I administer a Discourse instance for a nationwide member-led, member-funded organization with about 200 chapters across the country. Our forum is the only closed communication space available to all members, so a lot of our historical documents and resource materials are available there, and it’s the only place to access this information since it is behind a login and made members-only.
Consequently, we have a fair number of users who join the forum in order to access this information, or who are curious about the discussion, who are not at all used to forums and how to navigate them. For the most part, these users have only ever been exposed to social media and the dreaded algorithm, and having content served to them in a way to maximize engagement, good or bad (usually bad, let’s be real).
Something I’ve been thinking about a lot, and I’m wondering if either of you have thoughts on it, are the obligations we have as users to curate our experiences on a forum rather than relying on others to feed content to us. Forums offer a firehose of information, and it’s all laid bare - and while admins and devs can help make navigation easier, it really is up to users to decide for themselves what they want and don’t want to see.
As more and more people are becoming disenchanted with corporate social media but don’t have familiarity with forums, how do we more gently onboard these folks to this concept? I think I’m asking more in the philosophical or abstract sense, rather than a specific list of features.