A sound-off post

[rm_steele]

For the most part, I'm just curious to gauge the activity here, how often people check it. Seems like no real posts have been made since at least the 21st, and I wouldn't be surprised if the last post is the reply on the "This place is about to change" discussion post.

I only found that this existed through the Surface monitor video's pinned comment, and think it would be cool to have reason to visit a forum, as someone who grew up past their prime. Unfortunately, it seems like this one is not at a high point, but I'm curious to know how much people check it, even if they don't have anything to post.

[MattKC]

Admittedly, this place isn't super active at the moment for two reasons:

1. I haven't really invested much into promoting this place. It's been mentioned at the end of a handful of videos and (mostly) on stream before, but there's never been any particular push to make it a primary gathering place for viewers. This is because:
2. As much as I like forums and want to see more forum-like places on the internet again, I've come to the conclusion that simply winding the clock back isn't the way to do it. I think we can revitalize what made older websites good without throwing away everything that makes new websites good. Unfortunately, this is a work in progress. I'm not a fan of any of the current forum implementations and none of them quite do what I want. But this is something I'm actively exploring in the background.

I still welcome people hanging out here and try to check in when I can, but yeah it's all a little dormant right now.

[ROllerozxa]

Nice to see you show up again.

Honestly just being consistent with linking to the forum under each video, and creating a thread for each video that can act as a secondary comments section, would probably garner some consistent attention on the forum. Personally I don't really care to comment on YouTube videos nowadays - far too often when I have tried to comment on a video, when I check the comment from another channel it has been thrown into the spam filter and nobody will ever see the comment (my comments may just be de facto shadowbanned on YouTube, I don't know).

YouTube comments sections are just mostly screaming into the void while posting on a forum feels much more worth of my time. Posts on forums are usually of higher quality and for that reason I also know that resident lurkers will all line up to read what I say, which makes me feel heard and makes me happy. And many people writing posts and being happy makes a community.

I'm interested to see what your upcoming plan for the forum is. I'm hopeful that you're not gonna replace it with a Discourse instance, at least.