# Are forums limited to gamers and tech communities?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-forums-limited-to-gamers-and-tech-communities/65829>\
**Category:** Community Building\
**Created:** [2017年七月7日 19:43 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-forums-limited-to-gamers-and-tech-communities/65829 "2017-07-07T19:43:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 14

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**Author:** ![sujato](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/sujato/32/114616_2.png) [@sujato](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sujato)\
**Post date:** [2017年七月10日 01:07 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-forums-limited-to-gamers-and-tech-communities/65829/14 "2017-07-10T01:07:39Z")

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Hi Jason,

I set up a Discourse community some time ago to discuss Buddhist texts:

> **[Discuss & Discover](https://discourse.suttacentral.net/)**
>
> Early Buddhist texts, translations, and parallels

This was a new forum, so it doesn’t encounter some of the issues you mentioned. In addition, we deliberately chose this approach because we want a “loose coupling” with the main site, which hosts texts and translations. We’ve done this by building our own custom plugin that links the forum with the main site.

However, the basic problem of encouraging diversity is still an issue. I raised the issue some time ago, specifically when it comes to encouraging gender diversity:

> [@Discourse, gender, and online forums](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-gender-and-online-forums/48317):
>
> I’m running a Discourse forum on Buddhism, and we have noticed that there are few women participating. As the forum runner (and a bloke) I’ve tried to encourage women to participate, and ensured that the moderators were all women. However the disparity is still there. I haven’t analyzed numbers in detail, but it seems as if the disparity is both in people using the forum, and in willingness to participate. Here at meta, it seems as if there’s same issue, and as far as I know it’s never been di…

Despite starting a conversation on the issue, we haven’t seen much progress.

We have also been in communication with the Buddhist trans community, and have implemented some of their suggestions, such as an ability to define your own gender and form of address when signing up.

Still, I think it is a very real and ongoing problem, for us, and I suspect for forums generally. I’m not sure if Discourse is any better or worse than others in this respect. But I do think it is something that should be taken seriously, as we’d all love to see Discourse succeed broadly.

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