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did user engagement drop significantly in programming forums? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/programming

53 comments fedilink hide all child comments

There was a lot of engagement in the communities I participate up until a couple of years ago. People were interested and actively discussing a lot of topics. There were a lot of newbies asking questions and people proposing different ways for tasks.

Is it just me or did it reduce a lot? LLMs? Company forums? Other forums I did not move to (e.g. discord)? Reduced interest? Or is it just subjective?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

As the kind of noob type to ask dumb questions, I talk out a lot of issues with larger LLM's now. What I can not, I ask here.

I feel like the forums logins thing is too antiquated. I wish they would all be on the fediverse and compatible with Lemmy. I would love the depth and scope of many forums as niche communities with their own trees of subjects and discussions.

[–] zlatko 10 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Even this is forum-like though. It's a forum of people talking about a topic that interests them. It just happens to be distributed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago

Yeah, but it lacks the tree that tends to support more specialization. I still get on the EEVBlog forum from time to time but that kind of concentration of specialization is just not the default.

To replicate that kind of ecosystem I think the platform would need a similar complex branching hierarchy and far more effective utility for searching. The element of time is too prioritized on a link aggregator like Lemmy. Community depth of specialization remains shallow because more intellectual engagement is slower and the mechanics of most recent comment engagement are not effective/implemented. Places like the EEVBlog often have the most engagement on very old threads that also concentrate a ton of history and useful information within the single thread. These threads are the primary anchor for the whole community. I think it would take some novel innovation to bridge a link aggregator's ADHD with a forum's depth and utility.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago

Can't bump an old question