[TeMPOraL]

There are degrees to word of mouth, though. Stumbling on, say, HN comment from a year ago, that said one can find high-quality Star Trek discussions on /r/DaystromInstitute, is a form of "word of mouth". Being invited to a community personally by existing community member, who themselves were invited by an existing member, ... is a different kind of "word of mouth".

Like everywhere else in the "cozy web" reality, it sucks to be an outsider looking to learn something or start to participate somewhere. With increasing number of hobby groups moving to Discord - or worse, Whatsapp groups - there's no way to observe from the distance or "dip your toes". Instead, you're asked to commit time, effort and/or reputation from the get-go, even before you know if the thing it's worth it.

This very mechanism keeps me away from any communities I'd happily participate in if they were open discussion boards.

[Kye]

Discoverability is worse now without a lot of public forums, blogs, and websites. That was the passer-by's way to find these things before The Great Consolidation. They'd search it up on Google when it still worked, find the website, see the IRC info or the forum signup, and hop on.

That said, Daystrom Institute formed a branch on the fediverse during the Reddit shutdown with some other Star Trek subs: https://startrek.website/c/daystrominstitute

[7speter]

Ironically enough, subreddit sidebars were almost always a great place to find highly relevant and useful discords, forums and blogs.

[TeMPOraL]

Exactly. The current trends make a lot of places suddenly out of reach for passer-bys.

Thanks for posting the link. I am aware of the current location of /r/DaystromInstitute, and registered on that Lemmy instance already - but to reinforce my point, I actually learned about it thanks to someone posting that link on HN a few days ago, randomly, in the middle of the Reddit blackout discussion thread. Much like you posting it here, which will hopefully help some other interested people find it.