is nodebb the right choice ? why the community is not vary "active "? installed nodebb and finds it vary enjoyable so far, where is everyone?

[jsmith]

is nodebb the right choice ? why the community is not vary "active "? installed nodebb and finds it vary enjoyable so far, where is everyone?

[crazycells]

Previously I wrote here: https://sudonix.com/post/4578 in @phenomlab 's forum...

I think many people are not building forums anymore, and they directly go with "Discord", "Facebook Groups", and "Sub-reddit" etc. The infrastructure is already there, and you need 0 technical knowledge.

Although NodeBB is an excellent solution for your forum infrastructure, it also requires some level of technical knowledge. I think this is eliminating many people who want to build a community. Because besides content creation and moderation, you also need someone with technical skills.

[phenomlab]

@crazycells you have to be cognisant of the popularity of social media platforms. People tend to stick to what they know, and the core reason (which I highlighted on my own forum in the link you posted) is that social media didn't exist in the 90s so all you had was BBS systems and forums. Fast forward to today, and the plethora of platforms all vying for attention such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok etc means that forums have lost their momentum, but aren't entirely "dead" in the sense that nobody uses them anymore.

In fact, some of the largest community based projects use forums as their only way of communication. One such that springs to mind is https://forums.cacti.net - this has been going strong since the 00's and has thousands of members.

As others have highlighted, content is king - in every aspect. The forum also has to offer something you can't get from social media. Sites that offer technical help (I'm not going to plug my own here of course) fare particularly well, as you won't find content like that on social media - and if you do, it's generalized and not tailored to exactly what the user is looking for.

Social media and Discord tend to fall on their own sword by not having content that can easily be searched (certainly the case for the Discord free plans as the history is limited) making it useless for those looking for historical content because it will cease to exist once the limits have been exceeded, meaning content drops off to never be found again.

Don't get me wrong. Forums are incredibly difficult to start and maintain momentum. Sudonix doesn't advertise at all and it's growth is purely organic via Google searches etc. It takes time, patience, and of course, content you can't get anywhere else.

That's the hardest part.

[jsmith]

Hi @phenomlab are you the owner/dev of sudonix, look clean and more "forum-like" UI to me. Is the theme public available, would like to test it out if so.

[crazycells]

@phenomlab I totally agree on all points. content is king. although we have social media accounts, we use that to our advantage - to increase interaction in the forum.

Building and maintaining a forum is a marathon, not a sprint... It takes many years of effort...

[DownPW]

Make a forum under Discord what a horror

When we also see the moderation policies of its platforms.
As well as being master at home.

Personally, the community has grown in less than a year.

[phenomlab]

@crazycells said in is nodebb the right choice ? why the community is not vary "active "? installed nodebb and finds it vary enjoyable so far, where is everyone?:

Building and maintaining a forum is a marathon, not a sprint... It takes many years of effort...

Couldn't have put that better myself.

[phenomlab]

@jsmith said in is nodebb the right choice ? why the community is not vary "active "? installed nodebb and finds it vary enjoyable so far, where is everyone?:

Hi @phenomlab are you the owner/dev of sudonix, look clean and more "forum-like" UI to me. Is the theme public available, would like to test it out if so.

Yes, I am. The "theme" you are referring to is actually an updated core CSS, with "swatches" applied which allows for a complete colour change across the site. The code referencing this is in fact available at https://sudonix.com

[julian]

@DownPW It didn't stop the Discord team from trying... and the Slack team from trying Square peg, round hole, etc.

But at the end of the day I don't really believe that an app can be both a real-time chat app, with forum-like threading, and do either of them well... add in other features like groups, classifieds, games, etc... and you end up with a product that can do a lot of things, but none of them very well.

[julian]

@phenomlab said:

and the core reason ... is that social media didn't exist in the 90s so all you had was BBS systems and forums

The other thing I want to mention is that not only was social media not in existence back in the 90s, but a large majority of the internet userbase wasn't on the internet either. The "tech savviness" of the average internet consumer has gone down purely due to numbers and the fact that it is much easier to get on the internet at all.

It's a huge boon to humanity overall, but it does mean that from a sociological point of view, we also move from long-form content (news journalism, long forum threads, etc.) to short-form content (e.g. what I had for breakfast, tiktok challenges).

To wit; the latest trend in social media is shorts... quite literally the opposite of long-form content. Instagram Reels, Youtube Shorts, TikTok... Twitter literally started the trend with tweets with a maximum character count. Quantity over quality. The why is straightforward... short content is easier to produce and consume. It is easy to fire off a tweet or share a livestream, it's harder to sit down and elucidate your thoughts on something that is important to you.

However, I am loathe to expand on this point further because that would be the research territory of people much smarter than I

I will say this, however... I refuse to believe that humanity will stoop to the lowest common denominator. Yes, maybe we'll go through phases where we just send memes to one another, but we will always rise above and return to a medium where long-form content is shared and appreciated. We will always need long-form journalism, and yes, even forum software for in-depth discussion.

Perhaps I am still naive and optimistic, but I refuse to believe that this is our future:

[phenomlab]

@julian said in is nodebb the right choice ? why the community is not vary "active "? installed nodebb and finds it vary enjoyable so far, where is everyone?:

I will say this, however... I refuse to believe that humanity will stoop to the lowest common denominator. Yes, maybe we'll go through phases where we just send memes to one another, but we will always rise above and return to a medium where long-form content is shared and appreciated. We will always need long-form journalism, and yes, even forum software for in-depth discussion.

This is a great point. Long-form responses that actually explain something add far more weight and value in my view. I'm no fan of the tldr brigade, and it's just being lazy. Yes, I appreciate that (in the case of my forum which offers solutions) people are keen to get to the bottom line, but if you don't read the thread in it's entirety, what did you learn exactly ?

The answer? Nothing - you just got the answer which you won't remember when the same issue occurs in the future