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General interest mega-boards and forum sustainability (community.nodebb.org)

submitted 1 month ago by julian@community.nodebb.org to c/general-discussion@community.nodebb.org

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I'm away from my desk for the next few days and so I'll likely be posting more open ended discussion questions.

Recently I've been thinking more about the decline of forums of yesteryear and how hosting a forum has always been rather niche.

That got me thinking about how one of Reddit's "killer features" was that just anybody could create a subreddit. The same could be said about Facebook groups as well.

You don't get that with forums, only the admin can create categories/forums, and by extension that usually limited the rise of general interest boards, and more towards niche topic-focused boards. It also meant that basically every board had a "general discussion" board or "random" board.

Would there be interest in NodeBB supporting something like this... Basically, the ability for anyone to set up a category and instantly moderate it, and build your own sub community inside a community? Does this ruin the magic of forums?

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[–] omega@community.nodebb.org 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

julian You're going into a place I was going to suggest around 2022 (becasue forums have been on the decline for a long time), while this sub-reddit-eaque is a neat feature, what about thinking of "ways" of being instead.

TLDR

I'd really like to be able to, and within seconds, with a single email address and password sign up for a stripped down NodeLET Acc and be typing happily (content creating) within seconds, that I could then disturbute to wherever-whenever platforms I like with a few clicks, get analytics feedback on how content (posts) are doing, where it is being seen and how much and maybe even track and manage payment for any revenue generated, without being a site owner carrying any of that "publishing" at scale burden and cost or having to sign up to one or more platforms to get my content out to the world.

That' the bones of the original 2012 idea.

If you think about supporting or looking for inspiration in terms of feature roadmap, where next for then NodeBB as a content creation platform, extra of being a forum, is when you start to unlock the true potential.

You might rememeber I pointed out substack some years ago and it wasn't that familiar to you or most back then, it was the lockdowns and covid that allowed it go prime time IMHO.

So here is a concept you might like to ponder

The NodeLET

NodeLET (Solo) a stepped down versions of a full NodeBB that is content creator centric (it may not allow more than one user, it might limit users, it can have tiered plans, it hosted but NodeBB, it's liek NOdeBB for one user that can bu spun up like droplet are spun up on DO in seconds)

Think of NodeLET as content hub as opposed to a hub (forum) for users.

NodeBB with NodeLET functionally (integrated)

What is NodeLET?

NodeLET is hosted by NodeBB as an in-house service as a very mass market non-techie solution (think wordpress.blog but technically spun up like a DO droplet) the user does not need admin level technical overload, they are the content creation focused user, they just need composer, drafts and the tags fundamentally to organise content all the forums, sub categories, users admin backend etc. etc. is not needed, wwe;re stripping right back here, you get the idea.

Now that activity pub is in the mix you can use this to hook up NodeLET to other NodeBB's and beyond.

Content creation space for the quiet content creator who wants a nice place to go and tap without distraction and mange their more long form thoughtful content over time.

Does this make sense?

The idea is a NodeLET would start as a free service for content creators, now that substack exists which came to my attention after I thought of this way of re-selling or re-spinning NodeBB that market is well established in terms of a simple offering to the content creator.

It's a new market segment because no one did it so well and elegantly until substack came along IMHO.

Focusing on content creation, but still being a very different option than say a WordPress vs substack option.

All my UI suggestions are generally based around content creation centric idea of the NodeLET but I never explained it properly, but if you're gonna do sub-reddit you might as well embrace the whole spectrum of user-needs potential dev led paths or "ways" of being, as opposed to what others are doing.

Build for the user you missed or forgot about, because NodeBB can do it all technically, as I've pointed out most of the ability is already under the hood, it exists, it's actually a matter or reconfiguring layout, how you offer the capabilities to the potential user / marketing (Harmony theme actually works really well here)

Offer 2 configurations, of NodeBB

Solo (limited, free) A Single user NodeBB offering.
Solo Plus (fee, more features) A single user NodeBB for closed content creation group
NodeBB (Full) What we all know and love.

There is naturally as explain no self-hosting option for a NodeLET

Bonus is all of these options can openly interconnect now, where back a few years they may have not so easily - Activity Pub is the thing that didn't exist when I was thinking about this, because as I've alluded to or implied it goes back to an even older idea I had when trying to solve a problem in 2012 no one was thinking about afaics, when I saw substack it looked the closest to my original musings over a decade later.

I know I'm sliding off topic but it's out of my head now. :)