[dunco]

I'm in agreement that facebook is partly what you make it and experiences vary. My own experience has been generally positive; However I was a member of a niche interest group that used to be run on an old-school forum at its own domain. Over the years more and more content moved to the facebook group and there was roughly an even split when an accident by the web host lead to the total loss of the forum which could not be restored which meant all users now moved to the facebook group. The quality of material and the standard of discourse is shockingly worse on facebook than it was on the forums to the point where many interactions degrade into mudslinging. There shouldn't be too much difference between the forum/fb groups, but the only explanation I have come up with is that facebook's algorithm selects and displays content to people who would never have seen it on the forum, and some of them feel compelled to comment with either nasty or unhelpful input. On the forum I think the discovery of this content is self-directed and so only those with a genuine interest come across the post and interact with it, most others will just ignore the post title and scroll on, whereas facebook will show them the whole post with images and this makes them more likely to interact when they shouldn't. The other explanation is just that the mudslinging was always on the forum, but I did not come across it because it was not selected for me, but this goes both ways in that perhaps facebook is selecting "high-engagement" posts (with LOTS of argument) to display to me as well, thinking these will be of more interest. Whatever the cause, the difference is stark for this particular online community.