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Discussion on: For Empowering Community

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Mark Erikson

What would you say are the major differences, both conceptually and technologically, between Forem, Discourse, and any other similar-ish forum-type software?

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Ben Halpern

A big difference for us is that we're trying to provide an experience which borrows from evolving expectations of social media that keep folks coming back, and make it easier to engage with the content and discussions without having to always be engaged.

The traditional forum is still valuable, but we feel like the way folks engage, make friends, and go deeper with the newer paradigms of social media are worth trying to capture in a way to build a constructive community that scales up well.

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Ben Halpern

Technically I think a big difference is that this style of social media does more work for you to surface the right parts of the conversation. Separating signal from noise, as it were.

I think where the big players go horribly wrong is doing so with a total black box. Transparency in developing this kind of software is a huge deal.