As someone who does just that… user numbers speak against it. Forums are “dying” everywhere as people just seem to avoid them. I don’t like it either, but I don’t see a way to reverse this trend either.
As a user, you’d dial in, sync your newsreader software, and later whenever you want you can go through all the threads in the groups you’re subscribed to and respond at your leisure. Your posts go out next time you sync up.
As someone who does just that… user numbers speak against it. Forums are “dying” everywhere as people just seem to avoid them. I don’t like it either, but I don’t see a way to reverse this trend either.
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The fediverse has a bit of a discoverability problem though. It could be part of the solution I guess, but right now it isn’t.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet used to be the thing before forums took over. Every decent ISP would host a news server for their users.
As a user, you’d dial in, sync your newsreader software, and later whenever you want you can go through all the threads in the groups you’re subscribed to and respond at your leisure. Your posts go out next time you sync up.
I prefer the forum model to ask questions and drive discussions.
It is fully asynchronous, you don’t need to wait for answers in real time where in a real time chat, all this information is lost in a few moments.
Some chat apps like Element are working on chat with threads so it’s like a forum in a chat. There’s a proof-of-concept on develop.element.io https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/2349
Element doesn’t work in Goanna-based browsers and has not the same speed as a forum.