@Neotheta I'm still using two forums, so yeah, it's true, they aren't quite gone.
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@Neotheta I'm still using two forums, so yeah, it's true, they aren't quite gone. But activity has decreased a lot and I can't seem to find any others matching my interests.
But maybe I'm just too particular about what I want. I'm not even sure what exactly I want, I just know that it isn't the places "where everyone is". -
@errant I don't think I've ever seen anyone use the threads feature on any of the servers* (I like your subtle jab) I'm on. :drgn_think: But it's probably also be due to the fact that I just can't deal with real-time mediums so I miss a ton of things. That's why, even if the above points were fine, it doesn't change the fact that the freedom of choice that used to exist (forums + chat rooms + IM) doesn't exist anymore today. At least not in a capacity that means anything to me.
@volpeon Yeah that's fair, probably a big part of why discord feels so dysfunctional a lot of the time is because its trying to fill in for the type of communication forums were much better at. Our game project has both a discord and a forum but barely anyone uses the forum... Even when we staff dislike discord, we find it hard in practice to use the forums more
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The early internet was so much better for me. Online communities were based on forums, but there was additional activity in IRC channels and instant messaging. No matter what mode of communication you prefer, you always had a choice.
Today? It's just instant messaging (Discord) and quasi-instant messaging (microblogging). Forums were given up and nobody gives a single shit about filling the huge hole left behind.
After trying Discord myself for a while, though, I realized that I'm actually not even missing out on anything.
Most activity on Discord servers is posting memes and shallow conversations in #/general (or whatever the general-purpose channel is called) about topics I don't care about, between people who have known each other for a long time and are dominating the channel.
The kind of interactions I had on forums are simply not happening.
So fuck it.@volpeon Or there are so many channels on a server that you have no idea where to post and they all seem to thematically overlap.
I also miss the asynchronous way of asking questions to projects that moved their forums to discord or matrix. It's kinda silly that everyone hates real time support (aka phone) and now it's replicated in text form with a chat system. Not even does everyone need to have time at the same moment, sometimes you come there with a question and a conversation is ongoing. Do you spam yours between the text? I hate it.
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The early internet was so much better for me. Online communities were based on forums, but there was additional activity in IRC channels and instant messaging. No matter what mode of communication you prefer, you always had a choice.
Today? It's just instant messaging (Discord) and quasi-instant messaging (microblogging). Forums were given up and nobody gives a single shit about filling the huge hole left behind.
After trying Discord myself for a while, though, I realized that I'm actually not even missing out on anything.
Most activity on Discord servers is posting memes and shallow conversations in #/general (or whatever the general-purpose channel is called) about topics I don't care about, between people who have known each other for a long time and are dominating the channel.
The kind of interactions I had on forums are simply not happening.
So fuck it.@volpeon On the otherhand, there are still many forums that are active, you just need to go and join them. But they've remained as hard to find as they always were, no corporation has pushed them infront of people for convenience.
People talk like there aren't options (with many things), but it's not true, selecting them just takes a little more effort and we have been trained by the current internet to feel difficult about them.
