I just wish people would use a system that's integrated into where the code is. I don't want to have to register for a forum when GitHub has a perfectly good ticketing system (and now discussions), and yet I have to register at another place where my details can be leaked from because who knows the technical capability of this one single person who may or may not have done any security.
If it's a company, please have the forum integrated into your software.
I seriously do not want yet another login unless there is a good reason. It's ridiculous. I have nearly 700 logins in my password manager and I'd say probably 500 of those items are websites I've registered once to ask a question (quite often questions that go unanswered). Half of these forums do not even provide the capability to removing my account without contacting the admins, which is just an unnecessary hassle.
> If it's a company, please have the forum integrated into your software.
Counterpoint. Other companies absolutely suck at making forum software. It's because it's not their core business, so why would they put more than token effort into it?
Edit: upon re-read this seems to be exactly what you are suggesting, so please disregard my reply.
The solution here is a forum set up with robust and plentiful SSO solutions, so existing authentication providers can be used.
I’m a believer in just creating a subreddit. It’s free and easy, many people already have Reddit accounts and it’s a much better forum than the ones that would be self-hosted, including moderation tooling and bot ecosystem. The threaded discussions are also better than what Github offers.
I agree that subreddits have a very low barrier to entry, but all that comes at a cost. Among other things, one of those costs is that your content is no longer owned by you.
Should Reddit decide to take itself private, or make ethically questionable decisions, etc., you are locked in due to the networking effect.
There’s risk in everything…self-hosted forum software run by an open source project also has a potential of going offline, either because hosting becomes onerous/expensive or some sort of database issue. Discord and Github have the exact same potential you’ve mentioned for Reddit. There’s no perfect answer.
Right. Good luck having a conversation as the channel grows. There's been several times where I've joined a channel, asked a question, and my question is gone from the screen before anyone is able to answer. Slack/Discord are way better than Telegram for support.
The biggest downside of Reddit is that it's so darn hard to find your own posts. The Reddit search seems completely broken for this, so you rely on DDG/Google etc. but this is far from perfect.
I downloaded all my messages with some script, but that doesn't seem complete either since there are messages missing I'm *sure* I posted on Reddit. It's also not very convenient.
Why do I want to find my own posts? Sometimes I write something at length explaining X, and then a few weeks, months, or even years later someone asks about X again and I want to link my previous detailed post.
IMO if you write "at length" explaining something, copy that to your own blog or at the very least a markdown file on your own computer. Don't rely on a 3rd party site for archival.
I usually save things (not just Reddit comments, also HN etc.), generally speaking the bar of what I publish on my site is higher than what I may write in a comment. Sometimes I get around to polishing stuff, sometimes not. Other times it's just too specific to really publish on my site.
Finding stuff in the chronological list takes forever.
You need a certain amount of reddit karma to make a subreddit IIRC. You can farm it, but it's yet another thing unrelated to working on your project you need to do, plus it takes time (could take days).
The whole process is opaque too, it feels distinctly like "we have arbitrarily bestowed upon you the privilege of operating subreddits... for now".
I like the reddit format so I've tried this option myself.
If it's a company, please have the forum integrated into your software.
I seriously do not want yet another login unless there is a good reason. It's ridiculous. I have nearly 700 logins in my password manager and I'd say probably 500 of those items are websites I've registered once to ask a question (quite often questions that go unanswered). Half of these forums do not even provide the capability to removing my account without contacting the admins, which is just an unnecessary hassle.