Only works if it’s the way everyone is sorting their feed.

Only works if everyone is sorting the same way otherwise by replying to an old post you’re just screaming in the void.

Look at this conversation, it’s old enough that it doesn’t show in my feed anymore (sorted by top 6h), if I wasn’t taking part in it no matter how many people replied to it I would never know it took place.

That’s what I’m talking about, if sorting is up to the user then most people only see “fresh” content, not ongoing conversations that they might want to take part in if they realized they’re happening. Same for the comments sections, threaded makes it harder to check what’s new (have to go down each branch to get the context).

Again, unless it works the same way for everyone then people are just replying to old discussions and no one knows about it except for the person they’re replying to.

I’ll go take a look, but isn’t it just the software behind the various forums and you need separate credentials for each one?

Let’s say you find a month old discussion with a reply to a question you’ve got but you have further questions, here’s the major difference.

On Reddit/Lemmy you have two options, you reply to that same discussion and only the person you replied to knows you replied, no one comes to help OR you create a new discussion leading to the knowledge on that subject being split up between two discussions, meaning that the next person who has the same issue will probably find that first thread and repeat the same process.

On an old school forum you just reply to the original discussion, it gets bumped up, everyone sees that you have further questions, no need for a new discussion, all knowledge is in the same place, next person who needs an answer to that question now finds all the info they need in the same place, no need to ask further questions of the issue is resolved, if it isn’t they just bump that thread and more knowledge is added.

Megathreads are locked at the top and people see new replies only if they bother looking. Nested comments mean that you need to go through all branches to check what’s new (hell, nested comments leads to people repeating the same thing as others,in the same thread, at the same time without realizing it because the same discussion is happening simultaneously in multiple branches!). Wikis are just a third party solution without any discussion happening and where only the people who bother editing the Wiki (or that are allowed to) add to it (which isn’t as easy as just writing a message on a forum).

Edit: Just want to say that I agree with you on something though, having to rely on other users can be a pain on forums but that’s mostly a forum internal search engine issue that has always been an issue…

No, it’s not. Unless they only allow the sorting of threads based on which discussions has the newest comment (bumping) and remove comment nesting (so discussions are ongoing instead of branching off which makes it difficult to keep up with what’s new in the different threads), it’s not that website.

Everything you’ll ever want to know about a specific model of motorcycle, all in a single thread:

https://advrider.com/f/threads/yamaha-wr250r-threadfest.936588/

Ask a question and people will tell you what page to look at if you can’t find it, post something that has already been talked about and they’ll refer you to the page where people talked about it.

On here? You could repost the exact same text tomorrow in a different community and the same discussion would happen again. Post it again in this community in a month and the same discussion will happen again without anyone noticing that you’re reposting.

Necroing in order to continue talking about something and build on the base already established is much better than the constant repost and knowledge reset we see on here where the same questions are asked again and again and again and people need to explain the same things again and again and again.

Only works if everyone’s experience is the same and discussions are centralized in threads. I added to my comment but on a forum that discussion would be part of a thread where all similar articles/discussions would be centralized instead of having a new thread being opened on the same subject every few weeks and people having to rewrite the same opinion every time (or just not sharing their opinion anymore because they’re tired of repeating themselves every time someone wants to talk about that subject).

There’s no knowledge accumulation with the way things work on Reddit/Lemmy, just repetition and things being forgotten.

If there was a Reddit/Lemmy style website (where people create communities for various subjects but it’s all available from the same website using the same credentials) with forum style discussions I would be outta here in a moment.

Ongoing discussions with bumps are so much better for knowledge accumulation (that’s the reason why they’re still used by specialized communities), the major issue with forums, as pointed out, is the hassle of having to go from one website to another to talk about various subjects and needing to sign up to each one of them.

As for solving the “little Kings” issue, dumb backend, smart frontend. Remove admins from the equation, those hosting are only there to host. People moderate communities but communities can easily be replaced. People create a frontend to access the backend but from a user point of view it doesn’t make a difference what frontend they use, they will get access to the same content.

The fact that I’ve written this comment a dozen times since last year proves a point, Reddit/Lemmy style websites just lead to content being repeated again and again. This comment will get lost to time just like all the other times I shared my opinion on the subject. On a forum it would be part of the ongoing discussion and anyone who wanted to go through the whole thread where all discussions on that subject to place would read it, no matter how long it had been since I posted.

Advrider still going strong!

Sure and I have a huge block list on here and I would never advocate for a solution where you can’t choose to block someone or where mods can’t block people from the communities they moderate, it’s the person above that I have a problem with.

On Reddit I got blocked from a community (bread tube), I contacted the mod for an explanation and told them I didn’t see why I would get blocked for an honest question (What is the alternative to cops when people get robbed if we get rid of cops?) from someone who is a progressive but who just isn’t informed on that subject, they contacted the admins and I got banned from Reddit altogether. That’s my problem with having admins at the top, one mod didn’t like me questioning them, I had no issue in any other communities I took part in, bam, locked out of the whole place.

I’ll go take a look and if it’s what I’m talking about then I don’t know why it wasn’t the solution people jumped on when Reddit admins started removeding up instead of leaving to go on Lemmy where admins are still a thing…

Backend: The hosting is a database, people provide servers, host content, filter what they don’t want on their own servers but if it’s hosted by someone else on another server then it’s available to users. In the end it works the same way as hosting any website except that you’re not dealing with AWS or another such service, it’s just people like you and me providing space on their servers to host chunks of the database and you back up everything so no one can wipe their server and make part of the database disappear

Frontend: The database is 100% public, if you create a website to access it all you’re doing is providing the UI for users to see what’s in the database and interact with it, you don’t host the content itself

If you’ve ever played with crypto the principle is similar, the ledger is public, anyone can create a website to let people see the transactions on it and to push transactions to it

And what I’ve been saying from the get go is that no one should have that kind of power. That you can get banned from a community is one thing, that you can get banned from all content available on one instance and that one person can decide you’re unable to communicate with tens of thousands of other users just because they don’t like your face? Well that means that Lemmy is no better than Reddit.

Post on a community moderated by Lemmy’s main dev to share a political opinion he doesn’t agree with? Say goodbye to all Lemmy.ml users, you’re banned from the whole instance mother removeder! No one should be able to do that in a decentralized system and if that’s what people want from Lemmy then they should stop pretending it’s decentralized because it’s not.

If you decentralize the hosting and make it a “public database” where everything is backed up on multiple servers then yes, you can in fact have people hosting the content they want to host without having actual control over the website itself. If they don’t want to host NSFW content then they can filter it, someone else will host it and people can pull it from the database when they browse the website from their favorite front end.

They can block content on their server, but as long as one server hosts the content, it would be available to anyone who wants to see it, which isn’t how things work on Lemmy unless you want to sign up to a bunch of instances to make sure you have access to everything.

Ok, but you can still go ahead and create the same community on every instance so you control all the communities with that name.

What I’m suggesting wouldn’t prevent people from blocking other users or communities, just like on Reddit, instances wouldn’t exist at all, which would solve the main issue with Lemmy.

But other admins still have the power to cut you off, so no, that’s not a solution.