> I would give my left arm to be using internet forums again. Online communities adopting Discord and Slack was such a terrible move in hindsight.

Was also a terrible move in foresight. :)

Thank you - try it out and let me know what you think.

Based on the launch feedback so far today, I think I need to build a Slack integration - primarily as a separate channel to deliver the daily newsletter. It seems like lots of people don't even open their work email anymore, so the chat + forum need to work together.

I wrote more about why chat fails for work communication in my launch post here - summarized as "our workplace communication looks like the floor of a 1980s stock exchange, not a place for writing code." https://www.contraption.co/news/launching-booklet/

Be careful with users hounding you for features, especially ones like you specify.

Think of HN here. How many feature requests have they implemented over the last 10 years?

That's a great point, and I'm conscious of it. I try to take a first-principles approach to building.

For instance, a few people have requested "pinned posts." I personally don't want the same post stuck at the top of my screen forever, and upon digging in deeper I find that people really want a "Welcome" post that all new users see and can access. So, I'm exploring some ways of accomplishing that without pinning - such as a dismissible post for new members.

I hate that forums changed from Simple Machine Forums or PHPBB to Discourse, the ui in Discourse is terrible and I find it unfriendly for community feeling - it doesn't invite customization, discourse design looks like an airport bathroom.

I disagree. I find Discourse superb. From the user’s perspective it is simple, clean, fast, with amazing search, etc. It can be customised, but most people using it do it for practical reasons, and worry little about customisations.

Overall I don't mind Discourse, but I would definitely love for it to:

- not hijack my scroll or do that infinite page thing. Please load the entire thread or at least let me use classical pagination.

- not hijack CTRL-f for its own built-in search. I want my browser's on page search, and I know what I'm doing.

> - not hijack CTRL-f for its own built-in search.

Just in case you(or others) don't know, you can press Ctr-F twice to get the native browser page search.

Helpful, thank you!

Why did they use infinite scroll in the first place? Is there any scientific research behind this? What are better alternatives?

I .. guess there are different standards or point of views what counts as clean and fast?

I experience it as very slow and bloated, even though it somewhat improved.

I experience it as fast compared to traditional, pre-SPA-era web forums; the use of JavaScript speeds up a lot of interactions that would otherwise require a full page load. The live Markdown preview is also a heck of a lot better than having to click “preview” and wait for a page load to see your BBCode rendered. Having live updates for new posts/edits without having to refresh contributes to a snappy feeling. And I think the visual theming is nice and clean.

Still, compared to a good email client, it’s not so fast. Which is why I personally read Discourse forums mainly via email, only visiting the actual site for long threads or when I want to reply. It’s not perfect, since Discourse allows editing posts but doesn’t notify email users of edits. But it’s fine. I actually like it better than real mailing lists, because I prefer Discourse’s composing interface.

>fast

Discourse is definitely not fast. Whenever Google sends me to a discourse page I just end up giving up on waiting for it after staring for over 8 seconds at a blank page.

I happily take that over Discord.

I am dumbfounded by the number of people signing up for these chat-based communities. Do people scroll through the threads? Are they watching notifications come through?

Chat works great for a small group of friends, I don't think it is a good fit for a community

Some telegram groups developed as some sort of community.

"Do people scroll through the threads?"

Most won't, so the same things and questions get discussed again and again. If the mod is engaged he will create sticky notes, but people also often ignore those. So - yeah, I agree. Not a good fit for a community. They sort of upgrade it though regulary, and now you can have subgroups in groups that can work as forum threads, but I experience it not as a good UX and I regulary delete telegram as it is really hard filtering out useful comments from noise.

Agreed. Im so thankful for the few remaining good forums like elixirforum.com etc. So sad that discord really hijacked all of the communities (of course i understand people choose it because it is good but still)

I think it's popular because it's easy / free to set up and the friction is very low for new user, not because it's actually any good.

I think it's actually horrendous for things you want to use forums for. I don't remember using IRC in lieu of forums (did we?), why do we use Discord for the same?

They choose it because its engaging.

Discord is really good at sucking you into conversation and capturing your attention/time. Its way better than IRC ever was. But that doesn't mean its a good format for information, issue threads, work discussion and such.

I guess endless frustration and wandering is engagement.

What in the UI or UX of discords has this effect?

Presence indicators, activity indicators, emoji feedback, and video chat, to name a few. Features that provide instant gratification.

Those insights are things I've tried to bake into Booklet - for instance, a really generous free plan and no per-user pricing. Existing community platforms (like Circle) are not set up for bottoms-up adoption, so it ends up feeling like gross enterprise software.

I am very sure they weren't speaking literally...

Absolutely. We've made a full circle and I'm very happy that products like this are becoming a thing again.

I believe we need to standarize forums api so we can build readers as well to see all the forums you are subscribed to in one place instead of jumping between websites

IMO, email and RSS are the universal APIs of the internet. Booklet already supports email, and I'm considering adding private RSS feeds.

If you like the old school bulletinBoards + standardized protocol, then you may like LemmyBB. An homage to the classic forums with the reach of activitypub protocol: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmyBB

It's not like chat hasn't existed for decades, it definitely has been in foresight for many. I think what attracted people to these platforms is the ease of use and plug n play nature of centralised software compared to forums that have much less intuitive UX and have only recently adopted federation making the very vast majority of them lacking in interoperability.

Absolutely. Two big drivers were:

1. People are impatient, and chat makes everything urgent

2. Chat make posting easy, so authors post more and with less intentionality

I wrote a long post about this on our blog as I announced Booklet: https://www.contraption.co/news/launching-booklet/

This take feels like twee projection of anecdata.

There are thousands of forums that require sign up just to read posts. Always has been.

I would give my left arm to stop having to check work email for the five people who still use it.

Something in the middle sounds lovely.

Do you use Slack?

My impression after today's launch is that I need to deliver Booklet's daily summary over Slack, not just email. Would that work better for you?

We use teams but slack is common enough.

It’s really a social issue more than a technical one. How to get people to stop playing, “guess which platform I sent you an urgent message on, which nobody else you work with uses to contact you, ever?”

Threading and history I think are necessary for the email thread set.

Yes, I agree. Email got ruined by external users - scams, spam, and marketing. Chat is nice for companies because everybody inside is trusted.

The irony is not lost on me that Booklet is almost rebuilding email, but for internal-only usage. I think about this a lot.

That could work nicely, yes.