The problem with self-hosted forums is that you have to host them, and that adds Yet Another Thing already overworked developers and maintainers have to worry about.
Self-hosting will not make a comeback until hosting software can be installed and maintained as easily as, say, mobile apps. Install a forum on your server, set an upgrade policy, and mostly forget about it.
So much developer work goes into overwrought boil the ocean attempts at decentralization when solving this boring-but-hard problem well could lead to a renaissance in the simplest and yet most robust and most accessible form of decentralization: people hosting shit themselves. Docker could have done this but really didn't. RedHat or Ubuntu could do it, but they're not. Nobody is really doing this, or if they are they are doing it in an overly complicated way.
Self-hosting will not make a comeback until hosting software can be installed and maintained as easily as, say, mobile apps. Install a forum on your server, set an upgrade policy, and mostly forget about it.
So much developer work goes into overwrought boil the ocean attempts at decentralization when solving this boring-but-hard problem well could lead to a renaissance in the simplest and yet most robust and most accessible form of decentralization: people hosting shit themselves. Docker could have done this but really didn't. RedHat or Ubuntu could do it, but they're not. Nobody is really doing this, or if they are they are doing it in an overly complicated way.