Any plans to make web stories for discourse?

AI-generated summary

The discussion explores the feasibility and desirability of implementing “web stories” in Discourse. Jay91 suggests that adding stories with admin-controlled permissions could be beneficial. However, Falco explains that the standard for web stories relies heavily on AMP, which is losing momentum, making a native implementation less appealing. He also notes that the fleeting, FOMO-driven nature of stories does not align with Discourse’s core focus.

Decorbuz agrees, calling the trend of adding stories to every platform “ridiculous” and noting that publishers are moving away from AMP. Instead, they highlight volanar’s suggestion for personalized Activity Streams, which would allow users to customize their browsing experience by sorting content by unread status, author, time, tags, and follows. Decorbuz finds this resource valuable for an ongoing investigation into using Discourse as a social media platform. Damian_Boon asks if this custom activity stream is what was intended, linking to a related discussion on building a scrolling platform. Meanwhile, WorldIsMine expresses strong interest in the stories feature, offering to fund its development if possible.

So, today most of the services put in use stories for their users and i believe would be a good idea if this happened to discourse as well.


Also, this should have good tools to be enough for admins to control it.
for example, with ability to allow the users add stories, or specific users or only admins.

6 Likes

I investigated this a bit and it had some potential. However, the “standard” for web stories was 100% built on AMP. And with AMP going down, at least in the hype cycle, it put that standard in a harder place.

Obviously we could come up with our own format, which would be only usable from inside the instance where it lives, but there weren’t enough incentives for us to pursue that yet. Not to mention the whole FOMO-based engagement of information that disappears in 24h is not really our main focus.

12 Likes

I think personal Activity Streams would be of great value. So that each user can customize Activity Streams for themselves and receive role-based content (Customize your browsing experience that’s unique to you. Sort by unread, author, time period, tags, follows and more).
Here’s an example:
https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/how-to-use-ips-community-suite/content-discovery/activity-streams-r69/

5 Likes

It’s become a massive joke online that everything must have “stories” built-in. In my honest opinion, it’s a bit ridiculous to be stuffing “stories” into platforms that don’t really need them. They make sense in Twitter and Instagram, but not Discourse.

And it’s slowly being abandoned by publishers…
https://www.wsj.com/articles/publishers-move-to-abandon-google-supported-mobile-web-initiative-11645725640

Nice find! I’ll include that as a resource for this project I’ve been investigating. :+1:

4 Likes

I would love to see this happen, perhaps even fund it if I can pull it off budget-wise.

Is something like this what you mean?

1 Like