Chat has a lower level barrier to participate than a forum post (or even old schooler: a mailing list).
Chat is More direct and faster paced, which has its positive and negative effects (engagement vs quality - I’d assume most people put more thought into a forum post or email than a simple chat message)
So far I have only seen Reddit/HN style „forums“ to combine these aspects together successfully (although I don’t know if that also happens in slack and the likes)..
Another option might be to filter out important discussions and elevate it on a certain (“BB or mailing list worthy”) level - that seems to be a challenge, that the threading function does not sufficiently solve (also, as users don’t always adher to the technical aspect of replying to a thread).
It will be interesting how LLM/AI might solve some of these issues of organizing the knowledge that is generated in these different formats. That’s a task that so far seems to be too tedious to be done by humans, after all.
A wiki generated by AI to certain discussions and topics? Summaries in the chat software to certain keywords/discussions and suggestions on further reading?
Another option might be to filter out important discussions and elevate it on a certain (“BB or mailing list worthy”) level - that seems to be a challenge, that the threading function does not sufficiently solve (also, as users don’t always adher to the technical aspect of replying to a thread).
It will be interesting how LLM/AI might solve some of these issues of organizing the knowledge that is generated in these different formats. That’s a task that so far seems to be too tedious to be done by humans, after all. A wiki generated by AI to certain discussions and topics? Summaries in the chat software to certain keywords/discussions and suggestions on further reading?