I’ve tried to use forums so many times but I just can’t use them effectively. I don’t want to create accounts and get the notification settings correct so I don’t have to log in to see replies to my messages without getting spammed.
The only forum I’ve had success with as a user is Reddit. It isn’t the best forum software in the world but it is miles better than the usual php bulletin boards.
Having run a forum before, it’s so much work to keep anything secure and spam-free. I had to geo-ip block all of France and Russia just to stay above water. I gave up.
I don't know if it exists yet, but I can see ActivityPub (or even Matrix?) be used as a federated method for content sharing by combining the base protocol with some basic grouping and threading.
I'm not well-versed in ActivityPub and the systems interacting with it, but I believe Mastodon can do threading at least. I don't think it can do the categories to build a full forum system out of it, though.
Matrix is currently optimized for chat applications, but its "rooms" architecture could prove to be very powerful for building forums. You use rooms within rooms for categories and subcategories, and then either use threads (feature in beta) or more subrooms for the topics themselves.
You could make an overlay that renders the entire system as a forum, and people using Matrix chat clients could use it as an instantaneous chat system. Signing up for a forum could be done through a regular Matrix account, without forum accounts for all their users, or it could host its own Matrix account for new subscribers if they choose to partake in chats. The annoying chat popups you get in "modern" forums from direct messages would just be bog-standard Matrix chatrooms.
You know what, I'm kind of intrigued. I'm adding this to the pile of projects interesting projects that I'll probably forget about or never finish.
Cactus Comments [1] is a comment section replacement, but the comments are just posts in a Matrix room - effectively a public Matrix room viewer!
I've thought it'd be cool to expand on this to build a strictly chronological social network - that just interleaves messages from your group chats (or a group chat that only you can post to, which becomes your "feed").
I however am not a fan of relying on JavaScript to use comments. Although I guess there are third party Matrix clients, it seems like they are second-class citizens. If Element and Matrix devs focused on a native client like Telegram, I'd have been recommending Matrix long ago. However, for now IRC, XMPP, Usenet, and mailing lists all seem like better options due to the number of clients and lightweight options.
I too like mailing list, but most of the mailing list software I have seen isn't that great. Essentially, it would be like a glorified Google Groups which I am not a fan of. They are prone to spam and often leak your email address. I could see a modern system working with remailer support built in, but at that point it isn't much different than a forum. It is essentially Usenet, and at this point I'd rather see Usenet make a comeback.
Reddit can absorb off-topic digressions better than traditional linear forums at the expense of conversations becoming repetitious because five separate conversations each say approximately the same thing. However, the "one login to rule them all" trumps that UI hurdle.
The only forum I’ve had success with as a user is Reddit. It isn’t the best forum software in the world but it is miles better than the usual php bulletin boards.
Having run a forum before, it’s so much work to keep anything secure and spam-free. I had to geo-ip block all of France and Russia just to stay above water. I gave up.