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> discussion has collapsed I used to be extremely active on Elixir Forum. It was the main place I would interact with people online, and HN was a bit of a dis

> discussion has collapsed I used to be extremely active on Elixir Forum. It was the main place I would interact with people online, and HN was a bit of a distant second. Now HN usage has spiked a bit and I now have a... ugh... reddit account. There is still some decent discussion there, but it's largely library announcements (many vibe coded), some blog posts (that are often about AI), and news posts. Questions about the language itself have, unsurprisingly, pretty much completely halted. I think around a month ago someone asked a syntax question -- it was a bit of a jump scare!

ch4s3 16d ago
It doesn't help that the default page changed from the form to whatever the fuck it is now that requires multiple steps to see comments.
- sodapopcan 16d ago
  I'm not a huge fan of the changes myself, but discussion collapse was in full effect before the change (and had started happening long before it). But ya, I think I agree that it doesn't help. The change was made in good faith in order to try and boost it, but I can't objectively say if it's good or not since I always skip and go straight to forums.elixirforum.com now. My biggest annoyance is that I now have to type `fo<enter>` instead of `e<enter>` in my address bar to get there.
  - ch4s3 16d ago
    I agree in general, but I suspect that the change adds friction to commenting in a way that is counter productive.
- troupo 16d ago
  I still have no idea how to use that abomination of a page. Any obvious clicks lead to some weird states and places that are completely unobvious. I need to get to the list of topics in a forum, or to comments on a post damnit
  - ch4s3 16d ago
    I'd complain over there but it's historically been pointless.
- techpression 16d ago
  Second this, some of the worst UX I’ve seen in a long time and a classical example of why you shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken.
- plainOldText 16d ago
  I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks the new default page is absolutely horrible in terms of usability. I've noticed less comments on posts, but this is probably also the result of more AI-assisted Elixir projects being announced, not just the change in UI/UX.
chantepierre 16d ago
Hey, post author here, just to say that I've appreciated your presence on the forum a lot since I started using Elixir. You are one of those who brought a warm tone there :)
- sodapopcan 16d ago
  Oh Lucas! Ha, I searched your name on the forum before even reading the article but did so hastily, a thread for a talk which I guess you commented on came up, and I thought you were the guy from the talk and was like, "Nope, don't know him" and closed the page. Anyway, thanks, and back at you, and hi, and nice article :)
jamauro 16d ago
It was a nice place pre-LLMs. One of the better communities imo.
- sodapopcan 15d ago
  I think so, though I didn't spend any near that amount of time on other language forums, though I guess that's saying something. It's cool having José, Chris, and other big community leaders participate often. Same goes for frequent participating from the Erlang core team, in fact I think it got to the point where we'd hear from them even more often! But ya, was a fun place. I loved reading it, I love helping on it and the more general chats. I even made some friends and found a job through it!
arodenmaxxing 16d ago
there is a running joke among a part of the community that goes something like "0 days since last persistent workflow orchestration library announcement". I feel like Elixir community is a bit too nice to call out obvious slop (some folks straight out post LLM-generated blog posts every week or so), so instead we could focus on elevating human effort. Recent Oban release for example had a note that all the docs a human-written. We should praise this!
- sodapopcan 16d ago
  > there is a running joke among a part of the community that goes something like "0 days since last persistent workflow orchestration library announcement". Ha, I missed this! I rarely click on any topics anymore, but I have noticed a trend of similar-sounding libraries being posted. Other than one person whose blog I already read a bit, I don't click on any of the blog posts anymore. It's not a conscious decision, I just open scan the topics, usually nothing looks interesting and a close the tab.
  - arodenmaxxing 16d ago
    I feel you! I still try to share/comment on human-written posts even if they're not fully up my alley. Pangram extensions helps a lot with that. But yeah, in general it's just crickets and a buzzing noise of tokens floating around
    - sodapopcan 15d ago
      > Pangram extensions Was not aware of these. Thanks!
- cpursley 16d ago
  Ha, I feel attacked: https://github.com/agoodway/pgflow https://github.com/agoodway/pgflow ^ this one is pretty cool, pgmq does most of the work.
- sorentwo 15d ago
  Glad somebody noticed and appreciated that! Human written long form content is extremely important (to us, but I think for the world). Every single email and issue reply is also 100% human authored. People deserve to interact with humans online, especially when they have reached out for help and real interaction.

ch4s3 16d ago

It doesn't help that the default page changed from the form to whatever the fuck it is now that requires multiple steps to see comments.

sodapopcan 16d ago
I'm not a huge fan of the changes myself, but discussion collapse was in full effect before the change (and had started happening long before it). But ya, I think I agree that it doesn't help. The change was made in good faith in order to try and boost it, but I can't objectively say if it's good or not since I always skip and go straight to forums.elixirforum.com now. My biggest annoyance is that I now have to type `fo<enter>` instead of `e<enter>` in my address bar to get there.
- ch4s3 16d ago
  I agree in general, but I suspect that the change adds friction to commenting in a way that is counter productive.
troupo 16d ago
I still have no idea how to use that abomination of a page. Any obvious clicks lead to some weird states and places that are completely unobvious. I need to get to the list of topics in a forum, or to comments on a post damnit
- ch4s3 16d ago
  I'd complain over there but it's historically been pointless.
techpression 16d ago
Second this, some of the worst UX I’ve seen in a long time and a classical example of why you shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken.
plainOldText 16d ago
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks the new default page is absolutely horrible in terms of usability. I've noticed less comments on posts, but this is probably also the result of more AI-assisted Elixir projects being announced, not just the change in UI/UX.

chantepierre 16d ago

Hey, post author here, just to say that I've appreciated your presence on the forum a lot since I started using Elixir. You are one of those who brought a warm tone there :)

sodapopcan 16d ago
Oh Lucas! Ha, I searched your name on the forum before even reading the article but did so hastily, a thread for a talk which I guess you commented on came up, and I thought you were the guy from the talk and was like, "Nope, don't know him" and closed the page. Anyway, thanks, and back at you, and hi, and nice article :)

jamauro 16d ago

It was a nice place pre-LLMs. One of the better communities imo.

sodapopcan 15d ago
I think so, though I didn't spend any near that amount of time on other language forums, though I guess that's saying something. It's cool having José, Chris, and other big community leaders participate often. Same goes for frequent participating from the Erlang core team, in fact I think it got to the point where we'd hear from them even more often! But ya, was a fun place. I loved reading it, I love helping on it and the more general chats. I even made some friends and found a job through it!

arodenmaxxing 16d ago

there is a running joke among a part of the community that goes something like "0 days since last persistent workflow orchestration library announcement". I feel like Elixir community is a bit too nice to call out obvious slop (some folks straight out post LLM-generated blog posts every week or so), so instead we could focus on elevating human effort. Recent Oban release for example had a note that all the docs a human-written. We should praise this!

sodapopcan 16d ago
> there is a running joke among a part of the community that goes something like "0 days since last persistent workflow orchestration library announcement". Ha, I missed this! I rarely click on any topics anymore, but I have noticed a trend of similar-sounding libraries being posted. Other than one person whose blog I already read a bit, I don't click on any of the blog posts anymore. It's not a conscious decision, I just open scan the topics, usually nothing looks interesting and a close the tab.
- arodenmaxxing 16d ago
  I feel you! I still try to share/comment on human-written posts even if they're not fully up my alley. Pangram extensions helps a lot with that. But yeah, in general it's just crickets and a buzzing noise of tokens floating around
  - sodapopcan 15d ago
    > Pangram extensions Was not aware of these. Thanks!
cpursley 16d ago
Ha, I feel attacked: https://github.com/agoodway/pgflow https://github.com/agoodway/pgflow ^ this one is pretty cool, pgmq does most of the work.
sorentwo 15d ago
Glad somebody noticed and appreciated that! Human written long form content is extremely important (to us, but I think for the world). Every single email and issue reply is also 100% human authored. People deserve to interact with humans online, especially when they have reached out for help and real interaction.