You know, stuff that you would have originally asked in a forum about that specific topic, before they (the forums) all died off for no reason.
It's also mostly async, but synchronous enough that we can have a reasonable discussion without it taking two weeks.
I really, really miss the abundance of forums. The only thing like them left these days with any sort of population is subreddits. There are still forums dedicated to niche topics, but they're rare.
At one time your or my question would have been indexed into a search engine. Now it's mostly blogspam.
I think there is a lot of value to be unlocked if you could find a way to index discord channels (would probably have to work with discord on this due to their terms).
Of course slack and discords incentives aren't nessecarily aligned to want to do that either.
Whatever happened to spectrum.chat? I know, GitHub killed it. But the real question is why no one else seems to be able to build an indexable chat platform?
So most of this would boil down to RTFM, except it would be in published academic books or videos of "experts" discussing it. It would be up to you to define what an expert is. Choose carefully.
Ah, so we're at this old problem again (The you-need-to-know-the-right-people-problem). That didn't take long. How do I find experts that care about problem?
How do I find experts that care about helping a person they have no connection to with a problem for no reward?
There’s lots of easy to access experts on every subject, however, you’re asking for their time for free: that’s a very different proposition.
If you’re happy to pay, just tweet or post on LinkedIn asking for an expert and offer to compensate them fairly, you’ll have offers in no times.
I’d argue the problem is not that the forums are gone, it’s that people aren’t looking to help for free when there’s so many other ways to put value out into the world — better run a podcast about your favourite subject than answer emails about it.
What probably works best "outside" is writing a blog post with your problem, and throwing that into HN/Reddit for discussion.
For things that are too vaguely defined for that, I’ll bring it up at the local “Linux” user group, which in practice is just a nerd social group with an active group chat and biweekly gatherings.
- Seeking a Paradigm Shift: What is an article or essay that you have read that caused a dramatic change in your thinking / perspective / life? [2]
- How to become a person who just goes out and does things? You: a person who goes out and does things, just because. Things like hiking, going to the farmer's market, casual day trips to nearby places, checking out local events, etc. Nothing in particular really, just things outside the house. What does your thought process and mindset look like? How do you decide when to go out and what things to do? How do you keep track of what events are going on in your locale so you remember to go to them? How do you trick yourself into going places when you are feeling ho-hum about it? [3]
There's a wide gamut of questions. I've asked some random things before and gotten good responses.
[0]: https://ask.metafilter.com
[1]: https://ask.metafilter.com/home/popularfavorite12
[2]: https://ask.metafilter.com/354882/Seeking-a-Paradigm-Shift
[3]: https://ask.metafilter.com/355442/How-to-become-a-person-who...
