A rumor says it will happen sooner than we think. There’s many ways a move would benefit both the forums and its members.
The cost of running an independent community site is heavy, and the site need to expand. Facebook is a platform that already scales.
Another benefit to both guests and members is Facebook’s wide established user base where many users have web tech issues that would be better met if Sitepoint was on the platform for easy access. And SPF will have a wider audience than it could ever have on its own,
Sitepoint could finally get access to knowledgeable developers. They built Facebook, they use it too, and surely they will help out our own questions. The switch to Discourse long ago was a dificult task but then SPF was on its own, this is different.
And most urgent, at Facebook there’s easy access to much more personal information of every user visiting the community. That would make tailoring the user experience much more friendly, even for first time visitors, e.g. bring SEO issues to the top and push the accessibility department to the bottom.
One argument in the negotiations is that SPF staff could help Facebook in their strive to fight fake information. The need for Facebook is to find a way to weed out bad web tech advices and advisors that makes them look unproffesional.
The hardest question seems to be how much Facebook is ready to share of the wealthy ad revenue SPF will bring them. But that wont block the deal much longer. As of April 1st 2021, SPF will be moving anytime this month. Only staff departments will be left alone until the move is complete.
When the move goes ahead I think it will be detrimental because Facebook’s search is like “smoke and mirrors” . It is impossible to find specific information, even searching for a name is hopeless. Numerous results are shown but it is impossible to add additional information such as where they live.
Is it possible to approach TikTok instead? They seem to have a more vibrant community than Facebook,. Perhaps we could get both companies to offer a bid.
We have our own Forum on Facebook. But. As soon as it is possible, we are planning to move away from this mess. It is completely useless as a knowledge source. Hard to find older posts and search.
Facebook is for good for cat and cute baby photos or similar. And it is a good way to avoid younger people. IMHO.
Sitepoint is way better in it current format. Speaking from my own experience. Do not ruin by moving to Facebook. Please.
I use quite a lot of forums, and I use Facebook. I use some forums that are based on quite old forum software. The worst of these forums makes it much easier to find old posts and threads than Facebook does.
The worst thing about Facebook for this kind of thing? No quoting. Unless you can reply immediately after the comment you’re referring to, there’s no context to your reply. And even if you can, FB might randomly change the order in which it displays the posts, or (at the moment) decide to switch to what it considers are the “most relevant” posts, so you miss half the story. On a forum like this, very frequently there may be multiple points that need to be addressed individually, and without quoting that would be a nightmare. As would posting code blocks.
No, please resist moving to Facebook as long as possible. Sure, have a FB group if you want to. We’ve done this in a couple of classic-car related clubs I’m a member of, and it’s great for finding people because there are a lot who are on FB anyway, but would never consider joining a forum.
FB is good for making it easy for people to join, find and post, but it’s not a good replacement for a forum, especially a technical forum like this one.
I’m just waiting for the full integration phase, where you’ll only be able to respond to questions if you’ve first added the OP as a friend and given them access to your profile.
As of April 1st 2021, SPF will be moving anytime this month. Only staff departments will be left alone until the move is complete.
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