Web forums. There are good ones. They are independent of one another. Most forums I visit are centered around some subject, so people are bonded enough to be reasonably civil even if they disagree. Most aren't big enough to require much moderation. The best one have zero rules and very little trolling, but those are usually completely devoid of political stuff, since no one wants to spoil the good thing.

I think web forums are the best discussion medium developed so far. They support long-format content. They support hypermedia. They allow for offline conversations that don't get "dated" in 2 hours. They don't put thread authors on pedestal, unlike blogs.

I've heard there are mail/news groups out there too. Haven't used one aside from newsgroup for D Programming Language, though.

I guess maybe forums feel a bit too heavy duty with all of the additional user stuff built into the stream of replies instead of having to click them.

What if HN didn’t show a number of votes and all the topics ranked based on invisible votes? I wonder if a system that’s more simple like that would carry over to forums to make them feel more modern but true to their roots?

Voting systems create a lot of bad incentives. They encourage groupthink and filter bubbles. They discourage long-running conversations. I haven't felt that boards are "slow" if there is reasonable amount of new threads and posts per day.

The usual trouble with forums is that a lot of admins don't understand how to split one up into boards. They either create way too many, and those sit empty, or not enough, and then it's hard to keep track of conversations.

Maintaining the optimal number of boards and optimal average thread size are keys towards a healthy forum that doesn't seem empty, or overwhelming.

Twitter is full of hatred. People who disagree with you will threaten you and try to publicly shame you. Someone takes something out of context, then shares it with hundreds/thousands of other like-minded people and attempts to get them all to target you.

Facebook is full of ignorance. Doesn't matter what you say, some ill informed person will speak over you and refute your points. FB is absolutely the worst for this. The public posts about controversial issues is loaded with ignorant people spouting nonsense over others.

Reddit is full of downvote and report abusers. If someone disagrees with you, they and their friends will downvote your comment until it collapses due to the negative vote threshold. The more extremist ones will report every single thing you say and attempt to get you banned.

These sites also have no recourse for abuse. Once you are banned, it is next to impossible to get it overturned.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/31/17801404/mastodon-harassm...