mixer instead of Twitch? or even Linux instead of Windows?
They all have the same issue of a Network effect[1] to overcome. Sure, I can whip up or take over a dead forum today and dictate the direction, but I will likely struggle to get a dozen users in a month, let alone a dozen comments. Meanwhile, there are probably 12 new sign ups for reddit as I type this message.
There's dozens of reasons why this is hard to overcome, but to put it bluntly: people don't leave if they are comfortable with what they got. if Reddit works for someone, why search out for some forum that doesn't show up on search to find maybe 12 comments abut something, when reddit has hundreds of posts to read? Users are metaphorically lazy, and the biggest sites feed into that.
> would you create a forum if it had one click setup?
The only reason I'd be hesitate to create a forum is that I think people (not me) might actually prefer Discord and I'm doing a disservice for them. So it's like Catch 22.
Ah I could see that -- I personally think that forums and Discord are actually different mediums, for different purposes.
Slack/Discord/Mattermost/Matrix is great for frenetic conversation and water cooler chat, but it just feels like history and long term knowledge doesn't get built easily there. It's like the difference between old school forums and IRC -- people generally didn't expect much from ephemeral conversation on IRC.
The one exception might be Zulip -- their threaded chat model is actually a blend and is very effective at creating enough mass around a single conversation (i.e. a thread) and making it trackable. That said, I still think forums are a different beast.
I have been in forums my whole life and discord is far from them, discord is just a chat akin to irc. Forums and IRC worked together very well, when I was moderating a huge gaming community we had several IRC channels for those who wanted live participation.
It's impossible to follow a discussion in discord because when you arrive it may be over and they are talking about something else, that doesn't happen in a forum you can just post and add your take. And managing knowledge is easier in a forum, I can still find my 15 year old replies, or access all the news I created back when I was a mod.
I find discourse difficult and confusing to use. Everything seems mixed up together, so it’s never clear what the topic is supposed to be, and scrolling is a nightmare. I actually kinda like pagination as it means I can know where a post basically is even if I didn’t save it, with discourse, if I don’t glance at the date and “write” it to memory there is no way to easily find an old reply without just continually scrolling and hoping I don’t miss it.
People can use forums, and do. But in a lot of cases the community is already established somewhere and if you want to join the community, you go there. And good luck getting any sizable community to switch platforms.
If authentication is a problem then just let users login with their discord/twitter/reddit accounts?
Is it the lacking of "one-click setup" forum services?