1. mobile first design, an “app” wouldn’t hurt but at least mobile friendly this has been web design 101 since at least 2010. Hell the only reason I still come is I am glued to 4 monitors for work 16/7 and am looking for a specific take.
2. free speech policy couldn’t hurt, however it may upset some of the more sensitive posters.
3. post formatter. I get FR supports html style formatting but a WYSIWYG formatter will go along way toward QOL
these are technical, which is easy, what is hard is the culture. Do you sell what you like? or what the average customer likes? I don’t know if you can really draw users when there are countless other forums that already have the technicals and a culture that is more suited for the “growing” demographics. To me it seems you either go down with the ship or entirely pivot the product that alienates your current users and/or no different that any alternative.
At the root of it FR is a news aggregator in a society that no longer values the news. “This source is that team or that source is this team” is a fallacy. Milenials and Gen Z don’t care, CNN is indistinguishable from FOX, which is indistinguishable from RT or Algazeera, it’s all propaganda. When you can easily get hour old amateur footage from any country on a dot onion, why would they trust the news narration of it from any source?
probably not popular but that is just how I see it as of now.
Excellent points.