I found this article from earlier this year: https://blog.discourse.org/2025/04/discourse-and-the-fediverse/
However, I haven't come across that much content from Discourse platforms over here on Lemmy/Piefed. Is there more work to do with the plugins, or should we work with organizations running Discourse to help them connect with us?
For example, the threadiverse communities for OpenStreetMaps is relatively small, and being able to see / contribute to community.openstreetmap.org would be amazing.
@otters_raft I suggested on a few forums that I belong to that using the plugin might be useful and federating content would be a good idea - What I got back was fairly negative feedback - e.g people thought it would cause people who don't have accounts on the relevant forum being able to spam the forum and get around repuation requirements (not true I understand) - but also a kind of - query why federation would be useful - with an assumption people would just come to the forums and monitor them directly.
This is an important thing to consider, and why NodeBB decided to even pursue federation at all.
It's arguable that we've reached the point at which forums cannot organically grow due to the ubiquity of social media. Depending on who you ask, we've reached that point 10+ years ago already.
It's becoming increasing imperative that forums federate or risk dying due to attrition. Forums used to be the social network for niche topics. Facebook (with Groups) and Twitter (with hashtags) started competing, and Reddit (with subreddits) made another huge dent.
There are some communities that fear integrating with AP will cause their local communities to become flooded with just anybody. Those fears are unjustified, but understandable.
@julian Yeah I definately didn't think their concerns weren't valid - I wasn't sure that I could clearly demonstrate benefits / address concerns. (and they were technical forums) - Don't get me started with my desire to include a link to a fediverse post in any comment I make in Reddit