[dchuk]

I’ve actually been thinking about this recently, as I was also a heavy forum user back in the day.

Why don’t we just start a forum for the HN crowd? Not a new interpretation of the forum model or anything like that, literally any instance of vbulletin or phpbb or something comparable and “traditional”.

If people are genuinely interested in this, I would be up for spinning something up over the weekend.

[dchuk]

Update: Spent the evening researching software options for the "old school" style forums, and it seems like Xenforo is a solid choice in terms of active development, lots of addons/themes, and not crazy expensive. So I think I'll snag a license and put it on a droplet later this week when my wife is out for the evening :)

Also think I found a good domain for it that I'll snag tonight as well.

[thirdsun]

What's wrong with Discourse? It seems to be a popular choice.

Here are some more ideas: https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted#social-networ...

Flarum looks like a worthwhile option: http://flarum.org/

[KajMagnus]

I like Discourse too. (better than all the others mentioned so far)

There's also Talkyard. It's a bit like Discourse, and has Slack chat features (maybe nice with informal chat channels?) and StackOverflow like Q&A topics. I'm developing it. Open source & beta. https://www.talkyard.io/forum/

[dchuk]

Nothing is wrong with it, it's just a different interpretation of forums that is a departure from the "classic" bulletin boards we are discussing here.

[dx034]

That's one of the main issues with HN. Since there's no notification and/or messaging, few people will look back in this thread once you've actually set it up. A Show HN could at least be seen by some, but I too often miss those as well.

[admg]

Definitely interested if you go ahead!

[taneq]

> Why don’t we just start a forum for the HN crowd?

So HN doesn't count?

[KajMagnus]

To me, HN is rather anti social ( = anti forum), & prevents anything but a bunch of strangers meeting at a cafe, to discuss a piece of news for a brief moment, then leaving, to never see each other again, and being unable to message each other later.

And if you come to the cafe an hour too late, because it was night in your time zone — then it's empty already.

(Explanation: 1) At HN, if you reply to someone a bit later, s/he will never notice, because there are no reply notifications, and in his/her comments & replies list, your comment will get buried far down below other comments s/he has posted, and others' replies. And 2) if you visit a topic that is some days old, and you post a comment — no one will ever see it. Because there's no way for other people, to find the most recent comments (your comment) that have appeared since they were there the last time. Here's a way to fix that?: https://www.talkyard.io/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-improved-... )

[dchuk]

HN is quite different from forums because of the temporal nature of the content, the voting, and the threaded comments. Forums can foster very long running discussions, HN isn't really meant for that.

Also, there are all the components of user profiles/messaging/signatures/etc that HN completely omits (which is totally fine, but something forums are known for that HN probably will never have).

[pbowyer]

> Forums can foster very long running discussions

This. This is the element the 'modern web' has forgotten in its rush to 'new', 'realtime' and 'current' content.

Just because a conversation happened weeks (or months, or years) ago doesn't mean it's not relevant now. Google search results appear to favour 'fresh' over 'stale'; yet it doesn't say the content is any better, or more useful to me.

Hacker news has some awesome threads and knowledgeable people, but the threads and comments are buried in the archive. Add a comment to an old thread and no one reads it or responds. Which is the HN community's loss.

Blog comments were another: I had discussions that spanned multiple years, as people found it of interest and joined in. Because I wrote for engagement, not for pageviews.

Unless people regain a sense of place in time and realise that immediate doesn't trump everything else, I don't see us going back to longer-term discussions.

[dchuk]

Just so you know, I setup a site here for this experiment: https://hackerforums.co

I'll get a Show HN going tomorrow!

[crankylinuxuser]

No. not compared to where we were.

Usenet was like every HN, phpBB, digg, slashdot, and reddit in one. I await those days again.

[dx034]

Nowadays you have a much larger internet community. 20 years ago, the number of people online was maybe a few hundred million (likely lower), now it's several billion. That increases complexity, any forum that's too broad will attract so many people that you only get noise. HN works well because it's relatively unknown (esp outside of tech). Reddit only works because subreddits are individually managed (and it's a company that can dedicate resources to it).

[dchuk]

UPDATE: Got something up and running here: https://hackerforums.co/

I've tweaked it a bunch, but I'm sure there's a lot more to do. Please take a look if you're still following this HN thread...I'll post a Show HN in the morning for this.

I also have a post with my notes from setting this thing up...suffice to say that DigitalOcean's 1 click installer requires a few more clicks...

[handsomechad]

I think it's a really good idea. At least the spirit of it is correct - HN is a unique community which really helps me crowdsource a lot of wisdom and knowledge, and I think the pseudonymity and ephemerality is a feature more than a bug, but, it would be great to have longer running discussions that aren't swiftly superseded by the next days hot posts, and to have the freedom to post things/quesetions without the fear of getting drowned out (because on HN/reddit you have to be conscious of what is likely to get enough upvotes to even be seen)

[dchuk]

Check it out here! https://hackerforums.co/

[dougmwne]

I really wish we could get this set up, maybe even with some official ycombinator promotion. In my mind HN is the last really great group of strangers on the internet. I have learned so much from these comments sections and I've frequently read someone's post and connected with it to the point where I wish I could sit down for a cup of coffee or a beer.

Unfortunately, without community features it feels like slipping notes into a bottle and tossing them into the sea.

HN is the restaurant at the end of the internet.

[dchuk]

I'm going to tackle setting something up tonight and tomorrow night. I don't know anyone at ycomb so can't speak towards making anything official, but at the very least we can give it a shot and see if it can gain some traction/community.

I'll post a Show HN when it's ready.

[dchuk]

Just so you know, I setup a site here for this experiment: https://hackerforums.co

I'll get a Show HN going tomorrow!

[noyesno]

How about creating an Usenet newsgroup for HN?

[zafiro17]

In a way, it exists: visit comp.misc where a small group of devoted usenet fans discuss HN-type things, and where a fair number of HN stories have been linked and discussed. Visit misc.news.internet.discuss for non-computer tech discussion (and some fluff), and visit sci.misc for science articles and discussion. Among those three newsgroups you have the sum total of HN and Slashdot, and a nice crowd of Usenetters.

[CalRobert]

Is there anywhere we can see this progress? I suppose I'll see this comment of mine when I look in HN (I do often) but would love to know when anything is up and running.

BTW, I'd strongly, strongly discourage vBulletin.

[dchuk]

I'll reply to everyone here when it's online, and will post a Show HN. Hopefully it will get some traction.

[dchuk]

Here you go! I'm sure it still needs tweaks, but it's a start: https://hackerforums.co

[bobsoap]

Great idea.

Since we're reminiscing, unless I have you mistaken for someone else, I suspect that we both may have been a part of the same community way back when. Regardless, I look forward this; sounds like it could be fun.

[dchuk]

You're probably suspecting correctly :)

[ryan-allen]

Facebook Groups offer that to a certain degree. I get a lot of value out of small facebook groups I'm a member of, but they are not the same as the old forum-style, and it's on Facebook.

[greggyb]

Feel free to tap me to help mod if you'd like some assistance. I can give a few hours a week.

Ninja edit: wording

[PhasmaFelis]

That could be interesting.

[dchuk]

I’m going to try and fire something up this week. I’ll do some research on software for it, I’m fine spending money on xenforo or vbulletin but it looks like there are quite a few options out there.

I’ll announce it here when it’s ready!

[organsnyder]

Use Discourse. It's not only the most advanced from a tech perspective, but it also aims to promote strong communities.

[eitland]

Am I the only one who is totally confused by discourse?

Maybe it's because rhe demo instance was reset way to often or something but I've never really seen a really working discourse instance. (I think both Mozilla and Canonical (has?) run one but they weren't to active either IIRC.

Anyone has examples of a working discourse community?

[flaviocopes]

- https://discourse.mozilla.org/latest

- https://platform.github.community/latest

- https://forum.golangbridge.org/

[eitland]

Thanks everyone. You've convinced me that discourse can work :-)

[organsnyder]

The subject matter may not appeal to some on HN, but here's an installation I set up at a previous employer over three years ago, that is thriving: https://discourse.biologos.org/

[eitland]

Heh, I've recognized that feeling too but I feel HN is still one of the most reasonable foras I know of.

[ravloony]

I think https://purescript-users.ml is running on Discourse. It's quite young though.

[dchuk]

No doubt that discourse is really nice software, and I will give it a go, but it does lack the “nostalgia” referred to by the original comment I replied to with this idea. All options are valid at this point though!

[varrock]

I am a huge fan of Simple Machine Forums

- https://www.simplemachines.org/

[tluyben2]

I think it is important to curate it, but I applaud the idea. I would say; only allow people with over a certain karma score on HN (>1000)? That way you benefit from the quite strict moderation here.

But indeed I remember the days on vBulletin forums; all my remarks against ‘you cannot make friends over 30’ that I uttered here come from there: most my current friends and one of my best friends I met on forums. It just worked well.

[jgalentine007]

Dude, I've been on reddit since 2006 and I don't even have 1000 karma. Don't exclude the lurkers! (Who are too busy programming to post.)

[tluyben2]

Maybe you are right but how to prevent it from becoming a sales/recruitement/troll/showoff fest again?

[Yptur]

I think that's what mods are for. At least back in the day that's how it worked. Of course some mods will abuse their powers and just do stupid stuff but in the end that's part of what made it so fun. You had to iterate through dozens of forums and hope that yours had a fighting chance because the mods did their job properly.

[AstralStorm]

Normal forums have categories for these things.

Maybe except trolling.

[itchynosedev]

Now it sounds more like an elitist club. Weren’t most of forums free for all?

[tluyben2]

Yes, but there were only a few people around and they were tech savvy and often entrepreneural especially in tech forums... Now when a forum gets any sort of uptake, it is jumped on by marketers and other spammers. So elitist, I guess but it was automatically back then I guess.

[CM30]

Good moderation feels like a better solution than invites or elitism here. Have the forum open to anyone, but be ruthless when it comes to removing low quality content or marketing spam in any form. Maybe even set things like signature links or certain aspects of the post formatting to be only accessible to those with 5 or more posts, and have any first post with a link in sent for moderator approval.

Human moderation always wins out over technical solutions and elitism.

[sincerely]

most, but one of the best ("most influential on internet culture", maybe?) had a 10$ entry fee

[robotresearcher]

Free for a heavily selected group of people with internet access and specialist knowledge of how to find stuff. So: elitist in a sense of resources weighted by interest.

[int0x80]

A good thing of forums is that you get everything as is. As raw as it gets. If you don't like something or someone you just block it.

You can also have privileged threads/subforums that are read only if you don't meet some requierments.

You can even have an option to only show comments/posts for users with karma > N, if thats what you want.

[dchuk]

I think to kick things off it will be best to allow anyone to sign up and potentially lock it down in the future if things get out of hand. Usually forums have features like limiting new thread creation to users with enough karma/comments, so that can help a bit in keeping quality up.

[tluyben2]

Drop me an email if you need help anyway. I tried many existing options and have not found any good so far.

[dchuk]

Here it is! https://hackerforums.co/

[dchuk]

Thanks!

[dx034]

I wouldn't set the karma threshold that high. If you want to avoid spammers, a threshold of 50-100 is likely enough. That excludes any cheap spamming attempts.

[happertiger]

Second vote for discourse!

[dchuk]

Check it out! https://hackerforums.co/