My question is a little bit blunt but please take it in the good faith it is intended! The forums seem a bit like a ghost town from both the perspective of users, but also from the DF team, as I don't see much presence from the team on here, apart from Richard occasionally popping up on a comment or two. Funnily enough, I see Will is much more active on the news comments side... fore-shadowing
As a bit of preface, there was a little bit of meta discussion going on (https://www.digitalfoundry.net/forums/df-general/who_doesnt_love_forums) and the consensus seems like the forums are a bit of an unloved step-child between the DF presence on Discord, Patreon, other unmentioned social media platforms etc...
I get that there is a lot of surface area vying for attention of both sides here; however the fact that the forums exist seem to indicate someone thought it was a good idea at some point, and given the reliance on big-tech platforms, it seems like there would be an opportunity to carve out a little bit of independence here, much in the way the self-hosted videos do (which as a media hoarder, I greatly appreciate!).
This might come across as a whinge and please don't take it as a read on team as I know you are all extremely busy people doing the good work, but in reality I'm just genuinely curious to hear from the DF team whether the forums are actually something they see as meaningful for community engagement or not?
Regardless, I like the fledgling discourse here and will continue to try to do my part (albeit limited by being time poor) to foster community discussion!
Hey drewizard! You're right, I've not been active on the forums much, and I should be more. I guess it's just a case of a lot going on and only limited time, but I agree that if we're going to have forums we should use them
It might be a case that there's quite a bit of overlap between website comments, Discord, social media and so on. In theory, the forums ought to be the best place for evergreen topics that we want to be publicly searchable, whereas Discord is a bit more relaxed as it's private and the website is more focused around content that comes and goes.
One thing I wanted to do when I rejoined DF was to have a kind of weekly highlight of forum topics on the site and on Patreon, such that the forums could get a bit of a boost. However, I haven't been spending the requisite time here to find good things to highlight, and the few times I went looking specifically for that purpose, there didn't seem to be anything super worthy of a website post.
So - I'll do my bit in terms of logging on here each day to reply to stuff and have a poke around. What would be helpful for your end, drewizard and KenMasters, would be to let me know here (or wherever) if there is a great forum thread that I should know about, and then hopefully this plan of highlighting the forum regularly can go into action. Feels like a good Friday afternoon or weekend kind of post!
Funnily enough the foreshadowing bit in my comment was an allusion to the idea of combining news comments + forums comments, so that you could join us over here!
To your point about the overlaps, it feels like each of the platforms by itself represents either a small fraction or a duplicated effort, so centralizing some of those where it makes sense (ack. that Discord chats is a completely different speed entirely) feels it would create a more rich community, especially if the DF team themselves were in somewhat regular attendance. People come for the weekly Q & A, stay for the other topics so to speak... and the forums seems a good place to do that, given the continued capital E effect on most big-tech platforms...
But I digress, its good to hear your thoughts and aspirations to boost the forums. Certainly happy to give a shout-out to cool forum topics, but to your point, its a vicious cycle of needing the material, and the participation, to drive this! I have the same problem as you, would love to participate more, but professional and personal responsibilities keep me occupied... something I need to make more time for myself!
Also, to @KenMasters point, even some QoL improvements would be appreciated... reactions, like buttons etc; would allow discourse to feel more natural, as it can be hard to accurately represent reactions & tone when left up to the writer's prose and the reader's ability to figure that out.
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Topic: What is the point of the forums?
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