Instances or networks that focus on forums and conversations instead of link aggregation?
It seems like any platform that features link aggregation is soon overrun by bots and self-promoters trying to drive traffic, and pages and pages of link posts versus pages and pages of people talking.
Are there any lemmy instances or other defederated networks that focus on Q&A, niche communities, and people conversing, instead?
I always thought there was no big difference between link aggregators and forums, and that the first is more an extension of the other, at least it felt like it in my experience. What would you say really sets them apart?
Mastodon is much more this way than Lemmy, in my experience. I honestly don't know too many Lemmy communities that are that way, but kbin / mbin will let you interact with Mastodon users on a chat basis in addition to Lemmy communities.
This thread is a great example of the big downside of being on a smaller instance: OP was seemingly unaware and unable to subscribe to many cool communities and was stuck with the "defaults".
Perhaps admins and mods of smaller instances could be doing more to educate their users about how to find stuff in the wider Threadiverse?
When we had the big migration last year everyone quickly learned how to search for a community, how you had to do it twice for it to show up etc. But now it's no longer a common topic of conversation so newer users don't realise, and to make matters worse every single mobile app seems to handle search differently.
Is there some kind of "so, you're on a small instance, here's what that means" type of resource already hanging around somewhere?
Usenet still exists, and there are tons of old fashioned forums online, some of them good. Lemmy has its attractions but it is trying to be Reddit and maybe succeeding a little too well.
I have thought for a while that the next “reddit” should be usenet with a client having advanced filtering, local scoring, etc. Maybe where the client reports to/reads from a shared spam database.
I use gnus.el for usenet, which already has those filtering and scoring features. And Usenet has had spam filtering since the 1990s. So I think you are saying the next reddit would just be usenet.
Depends what topics you are looking for. They tend to focus on particular niches. Example: home-barista.com, for coffee nerds. I'm not a regular but have posted there a few times.
I noticed that beehaw.org on average has more "normal posts" (not links) than other instances. I found communities there for the topics you are interested in like technology, politics and parenting. It's not completely link-free, but I'd say there are fewer links than elsewhere. That's the best I could find on the Fediverse. Maybe someone else has better suggestions.
The thing is that people tend to post links as you can't really force people to post if they don't want to (or if they critical mass isn't there). I'm guilty of that in the !parenting@lemmy.world for instance, as I don't have kids yet, I can only but post articles.
It’s been invite-only for all five and a half years I’ve been there so I wouldn’t expect that to ever change. Fortunately it’s really easy to get an invite code. Just post in the official subreddit and the mods or another user will give you a code. It’s just enough of a minor roadblock that it helps filter out bad actors.
Personally I prefer Lemmy. But if you’re like OP and looking for conversation focused alternatives tildes is worth joining.
It's pretty heavily curated, but it's where I go for non-bot discussion on any variety of topics. Sorted hierarchically, and they keep out the riff raff pretty actively.
I originally wanted to join tildes, but I never could get an invite. so I just kinda abandoned it and moved to lemmy instead.
they seem to go more with a walled garden approach and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that kind of environment. but I'm sure it works well for those who participate.
Tildes is pretty good. Metafilter.com is still going strong and I believe is open registration as well, both are heavily curated but have good conversations to peruse.