Ironically posted on lemmy

I actually just launched a PHPBB forum for specific interests in regards to the indie web, building websites, and sharing random banter (among a few other things). I find Reddit and Lemmy to be useful for seeing what's going on in the world overall, and Discord has mostly just been annoying ever since its launch, and forums seem like a good answer to recreating actual communities. And if there are more people who feel this way, maybe they'll make a comeback (because they definitely haven't just started to be affected by corporations attempting to centralize everyone to one thing).

Me when I'm fucking banned from some Linux .org forum for no reason (did not read or make a post or even login)

ermmmmm contact the web admins 🤓 how about no?

Forums are extremely unfriendly and need a complete redesign if they hope people will use them

Are there good alternatives?

I feel like forums really fell behind the times, with shitty threading systems and awkward text formatting interfaces and the horror that is bbcode.

Meanwhile discord handles image embedding gracefully, with markdown formatting and previews.

What’s the next-gen forum system that’s keeping up with modern times? Is there a part of the fediverse that meets this?

Discourse seems the most modern, but not sure if it is open, let alone federated.

Lemmy almost fills it but tends to be too ephemeral and doesn’t handle multiple forums/channels for one broad topic.