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Discourse, the free forum platform, is now joining the Fediverse. (mastodon.world)

submitted 11 months ago by i_have_no_enemies@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[-] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 79 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Makes sense, it was already open source, just attaching to the activitypub protocol is a straightforward move.

It's everywhere too. Blogs, webcomics, special interest forums, and they will all potentially become new fediverse instances virtually by default. It's pointing to a future where people join the fediverse without knowing what it is or seeking it out. They just want to join a forum to discuss their interests.

[-] LWD@lemm.ee 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

deleted

[-] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 24 points 11 months ago

It could be an issue if the admin isn't prepared for it. One of the good things about it is that the posts get cached wherever they're accessed so it may actually reduce server load for a popular post.

I guess if it is an issue the admins could always disable activitypub.

[-] asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

If they get cached then do edits never propagate to other servers?

[-] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

No, edits propagate, they just get sent as updates, and it happens pretty quick I think.

But posts are about 1/100th of the traffic in forums in general, most people are just lurking. That's the traffic that slows down servers.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 46 points 11 months ago

This is really cool, I wonder if it can have integration with the “threadiverse” such as with lemmy or kbin?

[-] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 17 points 11 months ago

Eventually I imagine there will be adaptors for all the various types of post throughout the fediverse. I wonder if the differences will become largely superficial, with every activitypub system able to read all the others. It's just a matter of maturing the ecosystem.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 11 months ago

Hopefully but that is a tough nut to crack especially if things weren’t designed to be that way originally.

[-] hh93@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago

I wonder how a strictly linear thread structure is possible to transpose into a branching structure like lemmy

[-] uthredii@programming.dev 4 points 11 months ago

We can already view mastodon threads that are linear inside Lemmy.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah that is a good point, at the very least lemmy could display a traditional thread but yeah I have no idea about discourse displaying a lemmy thread.

[-] nix@merv.news 36 points 11 months ago

Anyone have an example of how browsing/commenting works? Can we follow a forum’s section using lemmy or mastodon accounts? How do we comment on a discourse thread with mastodon or lemmy?

BlenderArtists forum uses discourse so that would be cool to browse/use with lemmy

[-] Linkyu@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago

The person who made the actual announcement attached a video of exactly that: https://meta.discourse.org/t/activitypub-plugin/266794/117

[-] ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world 33 points 11 months ago

This could be the new "redditor answers my question" place for me 🤯🎉

[-] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 32 points 11 months ago

What do you get when you take a traditional forum, add vote based sorting so that the best post and comments (in theory) rise to the top to avoiding the issue of thread bumping, use a nested comment structure so that individual conversations in each thread can be easily followed, and allow anyone to make a subforum as they please?

You get reddit. (or now, Lemmy) The only thing missing in Lemmy is topic tags, which I think is a nice to have, but by no means necessary.

There is a reason why very few people uses forums and most of conversation nowadays takes place on social media, while reddit and Discord has but all but replaced them. So, replacing Discourse/Zenforo as the software to use for independent Internet forums should be the aim for Lemmy to significantly grow.

Strangely, Discourse's federation model seemed to be based on Mastodon compatibility instead of Lemmy-like Groups, which I think is a mistake.

[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I think you're missing the point of a forum like discourse, which is most definitely not a classic forum.

In no way is it similar to lemmy or Reddit when it comes to functionality or the problem space that it solves for. It's essentially stackoverflow, for niche communities, do you really think you could replace the utility of stackoverflow with.... Reddit?

It's specifically tailored to q&A, knowledge sharing/archiving, and as a living knowledge base. It does an excellent job of that, with copious features built specifically to enable and support that purpose. Which both lemmy and Reddit lack, they aren't even in the same problem space.

The platforms that actually utilize discourse effectively are some of the best to work on. Similar communities on social media platforms don't have anywhere near the level of quality, engagement, knowledge, or problem solving. Even simple features that encourage engagement in months or years old threads are massive boon.

It really is not much of a step to take your logic and replace lemmy or Reddit with Discord as a Q&A support and knowledge base platform. Which we all know is a terrible idea, and largely leads to a loss of knowledge and destroys discoverability.

Overall I get the feeling that you may not have experienced what makes that platform powerful? Which understandably can lead to thoughts that it's "just another forum", and that it is supplementable with a social media platform (which in the reality of it is laughably bad).

Check out https://forum.babylonjs.com/ for example. The framework is an absolute pain in the ass to onboard too but because their forum is just so damn good, it was a breeze compared to others.

[-] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Let me address some of your points:

a forum like discourse, which is most definitely not a classic forum.

Linear post structure, sorting based on latest response, so it is a traditional in vein of old BBS/phpBB systems.

Do you really think you could replace the utility of stackoverflow with… Reddit?

Upvote based sorting and nested comment structure means StackExchange/Overflow is closer to reddit than it is Discourse.

It really is not much of a step to take your logic and replace lemmy or Reddit with Discord as a Q&A support and knowledge base platform.

Reddit, Lemmy, and Discourse are all public forums, Discord is a chatroom.

Even simple features that encourage engagement in months or years old threads are massive boon.

Thread necromancy for month/year old dead threads has always been considered offenses to almost every single forum, which is why most forums lock posts after a month or so. It's not a feature, it's a fundamental flaw with the sorting.

with copious features built specifically to enable and support that purpose. Which both lemmy and Reddit lack

I'm genuinely curious, what are some of those features? I can't think of any significant one, outside of tags.

Forums are ultimately shaped by people, so I would say these forum succeeded in spite of the software instead of because of the software.

[-] uthredii@programming.dev 18 points 11 months ago

Discourse and Lemmy are both based around topics/communities so hopefully there will be better federation here. E.g. being able to follow a discourse topic from lemmy would be really cool.

Hopefully they have done this in a way where Lemmy can federate with then easily.

[-] stepanzak@iusearchlinux.fyi 15 points 11 months ago

That's great! It's really annoying for me how I have to make an account on every single discourse forum, and every time I get the welcome mail and the first comment badge, and so on. Also, the emails from all of the forums are annoying. This seems to fix all of that.

[-] KDE 10 points 11 months ago

thats cool ngl

this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023

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