Both here and on reddit communities/subreddits, especially big ones, is a difficult place to hold a discussion on the topic of that community. Take for example technology, I could enjoy to discuss anything from SR-IOV to maglev trains. But the technology subs are filled with business news of companies run by eccentric billionaires. Even when the news article is a somewhat interesting topic many "news" site are so filled with ads and autoplay videos I close them immediately.
I would enjoy seeing what other people have on there their mind, and see it bring interesting discussions. Instead all these communities drown in posts of links to news site. And the comment-section on those type of post isn't the right place for a "philosophical" discussions that would otherwise be on topic for that sub/community, but exactly align with topic of that post or news article.
Some old fashion webforum have a separate subforum-section dedicated to posting links to external sites, leaving that place open to actual discussion. Reddit have flairs, but few people use them. So still the problems remain that text post would drown in the hundreds of link posts, leaving the text-post empty.
What are your thoughts on this?
I hope this isn't too much negativity from my part. I would only like to see something better than what we have now.
The way I understood websites like these is they are meant to be link aggregators which would imply that the entire page would be full of links on that topic and the discussion would be about those articles or links in general.
Yes, link aggregation is one of the main feature of reddit. And I guess it's a main feature here as well. But another feature on both sites is also the text-post that can be used to promote discussion among users. But they are so few and far between they drown in all the post with links to new-site of less than good quality.
Of course there are webforums, but the one that are still active are usually single topic webforums. Like for example windows 10 forums, or a rc-helicopter/remote-drone forum. This place is a much better place to discuss a wide range of topics inside the correct community, anything from gardening, to politics, to power electronics. That's why I would enjoy a common place in the fediverse to meet people :)