this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Technology

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[–] [email protected] 93 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For a second I thought they were launching their federated lemmy/kbin instance. With different communities, like "support", "bugs", "news"...

Would have been freaking awesome and a great use case for Lemmy and federarion.

Good for them anyway.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (9 children)

At the same time, it might not fit them. Lemmy is a link aggregator, which seems like extra functionality that they don't really need, not when existing forum software will do what they need, while also being more stable/mature.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Not good enough of an excuse, IMO. Link aggregation is essentially a normal post with just a link to somewhere else, which you can totally do in any forum... and it is no bloat at all.

I believe the reasoning was more like "we don't want to do any federation, because the barrier of having to create a new account will free us from trolls/bots/etc".

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Add in the fact they'd end up having to defederate a lot of instances due to trolls and whatnot, and it's much better that they run it on their own site. It's much better from a moderation viewpoint for them. I know people will be all upset here, but it's honestly for the best.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The return of phpbb, who had that on their 2023 bingo card?

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is great, I'm honestly glad they have their own forum on their own page as opposed to something like Discord.

I know people will be disappointed it's not on lemmy or similar, but it's for the best to be honest. Since it's a product, it's much easier to have something they fully control and can have ownership over (including who and what can be posted there). It's a great decision by them.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

As much time passes I still find forums really easy to navigate through with how categorized everything is, and I do like activity bumping up threads. Although searching through like 100+ page long threads on like xda can be a pain. Still so much better than discord for being a source of information.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Ah, yes. Nothing like bumping a five year old thread for whatever reason.

Legit funniest necro I saw recently was on one of the forums in a private tracker I'm a member of.

There were about three pages of discussion. One dude is talking back and forth with another.

Thread died down as they all do.

A few weeks ago, five years after the last post, that same dude just randomly pops in to reply to the previous post with the most casual of responses.

He wasn't even inactive on the forums. Somehow he just left that specific thread for five years.

On the topic of forums, I do like them, but I find they can often feel less "casual" than reddit/Lemmy. Different etiquette, I think.

Discord goes the complete opposite direction. It's basically IRC with some more modern features. In other words, there is nothing but the chaos of a conversation that's lasted maybe an hour or so.

How people rely on it for long term stuff, I don't know.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I welcome the return of forums. What a simpler time.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I don't-

I don't miss having to register accounts on each one, answer a bunch of questions, give a birthday, give an email, do a capta.... etc...

Just for that forum to popup on haveibeenpwned.com a few months later.

Knock on wood, password managers are a thing now, and its easy to give each forum a very unique password. But- still. Don't really miss those.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Thank you! I feel like I'm the only person who lived through that time. Having everything on one site is way simpler, reddit sucks but that doesn't mean the concept does.

I do not miss having to sign up for a specific forum, wait for the email, no email, check spam folder, no email, 15 mins later email shows up in spam, go to post, "sorry you can't make a post without interacting with at least 5 other posts", post random shit on 5 other posts, finally get to post, "this question has been answered. Post archived "

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I'm so excited for forums to come back, just need to make sure there is a great mobile app to handle them.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (6 children)

It felt so much better to engage on forums. felt a bit slower and more intentional. And signatures, the signatures! Love their choice here.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

a indie game i support refuses to use a forum, only discord. i hate searching thru threads in discord when a forum would be easier.

i wish people wouldn't shun the idea of a forum just because it's a "old idea." good on the jellyfin folks for doing this.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yep unpopular opinion I hate hate hate discord for anything but normal chat. The threads they added recently are neat and I hope they keep going in that direction.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I'm sure Jellyfin considered the Fediverse but some projects like the idea of having more control of the community discussions they participate in so having a forum makes sense. I still think a Jellyfin community on Lemmy can thrive with an official forum in place.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

This is probably true. Forum software is a lot more mature then Lemmy etc and probably a better overall option currently for a project like Jellyfin to operate. They just want something that works.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

The moderating tools on MyBB is worlds away and better than Lemmy/Kbin.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Jellyfin is all about self hosting. I don't see why they wouldn't just create their own Lemmy instance if that was the concern. It wouldn't need to be big if they limited the userbase

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemmy is pretty immature, and probably doesn't suit their needs compared to a forum.

They don't really need a link aggregator, so using Lemmy there wouldn't really make much sense.

The only thing that they might use Lemmy for is the community, but otherwise, it's not a great fit for what they need.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yup, "when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail". Lemmy and the Fediverse are great, but they aren't the end all, be all solution to online content.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

forums is all around an infinitely better solution for support and discussions on specific tech and interest. It's also more searchable and less ephemeral. At least reddit and fediverse is better then ephemeral solutions like discord.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I thought this was an announcement they were moving to the Fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seriously, how about they stand up a lemmy instance? That way peeps could follow their forums without having to travel to a proprietary place.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

According to the footer they're running MyBB so although it is more centralised, I wouldn't call it proprietary.

What advantages would Lemmy have over the traditional style of forum for their use case?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah it's not the end of the world. It's slightly disappointing that you have to create yet another account unnecessarily.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

The only real advantage I can see is they would be another mass of users on the fediverse, which is what we want I suppose. I mean I do want it to be populated, and if more people migrate, it ensures survival of their community. I don't like how we have all scattered to the wind, but it's their choice where to go

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Strange they don't even mention Fediverse. It just felt too dated.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can understand wanting to bring your discussion hub in house to avoid something like what's happened. But bringing it into essentially an old school phpBB forum is certainly, ah, a choice.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

There is nothing wrong with forums, they've existed (and continue to exist) for decades. They are a great way to have information easily searchable, as well as easily post and contribute.

Just because they aren't carded like twitter or lemmy doesn't mean they are dated. Everything has it's place and every tool has a job. In this case, that place is a forum and the tool is phBB. Also, I wouldn't call it "old school" as the most recent update is from May 21, 2023.

Not everything has to be federated, and nothing is stopping anyone from creating an instance for Jellyfin ( [email protected] ) . But for the official instance, having it hosted by them, on their hardware, that they control, it's a great choice to use a forum.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It could be argued that web forums were an answer to older system that came before it and the problems with them. Systems like Usenet and Fidonet BBS's were federated system, and web forums are actually newer than that.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Now all they need to do is move away from twitter.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah, a traditional forum. Makes sense.

Since we're talking about forums, who here is old enough to remember the IMDB message boards?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm old enough to remember dialing into different BBSs with my 14.4 Kbps modem.

These days my teenaged son is complaining that his 12GB Fortnite update isn't downloading fast enough and he has to wait a whole 20 minutes.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Kinda sad they didn’t settle for something like Lemmy, but at the same time happy that they realize the value of a forum and didn’t just move to Discord.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I can see the argument in favour of classic forums. Keeping everything chronological can help for certain kinds of discussion, and it's easier to sort content by subforums in a way that doesn't scale well with Lemmy. You'd need to create a lot of different communities to keep it all separated, which is messy.

The biggest thing forums lack is multi-threaded discussions. That said, simple chronological helps people at the bottom of the thread get assistance since it doesn't disappear into the web of conversation, so this might also be an advantage of single-threaded forums.

Also, voting gamifies the whole experience, so people are reluctant to post in older threads since they won't get "points".

Finally, threads on Lemmy also don't get bumped, so old content effectively dies. This sucks for troubleshooting since people very frequently have the exact same problem many years apart.

I feel like "release" and "discussion" threads would probably benefit from Lemmy's structure to allow for deeper engagement in sub-conversations, but the core of their use is single-topic requests and, frankly, forums are better at that.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Please note they also have a Mastodon account where they've made the same announcement:

https://mastodon.online/@jellyfin/110568058365759513

Let's support the Fediverse or FOSS alternatives when we can.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Even tho they didn't move to the fediverse, I'm glad they left reddit.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

It's great that they're going back to traditional, self-hosted forums instead of corporate social media for support and discussions, but damn, I don't miss having to manage hundreds of accounts with unique logins for each forum. I understand that they want more control over forum moderation and the Fediverse's "anyone can post there" system makes it troublesome. It would be great if there was more widespread adoption of decentralized, "one login to access everything" systems.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

As long as the forums are easily searchable then this is a good move. It looks like the subreddit is in read-only mode so we haven't lost any knowledge yet. That data should be preserved elsewhere, just in case the subreddit becomes unviewable.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'd actually love if companies/products/software went back to forums and other specialized means to get support. I hate when they refer to Reddit or worse, Discord.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

And they announce it on Twitter? 🙄

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

They announced it on their website. Why OP chose to link the tweet instead is beyond me.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (7 children)

TIL about Jellyfin. Is it like Plex? Better? I assume it's solid since everyone knows about it?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

It's plex but open source and without any sort of subscription. I have been using it for a couple of years and never had a problem

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

MyBB is a weird choice in 2023

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

MyBB is great for niche/specific content. Great moderator tools and everyone knows how to navigate a freakin' forum.

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