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Anyone else feel like we're kind of like a space colony?
Some of the discussions I've seen talking about Reddit sound like Mars colonists talking about Earth. Everyone's trying to make sure we don't make the same mistakes as our Earther ancestors.
Every new online community tries to differentiate itself from those before it, and specifically whatever primary communities people left to join the new one.
Reddit users compared themselves to Digg. MySpace v Friendster. HN v Slashdot. SA vs 4chan. Etc etc.
It's the circle of forum-life.
I'm actually on multiple small (<5k users, most <2k) forums that have closed signups and don't let anyone new in once it hits a "good vibe" type level. They almost always start based around a niche hobby, then realise that they have a good thing going with a solid group of people who get along well, so decide to close signups and make the entire forum viewable to members only.
It works better than you'd expect. 2 of my regular ones I'm on have been going for 10+ years. 1 is so old it's flat text files as a back-end and CGI for the dynamic aspects, and is still going strong with a few hundred posts a day.
I don't think that's the gold of @deimos here though. I think there's proper potential for a pretty big site here, if it's kept in check. HN has managed to stay open, and keep civil discourse going via good but strict moderation and a shared interest by the users to not allow it to devolve into memes and drama.
Absolutely. Most of my absolute closest friends are from small forums. Mostly car orientated, but some around electronics and computers too.
Pretty much all the small forums i'm on let you talk about absolutely anything, and generally end up being pretty heavily "general" chat, but with a shared common interest that permeates most convos.
Moderators are still important, but way less so than open sites. I'd say there'd be 1-2 "main" moderators/admins who have complete admin access, and 1-2 volunteer mods who just help keep people in line if they get heated, or get rid of people who have derailed.
Every single one runs entirely of donations, with some random merch group-buys thrown in. If it's a car forum, it might be a group buy of a rare part being remanufactured with minimum runs, computer/electronics ones might be group buys for components, and all usually do a few t-shirts and stickers. The forum always gets to keep a small profit, generally done very openly with financials shared in a thread and showing what it's being used for, though most people don't care and just trust the admins (I've only seen it go bad once when an admin took the money and abandoned the site, but the users took the site over, rehosted it, and it continued on anyway).
Literally anything/everything. Specific genres of modified vehicles, computer/internet subcultures, electronics/tinkering forums, etc. There's a forum for anything you can think of, from knitting to CNC-machined model rockets to restoring and customising pre-WW1 cars, to home made pizza ovens.
Forum culture is incredible, and while reddit/Facebook-groups did knock them down a few pegs, if you dig deep there's still a thriving forum culture that has been running non stop since the early days of dynamic websites. Lots of people hate the public eye, and contrary to popular belief, plenty of people don't use reddit or FB (except maybe in a small basic way) and still live their lives inside forums. I helped write some of the earlier forums with CGI and flat text files, and have been going ever since.
That's the wonder of the internet. No matter where I go, I find communities in the most unexpected places. I know the web is big, but I always underestimate just how big it is.
What is SA? And 4chan is dead?
I'm not on 4chan, but it seems to be doing fine, is it not?
You're not exactly wrong but that seems like a pretentious way of putting it.
Well NOW I do... I think it's normal to make mistakes.
I don't think we should worry about comparisons to the past.
Just do the best we can and it will be ours.