Or another term which is more descriptive. This is the first thing people see when they type in Lemmy

  • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    3 days ago

    it is perfectly descriptive. It is not a forum. I wish it was, but those went pretty much extinct. If they called it a forum it’d be lying

  • BubblyRomeo@thebrainbin.org
    0·
    4 days ago

    Doesn’t fucking matter! Lemmy is created by hardcore tankies and genocide deniers Dessalines and Nutomic because they fucking got banned from Reddit! Lemmy deserves to die! It doesn’t need new users!

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
    0·
    4 days ago

    Forums update threads by bumping, so threads from ten years ago can still be on the front page as long as they are active.

    The term “link aggregator” was made to differentiate websites that are designed for threads to rapidly decay and be replaced by a constant flow of new content. If you tried to federate lemmy with a forum it wouldn’t really work.

    Maybe there’s another term that could be used, but there needs to be a way to differentiate the two styles.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
      0·
      4 days ago

      We also do have a forum sort on here, that allows infinite necrobumping (not limited to 2 days like the Hot sorts), called New Comments.

      But ya I agree link aggregator is a good enough descriptor for what lemmy is: a place to post links to communities, and comment on them.

    • communism@lemmy.ml
      0·
      4 days ago

      Agree. “Link aggregator” is understood to mean “reddit-like” without having to refer to a specific link aggregator as a point of reference. “Forum” is a different though similar thing. And a lot of the lemmy communities I subscribe to are literally link aggregators like people link to articles, git repos, etc to draw people’s attention to, although I can see the issue with it referring to text posts too.

    • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
      0·
      4 days ago

      There literally are forums with ActivityPub support. Bumping is not some magic feature of forums. If you sort on Lemmy by activity you can get exactly the same behaviour.

      And bumping is even often frowned upon because it pollutes active discussions. It’s just people abusing how those forums sort threads.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
        0·
        4 days ago

        If you sort on Lemmy by activity you can get exactly the same behaviour.

        Point. That’s not the default behavior, though, and most users aren’t using the site that way - and I’d argue the site isn’t designed the be used that way, and that’s why most users don’t use that functionality.

        And bumping is even often frowned upon because it pollutes active discussions. It’s just people abusing how those forums sort threads.

        Not what I meant. I don’t mean people making worthless “bump” comments (that often just gets people banned) I mean that forums bump up threads that get new comments.

        I use forums, and they’re just different.

    • geneva_convenience@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      4 days ago

      The term link aggregator makes me think of a search engine. A forum is based on user content. Forums generally make lots of new threads too.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
        0·
        4 days ago

        Lemmy posts are still designed to decay and fall off the front page. The posts last longer if they have participation but the only way to make something last a long time is to sticky the post so it doesn’t decay.

        Forums aren’t like that. Forum threads are meant to stay around as long as people bump them and they can be ancient, with hundreds of pages of comments, and the thread still keeps getting bumped because new content is added to the thread.

        Also, the way comments are organized is different. Our comments are threaded so we can have a conversation between us in a comment chain, but forum comments are sequential. The comments section of every thread would look way different if it was a forum.

        Forums are just structurally different. If you don’t like “link aggregator” that’s understandable, it’s actually not very descriptive, but you still need to be able to differentiate between forums and whatever-the-heck this space is.

  • Semperverus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    Lemmy was built as a clone of Reddit, but federated.

    Reddit is and has always been called a link aggregator.

    Lemmy technically aggregates links to things as its primary function, and then allows us to talk about those links.

    • geneva_convenience@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      4 days ago

      The term “link aggregator” is not descriptive of any function. Links are posted on any medium including chatrooms like Discord.

      Users can also make posts, such as this one, which do not contain external links. Thus this is a forum.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
      0·
      4 days ago

      I think link aggregator is fine, and most descriptive of what lemmy is. Its a place to post links to communities, and allows for comments on those links.

      • geneva_convenience@lemmy.mlOP
        0·
        4 days ago

        Nobody knows what the term means. Even Wikipedia doesn’t describe Reddit as a link aggregator. For potential new users this is a massive turn off. Unless we want Lemmy to stay a niche community it needs to accommodate to layman terms.

        Most people who land on the join Lemmy page don’t even know what the Fediverse is.