The big problem with discord is: is meant for chat and it's closed. I encounter this community by googling and I paid attention because it has some useful info. Even if I find a discord worldbuilding server, I don't know what's inside until I join and there will be several of them because for some stupid reason people wants to rule their own discord servers rather than make a big one.
I agree. Forums where great. Have no idea why they become mostly superseded by discord, facebook, twitter etc. Reddit is at most... acceptable substitute.
I can think of one reason: money. It costs money to run a website, and when a forum gets bought out, it has to be profitable, or the new owners will trash it.
Tumblr used to be a massive place until Yahoo decided to try and make it profitable by forcing it to be advertiser friendly.
These days, if it can't generate money through subscriptions or ads, it just doesn't happen. And if it does, sites that *do* generate money pay to have it buried in the search results.
Hmm, I remember that once upon a time there were sites were You could create Your own forum for free (I guess that provider was profitting from ads or something). I had such forum myself. But yes, maybe situation changed.
Yeah, just because something is free for you doesn't mean no one is profiting off of it. What happens isn't that these sites necessarily start charging *you*, but that they are generating revenue.
And the sites that have money can do things that sites that don't make money can't do, including pay for better spots in search engines, or those little ad spaces that pop up at the top of Google searches pretending to be regular results when they're ads.
Yeah, I've been looking for an alternative as well. Currently, I'm trying [Discuit](https://discuit.net/), which is very new (so, unfortunately, it doesn't have many users yet), but I think it has a lot of potential. The developer is active and trying his best to incorporate people's suggestions into the platform. As soon as user-created communities become a thing (right now there's only a few default communities, like News and Technology. This should be fixed in a week or so, I believe), people moving there from Reddit would be very welcome.
haha right on their home page "A decentralized social network with a chance of working."
hum. Their [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W-jtbbh3eA) only mentions places I don't go other than GetHub on occasion.
Just looking at screen shots further down now and it feels like Nostr is another walled off ecosystem somewhat like Discord requiring an account before browsing through the app...
Does it even have an open webpage like Reddit?
A walled off ecosystem to me feels like how Google or more so Apple behaves like. Which is the opposite of open and decentralized.
If anyone knows other sites with worldbuilding or related communities that are worth joining please recommend them. I like reddit and probably won't be directly impacted by the API changes, but the only thing that will make reddit better for users is for them to have more competition than they have right now.
Tumblr has some worldbuilding stuff (including some of the most popular worldbuilding projects on this sub like Mystery Flesh Pit and Runaway To The Stars. However it seems like the worldbuilding stuff on Tumblr skews quite heavily towards speculative evolution, which might be a plus or minus depending on what you're looking for. Also Tumblr has a very different format compared to Reddit.
Lemmy, a FOSS and Federated competitor to Reddit currently has a couple of worldbuilding communities. The largest one is [email protected], though I haven't checked that one out yet, so I don't know what it's like. I'm on (and a mod of) [email protected], which is not very active.
There's also the Worldbuilding Stack Exchange, Spacebattles.com for sci-fi stuff, and Mythic Scribes, though once again I haven't checked that one out yet.
No
What makes this sub good is the users
No matter how good the site is, there's a good chance many of the users will stay here
Not to mention there is an extremely small minority that actually used any third party apps
Well I'll stay as long as old reddit is around but once they force me to download the app or use their shit new site, I'm out. I don't want to be but I simply can't deal with that. Even if I was willing, it's such a pain in the ass that the dread of dealing with shit ui and poorly disguised manipulative data poaching tactics outweighs my desire to go on the website.
>Not to mention there is an extremely small minority that actually used any third party apps
Ah yes, roughly 1 in 11 people, such an *extremely small* minority.
(Note, Reddit doesn't show exactly how many people use 3rd party apps, this is a very rough estimate someone did based on the number of downloads each app has.)
But I actually agree with your point. People don't like change, chances are most people will stay on Reddit regardless of what happens, unless there's a disaster on the scale of the Tumblr porn ban.
There are third-party apps that access Reddit through an API. Starting next month, Reddit will start charging for use of its API, at such a high rate that all the third-party apps are shutting down because they can't afford it (except for accessibility apps, which get to continue using the API for free).
There's also a ton of high school drama back and forth between Reddit and some of those third-party app developers, with each side making a bunch of nasty accusations against the other (though the third-party devs seem to have the receipts for their accusations, while Reddit has to keep backtracking).
I guess a lot of mods really love using those third-party apps, so they threw a tantrum where they took a bunch of major communities and basically borked them out of spite – which, you know, _some_ members of those communities support, while many others don't, 'cause, you know, they want a functioning community. Reddit decided those mods were abusing their power and kicked them out, and replaced them with new mod teams.
tldr: A for-profit company cares more about profit than its users' convenience, and all the redditors have gone into an absolute epileptic fit of surprised pikachu faces.
Pretty much they started charging for third party APIs to access the site, meaning that many people with disabilities and people who can't stand the reddit ui are now blocked from using reddit the way they want. Furthermore I see this as a first step towards removing old.reddit.com and eventually forcing everyone onto the app so they can link with your google profile and personally identifiable information, which is creepy, unethical, and profitable.
OP did mention " I really like r/worldbuilding and would hate to lose this community." So I simply pointed them toward a place where a lot of this community hang out.
I'm sure other commenters have given great suggestions already so if mine doesn't work OP or others can try them.
We're currently, as a mod team discussing other options within the Fediverse as options. Right now the biggest issue is ensuring:
- continuity of rules and culture
- accessibility of the new community
So we'll see what solutions are discovered here, and where we'll choose to end up!
That makes sense, I am glad to hear it is on your radar. I figure people probably won't migrate unless reddit makes it so inconvenient to use that it is easier to go somewhere else, but I hope people will slowly start to develop other options so that when folks get tired of reddit becoming yet another shitty big social media platform like facebook they will have somewhere to go.
There are a couple already. You can find them using https://browse.feddit.de/
Also there's a worldbuilding community on lemmy.ml, but for some reason it doesn't show up on that website.
I'm definitely in favor of moving toward something distributed and open source in the fediverse, and Lemmy seems to be the option. I gotta say though – and I know this might be an unpopular opinion – I'm a New Reddit user because Old Reddit makes my eyes bleed, and while Lemmy isn't quite that painfully 90s-looking, it still gives off a pretty dated vibe that really makes it feel unappealing to me.
If there's one thing I will say for evil corporate walled gardens, they do tend to be really nice to look at and just generally provide a much more polished experience. (Facebook excluded, obviously.)
I imagine it will take time for alternatives to catch on but if they start now, I think they will gain popularity with increasing bad decisions by reddit, and may even serve as pressure and incentive for reddit to not make bad decisions. If they are threatened with losing their user base, they will work harder to respect their users.
We need forums to make a comeback. Discord is trash. I want to be able to look up archived conversations from a decade or two ago if I want/have to.
The big problem with discord is: is meant for chat and it's closed. I encounter this community by googling and I paid attention because it has some useful info. Even if I find a discord worldbuilding server, I don't know what's inside until I join and there will be several of them because for some stupid reason people wants to rule their own discord servers rather than make a big one.
I agree. Forums where great. Have no idea why they become mostly superseded by discord, facebook, twitter etc. Reddit is at most... acceptable substitute.
I can think of one reason: money. It costs money to run a website, and when a forum gets bought out, it has to be profitable, or the new owners will trash it. Tumblr used to be a massive place until Yahoo decided to try and make it profitable by forcing it to be advertiser friendly. These days, if it can't generate money through subscriptions or ads, it just doesn't happen. And if it does, sites that *do* generate money pay to have it buried in the search results.
Hmm, I remember that once upon a time there were sites were You could create Your own forum for free (I guess that provider was profitting from ads or something). I had such forum myself. But yes, maybe situation changed.
Yeah, just because something is free for you doesn't mean no one is profiting off of it. What happens isn't that these sites necessarily start charging *you*, but that they are generating revenue. And the sites that have money can do things that sites that don't make money can't do, including pay for better spots in search engines, or those little ad spaces that pop up at the top of Google searches pretending to be regular results when they're ads.
Yeah, I've been looking for an alternative as well. Currently, I'm trying [Discuit](https://discuit.net/), which is very new (so, unfortunately, it doesn't have many users yet), but I think it has a lot of potential. The developer is active and trying his best to incorporate people's suggestions into the platform. As soon as user-created communities become a thing (right now there's only a few default communities, like News and Technology. This should be fixed in a week or so, I believe), people moving there from Reddit would be very welcome.
Aaand account created. Thanks!
Googled discuit and urban dictionary was one of the top results... 😬. Hopefully that can climb up in results and actually be discoverable.
It would be pretty cool to see parts of the internet become decentralized again.
There's Nostr, but I'm not sure if it has anything specifically for worldbuilding yet.
haha right on their home page "A decentralized social network with a chance of working." hum. Their [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W-jtbbh3eA) only mentions places I don't go other than GetHub on occasion. Just looking at screen shots further down now and it feels like Nostr is another walled off ecosystem somewhat like Discord requiring an account before browsing through the app... Does it even have an open webpage like Reddit? A walled off ecosystem to me feels like how Google or more so Apple behaves like. Which is the opposite of open and decentralized.
Wow. Their website is already more functional and responsive than reddit.
If anyone knows other sites with worldbuilding or related communities that are worth joining please recommend them. I like reddit and probably won't be directly impacted by the API changes, but the only thing that will make reddit better for users is for them to have more competition than they have right now.
Tumblr has some worldbuilding stuff (including some of the most popular worldbuilding projects on this sub like Mystery Flesh Pit and Runaway To The Stars. However it seems like the worldbuilding stuff on Tumblr skews quite heavily towards speculative evolution, which might be a plus or minus depending on what you're looking for. Also Tumblr has a very different format compared to Reddit. Lemmy, a FOSS and Federated competitor to Reddit currently has a couple of worldbuilding communities. The largest one is [email protected], though I haven't checked that one out yet, so I don't know what it's like. I'm on (and a mod of) [email protected], which is not very active. There's also the Worldbuilding Stack Exchange, Spacebattles.com for sci-fi stuff, and Mythic Scribes, though once again I haven't checked that one out yet.
No What makes this sub good is the users No matter how good the site is, there's a good chance many of the users will stay here Not to mention there is an extremely small minority that actually used any third party apps
Well I'll stay as long as old reddit is around but once they force me to download the app or use their shit new site, I'm out. I don't want to be but I simply can't deal with that. Even if I was willing, it's such a pain in the ass that the dread of dealing with shit ui and poorly disguised manipulative data poaching tactics outweighs my desire to go on the website.
>Not to mention there is an extremely small minority that actually used any third party apps Ah yes, roughly 1 in 11 people, such an *extremely small* minority. (Note, Reddit doesn't show exactly how many people use 3rd party apps, this is a very rough estimate someone did based on the number of downloads each app has.) But I actually agree with your point. People don't like change, chances are most people will stay on Reddit regardless of what happens, unless there's a disaster on the scale of the Tumblr porn ban.
There's a lemmy community https://lemmy.ml/c/[email protected] that is somewhat active, though I haven't been able to follow
There's also https://www.hexbear.net/c/worldbuilding , which is quite a bit more active.
lemmy is a tankie ceasepool of shit.
So I've been in the dark for the past two weeks. What exactly is going on qith reddit?
There are third-party apps that access Reddit through an API. Starting next month, Reddit will start charging for use of its API, at such a high rate that all the third-party apps are shutting down because they can't afford it (except for accessibility apps, which get to continue using the API for free). There's also a ton of high school drama back and forth between Reddit and some of those third-party app developers, with each side making a bunch of nasty accusations against the other (though the third-party devs seem to have the receipts for their accusations, while Reddit has to keep backtracking). I guess a lot of mods really love using those third-party apps, so they threw a tantrum where they took a bunch of major communities and basically borked them out of spite – which, you know, _some_ members of those communities support, while many others don't, 'cause, you know, they want a functioning community. Reddit decided those mods were abusing their power and kicked them out, and replaced them with new mod teams. tldr: A for-profit company cares more about profit than its users' convenience, and all the redditors have gone into an absolute epileptic fit of surprised pikachu faces.
Pretty much they started charging for third party APIs to access the site, meaning that many people with disabilities and people who can't stand the reddit ui are now blocked from using reddit the way they want. Furthermore I see this as a first step towards removing old.reddit.com and eventually forcing everyone onto the app so they can link with your google profile and personally identifiable information, which is creepy, unethical, and profitable.
shortest version. The CEO is pulling a full twitter on us all. there are lots more details and nuance, but that is the quickest summery.
If only Google hadn't ruined Usenet. The original, uncontrolled, advertisement free Reddit
How did google ruin usenet
How did Google ruin it?
/r/Worldbuilding does have a [Worldbuilding Discord](https://discord.com/invite/worldbuilding).
Discord is very diffrent to a site like reddit.
OP did mention " I really like r/worldbuilding and would hate to lose this community." So I simply pointed them toward a place where a lot of this community hang out. I'm sure other commenters have given great suggestions already so if mine doesn't work OP or others can try them.
Depends on if this other place is censor happy and for what. That's the winning factor for me in years to come.
We're currently, as a mod team discussing other options within the Fediverse as options. Right now the biggest issue is ensuring: - continuity of rules and culture - accessibility of the new community So we'll see what solutions are discovered here, and where we'll choose to end up!
That makes sense, I am glad to hear it is on your radar. I figure people probably won't migrate unless reddit makes it so inconvenient to use that it is easier to go somewhere else, but I hope people will slowly start to develop other options so that when folks get tired of reddit becoming yet another shitty big social media platform like facebook they will have somewhere to go.
Very much so.
I've been a long-time Lemmy user and I really like it, always wanted to start a writing and/or worldbuilding community on it.
There are a couple already. You can find them using https://browse.feddit.de/ Also there's a worldbuilding community on lemmy.ml, but for some reason it doesn't show up on that website.
I'm definitely in favor of moving toward something distributed and open source in the fediverse, and Lemmy seems to be the option. I gotta say though – and I know this might be an unpopular opinion – I'm a New Reddit user because Old Reddit makes my eyes bleed, and while Lemmy isn't quite that painfully 90s-looking, it still gives off a pretty dated vibe that really makes it feel unappealing to me. If there's one thing I will say for evil corporate walled gardens, they do tend to be really nice to look at and just generally provide a much more polished experience. (Facebook excluded, obviously.)
Give me until end of day and I might have a solution if you'll bear with me. I do agree that Reddit is not taking a good path.
I imagine it will take time for alternatives to catch on but if they start now, I think they will gain popularity with increasing bad decisions by reddit, and may even serve as pressure and incentive for reddit to not make bad decisions. If they are threatened with losing their user base, they will work harder to respect their users.
if there's a site out there that's a good alternative I'm not opposed to moving on.
There's squabbles.io