# The Discourse Hobbyist Bar Club **URL:** \ **Category:** Site Feedback\ **Created:** [May 17, 2021, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298 "2021-05-17T18:03:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/1 "2021-05-17T18:03:12Z")
Continuing the discussion from [Cannot distinguish reply to previous post vs reply to original post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannot-distinguish-reply-to-previous-post-vs-reply-to-original-post/941439/76): Welcome to the Discourse Hobbyist Bar Club! This is a thread for people to discuss what they hate about Discourse or what they love about Discourse on a more philosophical basis. . The title of the club is based on **Joey\_P** ’s description of some people in multiple site feedback threads who just want to talk about Discourse, like they’re in a bar talking about their first gen Mustangs, which is their hobby. > [@Cannot distinguish reply to previous post vs reply to original post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannot-distinguish-reply-to-previous-post-vs-reply-to-original-post/941439/76): > > Think about it like this. If you and your buddies all bought first gen Mustangs and liked to hang out a the local bar and talk about them, specifically the problems you had with them and how to fix them. It would just be a bunch of guys talking about their cars. I think it would be helpful to separate out the “chewing the fat” discussions from the discussions in site feedback where people are trying to find solutions to the issues or finding alternative ways to deal with the issue that are available now, not solutions that could be available. . . if only. . . . Hopefully, that might help the people who feel like they’re talking at cross purposes in the same threads. This is my reply to **Joey\_P** ’s post that gave me the idea for this thread. > **Summary** > > > [@Cannot distinguish reply to previous post vs reply to original post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannot-distinguish-reply-to-previous-post-vs-reply-to-original-post/941439/76): > > > > Think about it like this. If you and your buddies all bought first gen Mustangs and liked to hang out a the local bar and talk about them, specifically the problems you had with them and how to fix them. It would just be a bunch of guys talking about their cars. However, if one of those guys was Lee Iacocca, talking about the problems might seem more like requests to fix the problems. Granted, those guys are aware they have an audience with someone in a position to actually make the changes, but that doesn’t mean they’re demanding anything. > > As you note, it’s becoming clearer that there are several posters who have made discussing the issues they’re having with Discourse into a hobby or a sport and consider doing it in a thread like this one as a sort of club as you suggest. > > The issue is that it’s not clear to everyone reading that some people are just discussing their Discourse issues for fun. To some people, it might look like that people really are trying to solve the issue when that’s not their goal. > > Keep in mind that the posters here didn’t “buy” a Mustang. They don’t have access or permission to touch the engine. They’re riding in someone else’s Mustang and getting together on a frequent basis to discuss how the owner of the Mustang should get a mechanic or upgrade the engine because they don’t like the ride. And the owner of the Mustang is not in attendance and not interested in their discussion. The only person who can fix most of the issues with the SDMB Discourse is the SDMB admin. > > Fair enough. My suggestion is that those threads should be labeled clearly to note that the participants are taking part in a club discussion about Discourse. Maybe an ongoing thread called the Discourse Hobbyists Club or something like that. It would be less confusing to people who might be reading and wondering why the club members are being so counterproductive to trying to fix the issues. > > I also don’t think that people would talk to Lee Iacocca like this if they wanted him to continue attending their club meetings of the riders of the Mustangs club. > > > [@Cannot distinguish reply to previous post vs reply to original post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannot-distinguish-reply-to-previous-post-vs-reply-to-original-post/941439/24): > > > > @codinghorror many of the issues we’ve brought up are met with some resistance from you, which is understandable and not a problem. But telling us that we’re in the wrong and that somehow learning how to do things your way will serve us both on and off line comes off as a bit condescending. ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/2 "2021-05-17T18:22:43Z")
> [@Cannot distinguish reply to previous post vs reply to original post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannot-distinguish-reply-to-previous-post-vs-reply-to-original-post/941439/78): > > > [@Cannot distinguish reply to previous post vs reply to original post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannot-distinguish-reply-to-previous-post-vs-reply-to-original-post/941439/77): > > > > The issue with Discourse deleting the entire previous post if it’s quoted in its entirety can be fixed in the admin control panel. See [here](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bug-when-making-a-quote/150755/3) on Discourse Meta. One admin who turned off the feature soon realized how repetitive the site became. > > Nothing in the linked thread says anything about an admin changing that feature and soon realizing how repetitive the site became. > OP asked why it was happening. Someone else told them how to fix it. OP thanked them, thinking it was a bug. Codinghorror said it’s bad form to quote an entire thread and added “why add that duplication to the stream… it’s noise for all future readers”. It’s in the next thread I linked in that post [here](https://meta.discourse.org/t/question-suggestion-about-arrow-icon-referencing-replied-to-post/117516). > [@](#): > > In that original topic, I was told about a site-wide setting where those reply icons are displayed even when the reply is to the post immediately above. We enabled that on our install and personally I’ve had a mixed experience with it. While it did “fix” my original problem, I now find myself clicking the reply icon to see the previous post, just to see that it was actually the post right above. In short, I understand why the Discourse defaults are the defaults, as they do seem better than the current alternative. > [@Cannot distinguish reply to previous post vs reply to original post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannot-distinguish-reply-to-previous-post-vs-reply-to-original-post/941439/78): > > > [@Cannot distinguish reply to previous post vs reply to original post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannot-distinguish-reply-to-previous-post-vs-reply-to-original-post/941439/77): > > > > Discourse team since there are so many easy ways to make the communication clearer by quoting and context. > > But Discourse will happily remove both the arrow AND the quote, leaving you with only context, which doesn’t always make it clear. As long as people know that, there are multiple ways to make the communication clearer, many of which are discussed the thread where this discussion originated [here](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannot-distinguish-reply-to-previous-post-vs-reply-to-original-post/941439) ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/3 "2021-05-17T18:26:41Z")
> [@Cannot distinguish reply to previous post vs reply to original post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannot-distinguish-reply-to-previous-post-vs-reply-to-original-post/941439/79): > > > [@Cannot distinguish reply to previous post vs reply to original post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannot-distinguish-reply-to-previous-post-vs-reply-to-original-post/941439/77): > > > > It’s pretty clear from that thread and this one that changing that feature is not a priority for the Discourse team since there are so many easy ways to make the communication clearer by quoting and context. > > But if someone _really_ wanted this feature, the code is open source and the Discourse team is apparently willing to add the feature if someone puts in the work. > > ~Max Yes. And if someone is so inclined, they might even be able to piggyback off the OP in that thread I linked where someone was looking for a plug-in. I put the odds of the admin of the SDMB agreeing to implement that plug-in to be upwards (downwards) of negative 95% since it could affect the stability of the entire SDMB database for one indicator that doesn’t affect that many people. But yes, it could be done. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/4 "2021-05-17T18:35:24Z")
Walks into bar… sees the Mustang guys are there… sees look of despair on bartender’s face… walks out. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/5 "2021-05-17T19:21:27Z")
> [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#): > > As long as people know that, there are multiple ways to make the communication clearer, many of which are discussed the thread where this discussion originated [here](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannot-distinguish-reply-to-previous-post-vs-reply-to-original-post/941439) And that’s the underlying problem. Most posters are not going to know that. Most posters are going to assume that their post will still contain the quote. Most posters aren’t going to read these threads and know anything about this situation. And, even if you tell everyone, our goal is to get new users, and they won’t know. Plus all of us have an inherent bias towards assuming the things we say are clear, not realizing how other people might interpret them. It’s easy to not realize that it’s not clear who you are talking to–especially if you quoted the person and forget that the quote will disappear. There’s also the exploit issue. A crafty poster can be deliberately misleading by clicking thread reply button rather than the post reply button. It will appear to everyone that the poster has been notified and told of their post, but they weren’t. And since we all get notified of replies now, we are unlikely to go back and check the thread to see if anyone replied to us. What’s I find frustrating is that this exception had to have been intentionally added. All posts that reply to the post above them will never indicate who they are replying to. That’s why I said that the fix probably isn’t too complicated. Just find where that exception gets made and remove it. Sure, maybe it means that even posts with quotes in them will have an indicator, but that wouldn’t be a big deal. It’s generally easier to remove an exception than to make something new. But that’s only true if you know the codebase, like the current developers do. For someone like me, having to learn the code well enough to find where to even start it is a daunting task, especially since I’m just a hobbyist who messes around with code, not a full on programmer. The code I’ve written or fixed before is all much less complicated than this. It really would be good if someone who knew the codebase and knew where to look would consider it. As for the claim that it would put the database at risk: I don’t think that would be the case. This isn’t something that touches the database. ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/6 "2021-05-17T20:32:02Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > And, even if you tell everyone, our goal is to get new users, and they won’t know. New users go to Discourse forums all the time. As long as there’s a way to read and reply, the rest is pretty small potatoes. New people wouldn’t likely be as affected because they’re learning a new place. It’s mostly the users from the old platform who are expecting things to go one way that they’re used to that are not getting what they expected. Even they will figure it out over time. > [@BigT](#): > > Plus all of us have an inherent bias towards assuming the things we say are clear, not realizing how other people might interpret them That’s true of all communication, regardless of the platform. > [@BigT](#): > > There’s also the exploit issue. A crafty poster can be deliberately misleading Discourse has made it much easier to know when people are trying to talk to you or about you because they notify you when you’re linked, when you’re quoted, when you’re mentioned. It’s a huge improvement over systems that don’t do that. In this one small instance where someone might, just might be replying to you without you getting notified isn’t such a huge issue to me. If it is to you, that’s what this thread is for. Welcome to the Discourse Hobbyist Bar Club! > [@BigT](#): > > What’s I find frustrating is that this exception had to have been intentionally added. All posts that reply to the post above them will never indicate who they are replying to. Yes, taking out the quote of the person directly above them was intentionally added. It was seen as a feature. > **[Removal of full quotes from direct replies](https://meta.discourse.org/t/removal-of-full-quotes-from-direct-replies/106857)** > > Discourse 2.2.0.beta6 added a new feature to Discourse: Remove full quotes of direct replies. We’ve received quite a few questions about how it works, so I wanted to provide all the details here. How does this feature work? The new feature is... And yes, that feature is easily removed with a toggle in the SDMB admin panel. > [@BigT](#): > > As for the claim that it would put the database at risk: I don’t think that would be the case. This isn’t something that touches the database. I just meant that the SDMB is not likely to add any plug-ins to the SDMB Discourse. They have never added any plug-ins to the SDMB vBulletin. There’s no reason to think they would more amenable to do so now. ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2021, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/7 "2021-05-24T06:46:02Z")
Sitting at the bar, staring into my glass. I’ve been noticing some people who are unhappy with Discourse’s features that take some of the discretion away from the mods. I’m probably a minority in the club, but I like those features. Every feature that makes a message board more uniform and less subject to people’s judgment is good with me. I’ve participated on dozens of forums and lurked on many dozens more. Pretty much every message board I’ve ever seen has declined or died out when one or more mods or owners got a god-complex. I’ve seen bully mods, rogue mods, absentee mods that IMO all make a message board toxic for others who ultimately stop showing up. Almost everyone I’ve talked with who has been on a message board knows how it goes. Reddit knows this. When they built their platform, they created it so that when the mods go bad, any of the posters in the subreddit can just start another subreddit and take the other unhappy people with them. That way, the platform grows instead of shrinks when people go elsewhere. So I was thinking that if all Discourse forums could aggregate like that, they could all communicate, and people could move easily from one to another when they fit better with one group or another. Of course, as I found out while writing this, there are other people talking about the same thing on meta-discourse. > **[Federation support for Discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/t/federation-support-for-discourse/90921/39)** > > You can use feed2toot. It supports multiple RSS feeds and can filter what it re-posts. I really like the idea of all Discourse instances tied together like all the instances of Mastodon. I liked Mastodon but the general demographic was mostly programmers. I was looking for a more general interest instance. I’m sure there’s one out there, but I haven’t found it yet. The programmers are pretty nice though. There’s lots more to discover on how it’s going, but I’m encouraged that this vision has been in place for a really long time. > **[Revitalizing the Discourse Hub](https://meta.discourse.org/t/revitalizing-the-discourse-hub/15029)** > > The original basic idea of the Discourse Hub have a reserved @username across all Discourse instances, so when someone sees @username on any Discourse forum, they’ll know it is (probably) you! … seems like kind of a bad idea in retrospect.... I found this link in one of the threads. If it’s accurate, I’m glad the SDMB didn’t choose any other platform. If this report is up to date, Discourse has more forums in the top 1M sites than any other platform except vBulletin, and it’s pretty close. | vBulletin | 3,590 | 0.36 | | --- | --- | --- | | Discourse | 3,024 | 0.3 | | XenForo | 2,365 | 0.24 | | phpBB | 1,875 | 0.19 | | SMF | 1,485 | 0.15 | > **[Forum Software Usage Distribution in the Top 1 Million Sites](https://trends.builtwith.com/cms/forum-software)** > > Usage Statistics for Forum Software technologies in the Top 1 Million Sites As Discourse grows, it would be great if there was a way to connect all the forums so that people could move freely between them. I’m way over my head in understanding how that would work, but it’s interesting to read about how it’s progressing. I hope to read more about it. ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2021, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/8 "2021-05-26T19:53:24Z")
> [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#): > > it would be great if there was a way to connect all the forums so that people could move freely between them It’s a _very_ difficult proposition, you can look at [Mastodon](https://joinmastodon.org/) for an example of how hard it is to pull this off in practice – and you can look at Facebook for an example of the incredible supermassive black hole gravitational pull of “oh, just use one site for everything”… 😱 Centralizing everything is seductively easy, but comes at tremendous cost to society: > Anything that makes decentralization harder and more complex is very dangerous. **We want decentralization to be as simple as centralization** , and that’s an awfully big ask… ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2021, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/9 "2021-05-27T20:18:28Z")
> [@](#): > > **We want decentralization to be as simple as centralization** , and that’s an awfully big ask… It’s a big ask to create a successful platform. You’ve already done that. I’ve read your post where you say that your model is based on WordPress. I can clearly see the [WordPress.org](http://WordPress.org) model where the platform is open source and they sell server space. But I don’t see the [WordPress.com](http://WordPress.com) model where they showcase other blogs (forums) and help people connect with others. ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2021, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/10 "2021-05-29T04:43:31Z")
Has that part of WordPress been particularly… successful? I mean we think of Medium as “a platform”, but… WordPress? ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2021, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/11 "2021-05-29T06:00:27Z")
> [@codinghorror](#): > > Has that part of WordPress been particularly… successful? Not sure what you mean by successful. Monetarily successful? I don’t know the answer to your question, so I looked it up. When I looked it up, it looks like Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) thinks they’re a good case study for free speech, so that’s a plus. > [@](#): > > One of the largest hosts of third-party speech is the site [WordPress.com](https://wordpress.com/). With over [38 million sites](https://en.wordpress.com/stats/) all over the world, the site has empowered users to speak their minds and comment on each other’s creative content. > > We spoke with Paul Sieminski, General Counsel of [Automattic](http://automattic.com/), the owner of [WordPress.com](http://WordPress.com), about the importance of CDA 230 on free speech online. Interesting interview on free speech in this article. According to [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automattic), Automattic, the owner of [Wordpress.com](http://Wordpress.com), is worth $3B. > [@](#): > > **Automattic Inc.** is an American global [distributed company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_company) which was founded in August 2005 and is most notable for [WordPress.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress.com) (a freemium blogging service), as well as its contributions to [WordPress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress) (an open source blogging software). The company’s name is a play on founder [Matt Mullenweg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Mullenweg)’s first name. > > Automattic raised US$617.3 million in six funding rounds. In the last round, in September 2019, the company was valued at US$3 billion.[[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automattic#cite_note-funding-1) > > The company had 1,273 employees as of September 2020.[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automattic#cite_note-2) Its [remote working](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommuting) culture was the topic of a participative journalism project by [Scott Berkun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Berkun), resulting in the 2013 book _The Year Without Pants: [WordPress.com](http://WordPress.com) and the Future of Work_ .[[3]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automattic#cite_note-Berkun2013-3) If I’m reading this right, Automattic projects include tumblr, Gravatar, bbPress, Simplenote, Woo Commerce and lots of other cool stuff. Medium, on the other hand, is a mess. This was from March 2019. At that time, Medium was not profitable. Their business model is all over the place. I’d be dubious if it has exploded in the last two years, but maybe you’d know more about it than I do. [wiki on Medium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_(website)) > **[The long, complicated, and extremely frustrating history of Medium, 2012–present](https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/03/the-long-complicated-and-extremely-frustrating-history-of-medium-2012-present/)** > > "A beautiful space for reading and writing" and pivoting. > [@](#): > > Less than a year after Medium [abruptly canceled the membership programs](http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/05/medium-abruptly-cancels-the-membership-programs-of-its-21-remaining-publisher-partners/) of its remaining publishing partners, the company is coming back around like an ex promising you they’ve changed. “We are seeking partners to create new publications on Medium, which we will help fund and distribute,” it said [in a blog post Tuesday](https://blog.medium.com/medium-seeks-partners-to-launch-new-publications-6d7df0b05159). > > It’s not the first time, of course. Medium is nearly seven years old. It’s raised $132 million in venture funding, and it is not profitable. It has undergone countless pivots. > [@codinghorror](#): > > I mean we think of Medium as “a platform”, but… WordPress? I’m not sure what this means. [Wordpress.com](http://Wordpress.com) has a Reader that highlights some of the best blogs, allows people to connect to those blogs and gives free tutorials for people who are starting out. They sell hosting services. ads on free blogs and additional services to people using the Wordpress software. The part I was comparing to Discourse was this Reader feature where site owners can get started at a centralized place, connect with other site owners and maybe get some tutorials on how to get started. It wouldn’t have to be Discourse staff doing this. Wordpress points to freelancers who can help others get started. > **[Reader](https://wordpress.com/support/reader/)** > > Visit the WordPress.com Reader to discover new blogs and keep up with the latest posts from sites you follow. This guide will show you how to use Reader. About the Reader The WordPress.com Rea… ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2021, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/12 "2021-05-30T00:30:50Z")
WordPress has mega-morphed into a generic CMS aka Content Management System. The original use case was blogging, but I don’t know anyone that really starts a blog these days, do you? I believe most of WordPress really competes with SquareSpace these days – hence the purchase of WooCommerce. It’s a storefront, a platform for selling stuff, more than anything else. > [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#): > > I’ve participated on dozens of forums and lurked on many dozens more. Pretty much every message board I’ve ever seen has declined or died out when one or more mods or owners got a god-complex. I’ve seen bully mods, rogue mods, absentee mods that IMO all make a message board toxic for others who ultimately stop showing up. Almost everyone I’ve talked with who has been on a message board knows how it goes. This is probably the most accurate observation – we want communities to be healthy and self-sustaining, and not absorbed into “free” closed source collectives. That doesn’t really require any interaction with the other communities, in fact, as you noted, _not_ being a part of those communities is a feature, the splintering off into your own space, with _different_ tools and _different_ feature sets, not more of the same: > [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#): > > the mods go bad, any of the posters in the subreddit can just start another subreddit and take the other unhappy people with them. That way, the platform grows instead of shrinks when people go elsewhere But you’re still on Reddit – you’re still in a closed source space where you don’t own or control the content being generated, with the same tooling that led to the same problems that got you into that mess in the first place. Reddit is the finest system in the world for producing the funniest meme response to a given subject … and it’s pretty good at breaking news. But it’s _awful_ for everything else. It’s unclear what problem centralization would solve. We already have centralization in the form of Facebook. We need the opposite of that! ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2021, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/13 "2021-05-30T13:06:46Z")
> [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#): > > Yes, taking out the quote of the person directly above them was intentionally added. It was seen as a feature. My biggest issue with the software deleting something the user thought they quoted is that it makes it harder for new users to learn how to quote at all. Because likely, the very first time they try it, it doesn’t work. And it doesn’t work for confusing reasons. I’ve explained how to quote, and why it didn’t work when you tried it, to at least half a dozen people, personally. That’s a big hurdle to ask newbies to jump. I think it would be a huge improvement if the software told you it would do that. Maybe a note saying something like “complete quote of prior post not allowed, edit?” When you clicked “post”? Maybe the choices could be “edit” and “post without quote”? It wouldn’t make much difference for experienced users, but it would make the software much more transparent to new users. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2021, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/14 "2021-05-30T13:15:14Z")
Oh, and because I complain a lot, can i say that i freaking love the member moderation. We don’t really use it on the straight dope. And it might be problematic here, because it would be such a huge culture change. But I’m posting on a new board that picked up a lot of the users of a recently killed board. And it’s been great. We have a poster who’s a member of a vulnerable minority. And when she sees something that feels to her like hate speech, she can make it go away, right away. Yes, sometimes the mods decide to unhide something she reported. Then she has to make a case. But it really nips nasty conversations in the bud to have that immediate action she can’t take. We have another member who likes to pick fights. And other users have found they can just hide her aggressive posts. And the result is that she’s been fine. It does cause problems. I’ve been DMing a poster who is really upset at being censored. But no system is perfect. Message boards are hard to moderate. Someone is always upset. And i think the net impact of this feature is that it’s going to lead to a much more welcoming and gentler message board. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2021, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/15 "2021-06-01T02:02:35Z")
@codinghorror , this is a more generic thread for stuff like user moderation than the one about “nannying”. ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2021, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/16 "2021-06-01T17:21:04Z")
> [@codinghorror](#): > > we want communities to be healthy and self-sustaining, and not absorbed into “free” closed source collectives. > > That doesn’t really require any interaction with the other communities, in fact, as you noted, _not_ being a part of those communities is a feature, the splintering off into your own space, with _different_ tools and _different_ feature sets, not more of the same: Exactly this. But communities are not fun or interesting without critical mass. Finding people to join your new community is difficult if there’s no way for people to stumble on it. If it’s a business, the community is the customers, so that’s a different story. For a social community, there’s no marketing budget to reach out to other people. Unlike with other products, many people don’t share the places where they hang out online, even when you ask them. They don’t want to be “outed” or have their identities shared across platforms. Lots of good reasons for that. I’ve been followed by several unpleasant people across multiple platforms. For instance, I’d love to see a forum or forums with more member moderation settings turned on. But until **puzzlegal** shared her experience with another forum, I wouldn’t even know that existed. It would be great to have a centralized location where people can share their forums or have features highlighted by others. I realize that the Discourse forum does this to some extent, but having gone there, it was still very difficult to find other forums, even for people who were asking about them in several topics. I agree with you (you’ve convinced me) that centralizing operations and the user base is a bad idea for so many reasons. One is monopoly. Two is that the user base demographic becomes homogeneous. Reddit has a predominance of young males. Three is forced conformity even without thinking it. And the list goes on. But a centralized place to communicate with other places and talk or review about other forums, without a centralized operation, could still work, I think. ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2021, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/17 "2021-06-01T19:20:48Z")
As often happens when I’ve been discussing this topic, right after I hit submit, I found more information by people on the Discourse forum who are explaining the issue more eloquently and are taking action on this. Here’s one. > [@](#): > > We all share one planet 😉 intermingling in complex social structures. Why is a Discourse community restricted to a single forum? > **[Community has no boundary: Discourse-as-a-Fabric - ideation & brainstorm](https://meta.discourse.org/t/community-has-no-boundary-discourse-as-a-fabric-ideation-brainstorm/174578)** > > In ActivityPub Support: Phase 1 RFC I outlined an ideation exercise to evaluate the business case for having ActivityPub support in Discourse, and think beyond a MVP as-if Discourse was built from the ground up with federation in mind: So hereby... This leads me to going down a rabbit hole of linked forums and different groups with different ideas. The technical stuff is over my head, but I think I’m getting the gist of it. This discussion seems more current than the discussion I linked in post #7. Much reading to do. ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2021, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-discourse-hobbyist-bar-club/942298/18 "2021-06-18T21:44:08Z")
> [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#): > > It would be great to have a centralized location where people can share their forums or have features highlighted by others. I realize that the Discourse forum does this to some extent, but having gone there, it was still very difficult to find other forums, even for people who were asking about them in several topics. Sure. Reddit is a good model of this, but the quality and tenor of those communities is all over the map. There’s a lot of _convenience_ in centralizing everything into one giant bucket, but a lot of danger as well. I do hear you on advertising other interesting places to discuss stuff, but that tends to be more about the topic than the delivery mechanism. It’s like shopping for ice cream based on the specific type of machine that was used to make the ice cream, rather than the flavor 😉