11mo ago

Instances or networks that focus on forums and conversations instead of link aggregation?

It seems like any platform that features link aggregation is soon overrun by bots and self-promoters trying to drive traffic, and pages and pages of link posts versus pages and pages of people talking.

Are there any lemmy instances or other defederated networks that focus on Q&A, niche communities, and people conversing, instead?

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Mastodon is much more this way than Lemmy, in my experience. I honestly don't know too many Lemmy communities that are that way, but kbin / mbin will let you interact with Mastodon users on a chat basis in addition to Lemmy communities.

I always thought there was no big difference between link aggregators and forums, and that the first is more an extension of the other, at least it felt like it in my experience. What would you say really sets them apart?
- More policy and culture than implementation. Rarely see pages of links to mass media sites on your average phpBB, though.

This thread is a great example of the big downside of being on a smaller instance: OP was seemingly unaware and unable to subscribe to many cool communities and was stuck with the "defaults".
Perhaps admins and mods of smaller instances could be doing more to educate their users about how to find stuff in the wider Threadiverse?
When we had the big migration last year everyone quickly learned how to search for a community, how you had to do it twice for it to show up etc. But now it's no longer a common topic of conversation so newer users don't realise, and to make matters worse every single mobile app seems to handle search differently.
Is there some kind of "so, you're on a small instance, here's what that means" type of resource already hanging around somewhere?
(OP, get yourself on lemmyverse.net/communities)
- Is there some kind of “so, you’re on a small instance,
  Captain America advisors on the subject of the Fediverse? Now that would be on-point.

Many instances have a chat community. Some examples: !chat@beehaw.org !chat@lemmy.one !chat@iusearchlinux.fyi !chat@midwest.social !general@lemmy.today !chat@lemmy.world
- I dont mean a chat/conversation-specific community, I mean a collection of communities that are more people interacting than links being posted.
  Especially for hobby, parenting, philosophy, politics, technical discussions, etc.
  
  Why does it have to all be on a single instance? Can you not just subscribe to a number of communities that have interests the same as yours?
  
  I noticed that beehaw.org on average has more "normal posts" (not links) than other instances. I found communities there for the topics you are interested in like technology, politics and parenting. It's not completely link-free, but I'd say there are fewer links than elsewhere. That's the best I could find on the Fediverse. Maybe someone else has better suggestions.
  
  For hobbies, depends, but there is the general pinned post in !knitting@lemmy.world which list a lot of crafting communities: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/842186
  For parenting: !parenting@lemmy.world
  Politics, you should be able to find a lot by searching that word into https://lemmyverse.net/
  Finance? !finance@lemmy.ml
  The thing is that people tend to post links as you can't really force people to post if they don't want to (or if they critical mass isn't there). I'm guilty of that in the !parenting@lemmy.world for instance, as I don't have kids yet, I can only but post articles.

Usenet still exists, and there are tons of old fashioned forums online, some of them good. Lemmy has its attractions but it is trying to be Reddit and maybe succeeding a little too well.
- I have thought for a while that the next “reddit” should be usenet with a client having advanced filtering, local scoring, etc. Maybe where the client reports to/reads from a shared spam database.
  
  I use gnus.el for usenet, which already has those filtering and scoring features. And Usenet has had spam filtering since the 1990s. So I think you are saying the next reddit would just be usenet.
- Any forums you recommend?
  
  Depends what topics you are looking for. They tend to focus on particular niches. Example: home-barista.com, for coffee nerds. I'm not a regular but have posted there a few times.

nodebb and discourse are working on activitypub support. See https://crag.social/@devnull/111732273308478221

tildes.net might be what you are looking for.
- but right now it's invitation only
  
  It’s been invite-only for all five and a half years I’ve been there so I wouldn’t expect that to ever change. Fortunately it’s really easy to get an invite code. Just post in the official subreddit and the mods or another user will give you a code. It’s just enough of a minor roadblock that it helps filter out bad actors.
  Personally I prefer Lemmy. But if you’re like OP and looking for conversation focused alternatives tildes is worth joining.

Tildes.net
It's pretty heavily curated, but it's where I go for non-bot discussion on any variety of topics. Sorted hierarchically, and they keep out the riff raff pretty actively.
- I originally wanted to join tildes, but I never could get an invite. so I just kinda abandoned it and moved to lemmy instead.
  they seem to go more with a walled garden approach and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that kind of environment. but I'm sure it works well for those who participate.

Honestly do you have any examples of this happening here on Lemmy? Lemmy is not Reddit.

!casualconversation@lemmy.world

Some forums are still reasonably active. I use Whirlpool fairly regularly. Mostly tech related, but has lots of other sections too.
https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/
If you search around you can find others.
- The GameFAQs boards are still quite active as well, as long as you're willing to put up with neckbeards and bronies.

I guess this feature request would help you?
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3809
So communities could disallow link posts
- The opposite of that request, yes.
  
  sorry what do you mean?
  the feature request is suggesting the ability to disallow link posts, as well as the ability to disallow text posts
  Ability to disallow certain kinds of posts (text posts/link posts) in specific communities
  Currently it is not possible to disallow using the text field or URL field in specific communities.
  Similarly one could imagine a setting to disallow using the URL field, for example in a conversation-only community.
  which did you want?

You can try us if you are interested hilariouschaos.com
- I heard that this is the new project from exploding-heads, is it correct?
  
  No.
  HC is its own thing, and its purpose is for fun. Whatever fun means to you as long as it's not illegal.
  The primary reason HC was created is for the purpose of having fun.
  For some, posting political shit is 'fun', so you will see some political posts.
  We are pretty strongly adamant about not having a political bias in our instances.
  So we don't care if you post left or right shit. Upvotes and down votes are there for a reason and our community can decide what they like and don't like with those functions.
  We do not take posts down or ban users based on our own personal ideologies.
  There will be no favoring of either political side. Right and left are allowed.
  I think this is why people have that assumption.
  
  It is. It has the same people on it from exploding-heads and is currently linked to nostr.

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