Retiring the Biohack.me Forums
Earlier this year we posted about migrating the forums, going to Discord and updating the wiki. No issues were raised so we started to move forward.
Biohack.me 2023 Update
Initially we talked about migrating our forums from Vanilla software to Discourse. Reasons included Vanilla's reduction in support for their open source version (talked about in their forums https://open.vanillaforums.com/ ), the poor search quality, and the lack of mobile/app options.
Admins have looked at the scope for migration and maintenance. There will be significant time, effort and money needed to migrate, and even then it might not be possible.
The forums have been slowing down for some time while communication has been ramping up in various chat programs. There is a small trickle of folks still registering, but very few people are posting.
New Proposal
We should meet people where they are and not build where they are not. Doing that would include:
1. Putting the forums in a "read-only" archive mode
2. Restructuring the wiki and pull the useful information from the forums into the wiki
3. Migrate known Slack and Discord instances to a new Discord instance for biohackers
- The Dangerous discord community is looking to migrate to a new community as well, this would be a good opportunity to bring folks together instead of splintering further
4. Start regular communication on the biohack.me socials
5. Change the front page of biohack.me to focus on offering resources and send people to Discord to reach the community.
We don't want to make big decisions like this without reaching out to the community. We'd like your input about the changes.
We're also interested if you have any suggestions for the Discord name, the current frontrunner is Biohacking Digital.
Comments
Discord has had some server instability issues, but I think it'd still be worthwhile.
i would still like a migration to Discourse so its self hosted and not dependent on Discords server and TOS.
There will be significant time, effort and money needed to migrate, and even then it might not be possible.
So it might be possible?
I could increase my patreon monthy payment to like 10-15$ if that helps with migrating to Discourse
Dont get me wrong, i love the idea to take the community over to discord but i would also like to still have this forum around to not be bound to one platform that is controlled by some weird giant tech company.
Discord is for people who don't like being able to search very well through threads.
Discord is a chat room.
Discord is great if people are just going to be biohacking cheerleaders, but good luck posting and following progress reports and technical posts.
Just install an open source forum like phpBB or what-have-you, don't stifle research by moving a useable, searchable forum instance into a chat room.
The biggest problem is people can't keep caring for an aging forum that is barely used for free. Security and up keep are not time or effort free. This is pushing to free alternatives, like Slack and discord.
If you believe that "a open source forum like phpBB" you can take write the project in detail and look for people to build it, and run it. The other organizers here might perfectly join in and help.
I agree with your previous points and I'm sure most of us agree with them Discord is hard to navigate and following projects, but the problem is cost.