There's something /off/ about discourse that I can't put my finger on.
In the past (10-15 years ago) I remember using game forums (e.g., tribal wars, cs2d) and it didn't feel awful to use, even though I only had dial-up or 1mbps connection.
Today, some recent communities that I have visited using discourse are manjaro, elixir, purescript, and grim dawn. Across all of these I noticed that the initial time to render feels so slow, then the subsequent fetches using infinite scroll just sucks.
I've also visited some forums recently that do not use discourse, like the arch forum and some maplestory private server, and I don't feel the awfulness that discourse invokes.
For me the issue is that there's too much white space. I find the website uncomfortable to look at because the screen is mostly white and very little anything is visible.
I would liken it to the effect of being in a room with a very tall ceiling, it feels intimidating. This is why they built churches with high ceilings.
The website also gives me vibes of being a question and answer site like stack exchange, rather than a community.
In the past (10-15 years ago) I remember using game forums (e.g., tribal wars, cs2d) and it didn't feel awful to use, even though I only had dial-up or 1mbps connection.
Today, some recent communities that I have visited using discourse are manjaro, elixir, purescript, and grim dawn. Across all of these I noticed that the initial time to render feels so slow, then the subsequent fetches using infinite scroll just sucks.
I've also visited some forums recently that do not use discourse, like the arch forum and some maplestory private server, and I don't feel the awfulness that discourse invokes.