I would give my left arm to be using internet forums again. Online communities adopting Discord and Slack was such a terrible move in hindsight.
Definitely rooting for this to take off.
Definitely rooting for this to take off.
Was also a terrible move in foresight. :)
Based on the launch feedback so far today, I think I need to build a Slack integration - primarily as a separate channel to deliver the daily newsletter. It seems like lots of people don't even open their work email anymore, so the chat + forum need to work together.
I wrote more about why chat fails for work communication in my launch post here - summarized as "our workplace communication looks like the floor of a 1980s stock exchange, not a place for writing code." https://www.contraption.co/news/launching-booklet/
Think of HN here. How many feature requests have they implemented over the last 10 years?
For instance, a few people have requested "pinned posts." I personally don't want the same post stuck at the top of my screen forever, and upon digging in deeper I find that people really want a "Welcome" post that all new users see and can access. So, I'm exploring some ways of accomplishing that without pinning - such as a dismissible post for new members.
I experience it as very slow and bloated, even though it somewhat improved.
Still, compared to a good email client, it’s not so fast. Which is why I personally read Discourse forums mainly via email, only visiting the actual site for long threads or when I want to reply. It’s not perfect, since Discourse allows editing posts but doesn’t notify email users of edits. But it’s fine. I actually like it better than real mailing lists, because I prefer Discourse’s composing interface.
- not hijack my scroll or do that infinite page thing. Please load the entire thread or at least let me use classical pagination.
- not hijack CTRL-f for its own built-in search. I want my browser's on page search, and I know what I'm doing.
Just in case you(or others) don't know, you can press Ctr-F twice to get the native browser page search.
Discourse is definitely not fast. Whenever Google sends me to a discourse page I just end up giving up on waiting for it after staring for over 8 seconds at a blank page.
Chat works great for a small group of friends, I don't think it is a good fit for a community
"Do people scroll through the threads?"
Most won't, so the same things and questions get discussed again and again. If the mod is engaged he will create sticky notes, but people also often ignore those. So - yeah, I agree. Not a good fit for a community. They sort of upgrade it though regulary, and now you can have subgroups in groups that can work as forum threads, but I experience it not as a good UX and I regulary delete telegram as it is really hard filtering out useful comments from noise.
I think it's actually horrendous for things you want to use forums for. I don't remember using IRC in lieu of forums (did we?), why do we use Discord for the same?
Discord is really good at sucking you into conversation and capturing your attention/time. Its way better than IRC ever was. But that doesn't mean its a good format for information, issue threads, work discussion and such.
1. People are impatient, and chat makes everything urgent
2. Chat make posting easy, so authors post more and with less intentionality
I wrote a long post about this on our blog as I announced Booklet: https://www.contraption.co/news/launching-booklet/
There are thousands of forums that require sign up just to read posts. Always has been.
Something in the middle sounds lovely.
My impression after today's launch is that I need to deliver Booklet's daily summary over Slack, not just email. Would that work better for you?
It’s really a social issue more than a technical one. How to get people to stop playing, “guess which platform I sent you an urgent message on, which nobody else you work with uses to contact you, ever?”
Threading and history I think are necessary for the email thread set.
The irony is not lost on me that Booklet is almost rebuilding email, but for internal-only usage. I think about this a lot.