Forums vs MUCs - the showdown

[digdeeper]

Forums: In-built categorization enforces focused conversations. MUCs: A constant stream of homogenized sludge. Forums 1-0.
Forums: Have to put a bit more effort into making a post, making people engage more of the conscious mind, which increases quality. MUCs: posting is type and enter, which might seem convenient, but sucks for quality. Forums 2-0.
Forums: Permanence means long term serious discussions can be had, projects can be sustained, and so on. Searching functionality means a discussion can be found and brought up at any time. MUCs: mostly limited to banal weather convos. Insightful ones get buried between those. Projects are impossible to keep up. Forums 3-0.
Forums: Big customizability in terms of styling, blocking users, subscribing to topics, and so on. In MUCs you just...type. Even something as simple as blocking users is a pain, and unavailable in many clients, whlie servers don't offer it by default (?). Forums 4-0.
Forums: Easy and powerful ways to get rid of - or at least contain - spammers and other malicious actors. MUCs: they can pretty much do whatever they want by default, and handling them is a second job. One person can ruin a MUC, impossible on a forum. Forums 5-0.

Do MUCs have any advantage, really? Only that they are slightly easier to use, but again it's a double edged sword, on which many have cut themselves already, me included. More people might be compelled to join, but again, they will mostly just sit there and sometimes contribute to the sludge. Oh, and, I guess the seeming impermanence of messages means it's less likely one will be used against you at some point. But again, posts can be deleted on forums too. I'm probably missing even more advantages if I have to be honest. Polls, rewards for contributions, etc haven't been mentioned. Basically you can't make a community in a MUC, but you can on a forum.

What do you think?

[qualia]

Nothing to add, I agree with pretty much everything, using a MUC for serious discussion is misguided, the only thing its suited for is casual conversations between people.

But i wonder if you have looked into things like the matrix protocol? The "discord-like" format allows categorization, moderation, seems to work pretty well for both serious and casual discussion (and I wouldn't mind casual discussions if they were separated from the serious ones). I am not trying to shill, in fact I haven't used matrix much, I'm just curious about your opinion on how it compares

[malformed_jill]

mucs are just a tossabout: they're easy to get into and talk in.
that can be very funny for a short while but after a bit it gets draining and repetitive, comes at the cost of any intriguing conversations
plus with the burning train i was always idling to see if i didnt miss anything due to it not saving history. often there wasn't much interesting and i forced myself to deal with everybody
also too many people on the MUC kept asking for A Hot Fuck, i don't think that sort of spam is possible here thankfully, along with the subsequent voice begging

forums can go bad too if the liver (administration) is rotten, but i don't think that's gonna be much of a problem here. unlike gay ass imageboards blocking works like a charm, which i might not even really need to use due to the general culture of forums and the behaviour of their users

[moeloli]

They serve different purposes. Forums are for serious discussions, and MUCs are for fun banter. They're not mutually exclusive and in theory it wouldn't be bad if we had both a forum and a MUC, though if we can only have one, a forum is more appropriate for the "DigDeeper community" (so to speak).

[digdeeper]

Nothing to add, I agree with pretty much everything, using a MUC for serious discussion is misguided, the only thing its suited for is casual conversations between people.

But i wonder if you have looked into things like the matrix protocol? The "discord-like" format allows categorization, moderation, seems to work pretty well for both serious and casual discussion (and I wouldn't mind casual discussions if they were separated from the serious ones). I am not trying to shill, in fact I haven't used matrix much, I'm just curious about your opinion on how it compares

TBH, no. I only know XMPP (and IRC, somewhat).

They serve different purposes. Forums are for serious discussions, and MUCs are for fun banter. They're not mutually exclusive and in theory it wouldn't be bad if we had both a forum and a MUC, though if we can only have one, a forum is more appropriate for the "DigDeeper community" (so to speak).

Perhaps.

I won't deny that much of the reason for getting rid of it was personal. Years of enduring sludge with no other options did its job I guess. Not to mention other stuff that probably shouldn't go public.

Well either way it is gone. I hope this is an adequate replacement.

[Theundercoverman_]

MUCs are fun until you realize that, again, most people just lurk around and rarely post anything, and end-to-end encryption is useless for group chats anyways and as we all know doesn't even work. And I agree forums are better than real-time communication because it gives us time to think and encourages effort posting. Chats are good for 1:1, but then again, this forum and many others have "private" messaging.

I don't know much about Matrix except it's tied to Israeli surveillance and it's reference client, Element, uses Electron.

[qualia]

I don't know much about Matrix except it's tied to Israeli surveillance and it's reference client, Element, uses Electron.

Yeah, element was terrible when i tried using it. Not *just* because its electron it just was a terrible piece of software. Was unaware of the Israel thing. Looking into it a bit more, apparently matrix used to send identifiable user data to its matrix.org servers, even if you hosted your own instance (https://hackea.org/notas/matrix.html). Disregard any notion of matrix being a viable alternative i might've expressed previously, i believed people who called it "private" "free" "open" etc. without bothering to do any research