Darkscribes Community

@hemiechinuss v4.1.0 does, now.

@[email protected] a Tombstone with a context makes sense, a replies collection is more of a grey area.

@hemiechinuss I've updated the support-forum plugin for v4 compatibility, it didn't need much, just a light ACP page refresh.

@[email protected] this is now an issue on the Mastodon issue tracker <img class="not-responsive emoji" src="https://community.nodebb.org/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/android/1f604.png?v=42850288b6e" title="" />

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/37730

@hemiechinuss since it's my plugin at least it's easier to do. I'll make a point of looking into it Tuesday (as Monday is a holiday)

> @hemiechinuss said:
>
> Permissions is definitely a sore spot with NodeBB. They work, but they don't work as well as on Discord where I can lock a channel to a group or even an individual and the sheer amount of permissions I can define per group or individual makes it incredibly flexible.

Oh actually NodeBB has fine-grained privileges. You're able to restrict categories by posting or viewing privileges. Privileges can be applied to user groups and individual users.

All of this is handled at the admin level in the admin control panel.

@hemiechinuss ah! You're talking about nodebb-plugin-support-forum!

If you're interested in that plugin I'm sure I can get it updated for v4. You're right in that that would be helpful from a moderation standpoint.

When you say...

> @hemiechinuss said:
>
> it has fantastic support for setting up and maintaining your community

What was there for community admins, good documentation? Onboarding support? One on one contact point?

I'd want to make some inroads into providing something like this for NodeBB admins as well.

> @hemiechinuss said:
>
> The only problem I am having with it is providing real-time dedicated (and most importantly private) support to individual users. This is something that was crucial to many communities over at Discord where you were spoiled for choice in terms of solutions to this.

Thanks for commenting! I'd love to hear more about what kind of individualized support features Discord offered.

I am not a Discord power user, so I think many of the bot enhancements and customizations I am not at all familiar with.

@[email protected] yes, I'm actively working on 4.9.0 and there will be a blog post about it soon!

As for future planning, I can put something together as well

@[email protected] not yet, but supporting ActivityPub scales exponentially relative to supporting an actual user on the forum. The activities coming in for that one user take about as much processing power as a local user using a forum, but compound exponentially when you include boosts, other responses, backfills, etc.

It all adds up a lot, and it's hard to keep under control.

Possibly more since the AP code isn't terribly optimized at the moment.

@[email protected]

We're not even two months into 2026, and yet another large social media network has done the seemingly unthinkable and instituted a policy that triggers a mass exodus.

I am of course talking about Discord's roll-out of age verification globally, across the entire site.

https://www.theverge.com/tech/875309/discord-age-verification-global-roll-out

Not only will they require age verification, Discord is also utilising AI technology to analyze your content and habits to infer your age. While not a direct privacy violation, it is at least to me nearing that sort of behaviour that one ought to be very wary of.

So here's a rehash of our ongoing pitch for you to use a forum instead of Discord

Use a forum instead of Discord!

Now that that's out of the way — why?

The standard reasons aplenty. Searchability and indexability of content. Ownership of content. No more walled gardens.

Imagine a place where you can contribute your content to, not to feed a machine, but because you want to share your knowledge and talk to other people (radical idea, I know.)

Realize too that your content can then kept secure in a place where it can be shared and celebrated, archived for future readers, and indexable by search engines so it can be discovered widely.

That same place also means you're not screaming into a void — that your every contribution adds just that little bit more to the community around it. You're not just talking in a public square, you're build a corpus of content that you can and should be proud of.

We've spent the greater part of a decade pouring our time and energy into walled gardens... for the benefit of some faceless corporation. It's high time to turn the tables around and empower yourself!

So what's the alternative? There are many such alternatives one could jump ship to. Discord has implemented many features that make it stand out in a sea of competitors. Any one of those features could be something that make it special to you. In many cases, those features cannot be easily replicated. The question you need to ask yourself is whether this constitutes a deal-breaker, or whether you are willing to give it up. Do you need custom profiles? Do you need high-definition streaming? Coloured themes?

One of the standout features of Discord is its use of a single login across all of its communities. This is their network effect. The Fediverse has its own complement to this network effect. Simply put, each user can talk to any other user on the fediverse, without impediment, without additional logins, without any barriers. This is not only the dream of the fediverse, it is its reality. We have this now, and it is worth celebrating.

So what is that place? That place is a forum. A bulletin board. That place from back in your childhood where you might've spent far too many hours talking to random people. Forums haven't gone anywhere, and they've been silently chugging along all these years. They've even kept pace with modern web technologies and apps, and NodeBB is one of them.

We offer that fully indexable, super fast forum engine wrapped up in a responsive theme for use on all of your devices. We offer extensibility via a first-class plugin and theme system so you can make your forum your own. We offer federation via ActivityPub, so your forum can talk to other forums, and we offer the simple fact that when you start your own forum, you're doing so because you want to be that community builder for yourself, not for anybody else.

Do it. Ditch Discord, set up a forum. I'll help you do it, too.

Self-host it, or give our plans (as low as $20/mo) a spin. Discounts for non-profits and charities.

@anchorite the "traditional" way to do this was via a pinned directory post

@[email protected] it sounds like it's a rotating open call so you didn't miss it! I'll be applying soon, the next deadline is 1 April

@[email protected] I had no idea this existed, I have a good idea that likely qualifies. Time to apply for the next round.....

What of those who say the niche is filled with Matrix and/or Delta?

@[email protected] @[email protected]

@[email protected] oh haha I thought I did. Forgot to paste!

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/4f05/fep-4f05.md

@[email protected] I recommend you implement my FEP which includes Tombstone behaviour