[the_af]

> and are probably a good thing once the community gets big enough

Splits are happening in small-ish communities too. People don't know why, but they have to have Discord, facebook, reddit, etc. And if you join all of them -- which you often do in case they are similar but not exactly the same ("Why are you asking this? The answer was posted to the facebook group! Oh, but we are in Reddit, never mind, here's a link to fb") -- you'll see some of the same people in all of them. The one caveat is that the "owner" of the community (say, the game devs if this is about a game) are likely to be more active in only one of the platforms; Murphy's Law dictates it likely won't be in the one you prefer.

Which really raises the question, if (almost) the same bunch of people is posting in Discord/fb/reddit/whatever, do we really need all those platforms? What purpose do they serve?

But indeed it's doomed if you do and doomed if you don't. You have no control. You can be sure someone will create that goddamn Discord.

[bombcar]

Yeah, the best you can do (as the "leader" or dev or whatever) is pick ONE and stick with it religiously. And "reddit" is probably the best of the worst available, at least it can be linked from elsewhere.

But for large groups of the world (who are not 'gamers' or 'computer literate' or whatever) Facebook wins because everyone has Facebook.

[BlueTemplar]

No, again, the best is no platforms at all, so probably phpbb forums (or maybe as other have suggested, newsgroups ?)

[the_af]

> probably phpbb forums

I loved phpbb forums! I felt in control. Sadly, every community I was part of has moved on from there. One private community (I'm talking fewer than 15 members) I belong to moved to Discord.

It went like this:

"Hey, let's have a Discord"

(me) "But I don't wanna."

"Yesss... it's optional, the forum won't cease to exist and you can opt-out of Discord".

Current situation: the phpbb forum is all but dead. All of the activity happens in Discord. For no good reason, except that people who are online and chatting 24/7 like it. I don't. The forum has died for me.

Rinse and repeat for many other communities I used to enjoy (sometimes it's not Discord but facebook groups, with their absolutely aweful usability which is miles worse than phpbb, but you get the idea).

[BlueTemplar]

But, yet again, did you stand your ground and did NOT keep using Discord / (ugh) Facebook ? The forum is only dead if there's nobody posting (or I guess, only 1 person, but it can still be used as a blog of sorts at that point).

I've noticed that one small sized community still has an active forum at the same time as a Discord, I suspect because one/two of the users have absolutely refused to use Discord (it might help here that they are 60+ years old ?).

[the_af]

It makes no sense to stand my ground since the whole purpose of the forum was to stay in touch with a small group of people. The majority moved on to Discord. They haven't officially abandoned the forum, they just don't post there. I tried posting, got zero replies (for a couple of years), then abandoned the forum myself.

I've seen this happen more than once. "Resisting" is not an option if you value the group of people more than the software platform. What would be the point of "making my stand" in phpbb? The forum software is not my friend.

> but it can still be used as a blog of sorts at that point

No. Why would I want a blog? I wanted to keep this community of people.

[BlueTemplar]

Depends how much you value these people I guess. (And this is also about not using platforms on principle.)

But I can see how this can be tempting for interacting with people that aren't friends yet (so won't spend extra effort to communicate with you via the medium of your choice), but aren't just random acquaintances any more.

(But personally, at this point I don't see why I would want to associate myself with the kind of people that insist on using platforms.)