[getwiththeprog]

"Front Porch Forum is a free community-building service in Vermont and parts of New York. Your neighborhood's forum is only open to the people who live there. It's all about helping neighbors connect." - https://frontporchforum.com/

[barkerja]

What sets this apart from Nextdoor?

[mplanchard]

I think a big part of it is the active moderation and the hyper-locality of the neighborhoods. It is also less ad-driven and less about trying to stoke engagement.

[Nextgrid]

Less "growth and engagement" and more "sustainable business" vibes.

[everybodyknows]

Great, but for how long?

> My wife, Valerie, and I founded Front Porch Forum in 2006 to serve our hometown of Burlington, Vermont

https://frontporchforum.com/about-us

They've been running the organization, now grown to 30 people, for 18 years. How long till they're wanting more space in their lives for other interests? And if they hand off management responsibilities, how might it change?

From https://frontporchforum.com/terms-of-use

> Here at FPF we strive to:

> Remain small and local: FPF is a Vermont-grown and Vermont-owned public benefit corporation, and we commit to remaining locally owned and Vermont-scale.

[mplanchard]

What’s your point? Either they’ll find someone local who wants to take it over, or they’ll sell out, or they’ll fold. The possible inevitability of something’s decay doesn’t make it any less valuable in the meantime.

The community here cares a lot about locality, so I suspect they’ll try to keep it as such even when they eventually bow out, but we’ll see.

[AstroJetson]

Good question. Nextdoor is full of people that I would not let on my physical front porch.

[everybodyknows]

This is about the #3 reason I seldom scan Nextdoor nowadays. Filtering/blocking of posts needs to be much more sophisticated.

[NikkiA]

I got an email notification yesterday about a new posting by 'Ministry of Justice' on nextdoor, being slightly piqued by it and not having logged in for 6 months or so, I logged in to see it was a reminder by the police that in the UK racial hatred posted in a public forum is actionable, and I thought 'yep, that's nextdoor alright'.

A quick look at the local nextdoor posts indeed illustrated a whole slew of 'it's all the <insert slur>'s fault' posts about everything from drunkenness to dog poo on the street.

[ProllyInfamous]

Absolutely. Nextdoor's lack of response against some of the more difficult contributors is why I stopped using their service.

Specific example/tangent:

My tiny city issues "city stickers" to residents (under the premise of "improving safety/recognizability"), which are technically required. During a Nextdoor debate about this "necessity," I commented that the stickers make it easier to target vehicles when they are elsewhere in the county, as our small city is much wealthier than surrounding areas.

Some neighborly asshat, MD, then proceeds to berate my ideas as "stupid/idiotic/don't like it then LEAVE!" Even on unrelated comments elsewhere on the Nextdoor platform, this mental health provider continues trolling me about "not wanting to be part of the community."

Really it's about not having any stickers on my vehicle which display allegiance/possessions; think about this, Mr.NRA-support-sticker-bearer: the likelihood that your vehicle has a gun stored within is much higher than an unlabeled vehicle.

Similarly, our little city's resident decal immediately tells others I statistically have more money/possessions than you, possibly even within this parked vehicle. No, I'll pass — I still don't pay for the sticker!

[warkdarrior]

Oh great, another service that requires and tracks your real-world identity in everything you do. No privacy, no thank you!