@jerlich The Discourse Forum is a totally separate entity, a forum and not federated like mastodon instances -- so you have to visit there to see what is new, read and respond to posts.
Advantages exist, as Forums allow postign with full text format, images inserted in the middle of text, etc. So they can produce pages that are richer and similar to a Blog page in fact.
Mastodon doesn't allow text formatting like bold, italic, unless you are in a GlitchSocial instance or on a Pleroma one; those do have MarkDown text formatting support.
I would say they complement each other -- in some cases Forums are better, while here we can distribute messages more widely and even announce posts that are hosted in other places -- like forums or blogs.
I use all those formats, and they all have their own strengths. Hope this helps! :)
@jerlich The Discourse Forum is a totally separate entity, a forum and not federated like mastodon instances -- so you have to visit there to see what is new, read and respond to posts.
Advantages exist, as Forums allow postign with full text format, images inserted in the middle of text, etc. So they can produce pages that are richer and similar to a Blog page in fact.
Mastodon doesn't allow text formatting like bold, italic, unless you are in a GlitchSocial instance or on a Pleroma one; those do have MarkDown text formatting support.
I would say they complement each other -- in some cases Forums are better, while here we can distribute messages more widely and even announce posts that are hosted in other places -- like forums or blogs.
I use all those formats, and they all have their own strengths. Hope this helps! :)