People yearn for how the internet felt 15-20 years ago — a wilder place where you could meet kindred spirits

Farcaster is the closest thing I’ve found to that experience now and I suspect that’s why so many of us are compelled to be here

I'm GenX and I've been online since 1993. I remember those early heady days of the internet with great fondness, and I agree that Farcaster is the closest thing to that experience. That's one of the reasons I love it here.

Gotta admit I miss old-school phpBB discussion forums and "webrings" of bloggers, too. Made most of my IRL friends that way. Can't help but wish FC channels had a similar vibe.

Word-Slinger-in-Chief /slowcore-hq | Senior Editor | GenX eldergoth | dark ambient music nerd | contemplative animist /blxstonesnctuary 🏳‍🌈

Stay Curious // iixii // Head of Crypto at https://www.lazertechnologies.com/  // Prev: CoinDesk, Roc Nation // based @basedevo

Good question. A few ideas for now (could be a long list!)

- skilled moderators and curators who care about building real communities 
- a dedicated space for channel rules
- ample space for long-form writing
- tools for deep browsing: ways to surface, revive, and continue previous convos, and draw new people in
- threads that preserve conversational flow and invite people to linger or read at their leisure, rather than burying everything quickly in algo feeds

Slowcore HQ

There are some, yes, but honestly I haven't been paying close attention to channels as defined spaces/communities for awhile because they've been in limbo ever since Merkle decided to deprioritize them.

You're absolutely right that it's a lot of work to do them well. I don't blame anyone for not wanting to put in that level of effort when there's no clarity about what will become of channels in the long term.

A few of us put in lots of work to make /slowcore-hq well-moderated and well-curated, and I think most channel members would say we succeeded. We'd love to revive it, but we'll have to wait until we have what we need to do it well.

Great ideas! Are there any channels today that you think are well moderated/curated?

I’ve wanted to host/improve a channel but it’s a lot of work to do well and not very rewarding with the lack of discoverability/growth prospects