Comment on How did we move from forums to Reddit, Facebook groups, and Discord?
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks agoOnly 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.
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I can’t disagree enough. There was little knowledge accumulation in oldschool forums either. There were constant arguments about thread necromancy and people not searching before asking. It sounds like you’re describing a parallel idyllic universe.
This kind of knowledge repository is why were have megathreads and/or attached wikis.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Everything you’ll ever want to know about a specific model of motorcycle, all in a single thread:
advrider.com/…/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.
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
You are relying on some random people being around to serve as your search engine. Cmon. You can do the same thing here with megathreads and wikis. Hell you can also ask around on megathreads and people will link you. Nothing you describe here is unique to forums.
The same happened in forums. Even in forums with megathreads like these, people asked the same question again and again. This is a matter of culture, not of software. You just happened to find a forum with a good culture and assumed it’s the result of the software.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
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).