this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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Well, forums are not real time, and that's what most people these days want apparently.
So, on to the alternatives:
Element / Matrix:
Revolt Chat
well, the problem is not that forums are not real time. the problem is that people use real time chats for things that should't be done in real time. like guides, which should stand on their own as an organized post, easily searched and found.
"real time" chats, that is, instant messengers, have their time and place. they have been around for a while, but they never really replaced forums. until discord came, which kind of then did. which i guess also resulted from facebook groups, twitter, instagram, and reddit first kind of partially replacing forums, after which then forums really fell out of favor, and discord really is way easier and better to interact with than any of the others mentioned (aside from maybe reddit). people are also just lazy and jusy use whatever works.
and people then started using discord like a forum since forums are almost dead and discord is just simple and easy. so many guides, info, announcements, etc. are put in discord like it is a forum since the admittedly amazing features for roles and bots make it convenient.
it all gets lost in a sea instant messaging organizing. to find something, one must go to one of a a bunch pinned messages in one of the bajillion channels that links to a post (i say oost, it is actually a message) which in turn links to a series of messages where someone knowledgeable posted something useful intertwined with shitpost messages fromither people. if you are lucky, someone made a google doc for a guide, but those also suck, and they are also not easily found unless you know the guy who knows the guy who knows which pinned message in which channel has the link to it.
You can't change how people want to communicate. So you either open a channel for people that won't sign up to a forum or don't get those users. Is it the best type of medium? Doesn't matter for them. It matters to other types of users.
I prefer Forums, but I'm not the type of user we are talking about.
Edit: I don't get why the downvotes, we are having a respectful conversation, if you downvote because you disagree, you are upvoting an echo chamber.
I think people use discord where it's a bad fit not because it's what most people want, but because it's what's familiar, free, and already in front of them.
If I understand correctly, you are proving my point by saying people chose Discord over others, and then you list their reasons.
No, I am disputing your claim: "forums are not real time, and that’s what most people these days want apparently."
Obviously, a lot of people use Discord, but I think you're mistaken about their motivations. They didn't choose it because they think forums are inferior to real-time chat. We can see that by the massive popularity of Reddit over Discord's lifetime. Rather, they chose Discord because it's what was offered (along with heavy marketing), and because it was convenient (especially for community creators).
Pardon me if I expressed myself incorrectly, what I meant is that they prefer real time chat (for whatever reason) over any alternatives.
Forums are the best? I still can get info from electronics forums from 20y ago and it's well organized.
I don't see any other alternatives, revolt chat is new and just a discord alternative that sucks as well while element is fricking bad at indexing stuff, you can't search anything there not to mention their bad encryption.
What's wrong with their encryption?
See this other reply: https://lemmy.world/comment/9321956
I just use chatgpt, a sufficient surrogate for the rest of humanity. At least as it pertains to knowledge before 2023.