Build the forum you want to see in the web

Last few years, there’s been a rather growing amount of online discussion in my (para)social circles about the enshittification of the web and how people miss for personal sites, blogs, forums, IRCs and other non-corporate forms of coming together in the web.

To an extent, I agree. I wish that a public sector organisation would communicate through a website with RSS or fediverse rather than posting only on X.com. I wish that a video game company would offer a way to submit bug reports or access support in other ways than creating a Discord account and joining yet another server. I wish I hadn’t fallen into the lucrative trap of Facebook and Twitter at their hay day, forgetting to maintain sites and forums that allow people to access information and contribute in a healthier way than corporate social media.

The good news is, none of the technologies that used to run the non-corporate web are gone. In fact, they have gotten much better and it’s become much easier to host your own. There are Platform-as-a-Service companies that offer pre-made images to be deployed for different forum software for example.

As a community builder outside the web (in what some people call the real life), I’m so used to hearing the “why is this organised at X?” or “why isn’t anyone doing it in [my city] instead?” type questions where someone is complaining to another person who is spending their time organising activities for others that they are not doing it for them as well.

I find these two overlapping enough that every time I hear someone saying they’d want something from the earlier list, I can’t help but to think: why don’t you go and start one? There are cases where, depending on the financial or technical limitations, it can be difficult for someone to start something on their own and that’s fair.

Often though, it’s people who could as well be the ones who start a movement — start a forum, organise an event or start a chant in a sports match — but instead, they hope someone else did it for them for free. And that rubs me the wrong way.

I’m not saying it’s easy. Building communities is hard, especially in the beginning before you get the momentum going. But it’s hard for all of us. I’ve spent over two decades building communities but there’s nothing special about me other than desire to see things happen and stubbornness to keep trying.

The only way we’ll see the personal blogs, open forums and non-corporate platforms to shine again is if people who want them, make them happen.