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[–]Bigs 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

"No blockchain."

First, why no blockchain? That seems to be the easiest way to create truly decentralized systems that cannot be blocked or stopped at any single point?

Regarding this bit:

"Or if a server owner bans a forum, that forum can just move to another server."

To me, decentralized would mean it exists on multiple servers, and so any individual server owner can do nothing beyond not hosting it on their server, but that doesn't alter that other places still do host it.

My understanding is that the Ethereum network already offers this kind of thing, though I have no idea how one would implement it.

One issue, which Ethereum prevents by charging 'gas' fees, is that such a system can be attacked by just flooding it with bullshit spam. Indeed we've seen exactly that recently on this Saidit forum, where the front page is just spammed with gibberish. Try doing that on Ethereum or one of Ethereum's L2 chains and it will cost you a fortune, as every activity has a cost associated.

Obviously free, or nearly free, is nice, but it does come with that spam downside.

So:

  1. Why not use blockchain tech?

  2. How would you tackle spam?

[–]fschmidt[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Blockchain is not the easiest solution. A blockchain would contain the history of all forums on the platform and this would be much too big if the platform is successful. Besides which the whole blockchain concept is pointless for forums. All you need is to be able to replicate data from one server to another. Then one server is the active one that your forum domain points to, while you can have a bunch of backups on other servers. If there is some problem with the primary server, just switch to some backup server.

Spam is a nasty problem with no really good solution. Basically each forum should be kept clean by its moderators. Tools to help with this can be added gradually to the software as modules.

[–]Bigs 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"Then one server is the active one that your forum domain points to"

OK, so I block you at the DNS level, what then?