I miss traditional message boards. No karma, no sorting algorithms, you just get new topics on top and replies are sorted oldest to newest.
You can have forum threads that go on for decades, but Lemmy’s default sorting system quickly sweeps older content away. I’m aware you can mimic the forum format by selecting the “chat” option in a thread and sorting by old, and you can sort posts by “latest comment” which replicates the old-school forum experience pretty well, but nobody does it that way, so the community behaves in the manner facilitated by the default sorting algorithm that prioritizes new content over old but still relevant content.
I also notice that I don’t pay attention to usernames on Lemmy (or Reddit back when I was on it). They’re just disembodied thoughts floating through the ether. On message boards, I get to know specific users, their personalities and preferences and ups and downs. I notice when certain users don’t post for a while and miss them if they’re gone for too long.
I used to mod for a forum. I would not do that again.
Also, isn’t this interface just forum+?
I still mess around in some traditional forums and I do not miss them.
The time bias is much bigger. First comments are usually the only ones people read and replies. If there’s a great comment in page 5 no one is going to see it. But if there’s a troll comment in page one it is on everyone’s faces. Karma system fixed that.
It’s true the thing about usernames and avatars. But I prefer not to personalize a lot so for me that’s also a plus, I can focus in the comment and not in who has written it.
They’re still alive and kicking.
But search engines try to steer you away instead of help you find them.
Any good ones? Was sad to see NeoGAF kicked the bucket
discourse > discord
No, I never liked the interface with all the conversations mixed so you had to copy most of the thread for context just to add half a line.
I always found them tedious and confusing.Personally I think that this Reddit style is an upgrade design wise. And as far as recognising people goes, I’m using an app that lets you tag users (Summit) and this has gone quite a long way. It’s also made the start paying attention to other usernames to an extent, so if I notice that someone often posts content that vibes with me or whatever, I can give them a ⭐ or something.
What I do miss from the days when forums were dominant is that people stayed in their lanes a little more. A particular forum or board or even thread is for a particular topic, and people who derailed or came along just to insult and shit on everything were dealt with, without this crying about ‘free speech’.
Current day social media has spawned a bunch of people who feel entitled to say whatever they want to whoever they want in any space they want, and cry about blue haired SJWs or something if there’s consequences. And they act like the internet used to be this place where forum moderators didn’t rule with an iron fist, or like the ‘real world’ is somewhere that you can behave this way without being punched in the face.
I just think a lot of problems could be solved if jocks went back to discussing sportsball and cars and stayed in their lanes, instead of considering themselves to be experts on biology and sociology and vaccines. There’s a fine line between ‘free speech’ and letting the inmates run the asylum, and the last 10 years have proven that.
Basically what I miss from the forum days is that back then, the conspiracy theorist idiots would’ve probably been banned, and would’ve stayed in the fringes of society instead of going mainstream.
there are still here, but not very prevelant as before. the problem with some is some mods are very uptight and when admonish you or ban at the slightest notion they think your violating some rule. Also other people giving you snide or condescending response might be harder to deal or report against, and sometimes you cant contradict someone who has older account who gatekeeps the subject of that forum. forum post also dont see much traffic either, usually its gets ignored pretty quickly.
I miss the community. I was a member of a community forum for about 18 years. You knew everyone and it was generally nice.
No. I feel like reddit/lemmy is a good progression for forums, and I absolutely hate discord when used for technical stuff
I still use some forums like xda-developers and I don’t enjoy it as much a I did 10-15 years ago
Unrelated but does anyone know how to fix my gpu drivers?
Never responds again
Forums were cool. They often had their own culture and in-jokes. People would become well-known on the forum. There’s a couple names I recognize on here, but it’s mostly transient. (On the other hand, I’ve probably had a vicious argument with someone and then a nice chat with them later, without realizing it was the same person).
Most internet users seem bland, and just congeal onto youtube, discord, twitch, and other nightmares.
Ah, the good old days of the internet. Yes, I miss them. There are still a few around, like the Linux Mint forum, and some other tech-related ones. But it used to be you could find any topic you were interested in and your account and username were specific to it, and they were separate domains (in the normal, non-tech sense of the word). So you might show one aspect of your personality in one forum and a different aspect in a different kind of forum. Just like you would with different friend or acquaintance groups.
I absolutely do. I’ve often dreamed of setting up a forum for my immediate friend group but I don’t think the idea would get a lot of traction.
I really miss the shit-talking forum on one of my old pirate BBS systems. You could just go a post something with the intent of having a mini flame war with someone… blow off steam. Good fun ☺️
Like others I also appreciate threaded comments here.
But for many niches - forums still abound. I regularly participate in four for specific interests.
On the flip side I loathe the attempt to replace forums not with Lemmy/reddit-like tools but with Discord.
Ugh.
Ugh indeed! Discord is an information black hole, where information enters never to be found again by search engines or even its members
I can understand replacing IRC with Discord, but using Discord as a forum is madness
Discord is even more ephemeral than Lemmy/Reddit. Conversations fly by in minutes or seconds. Discord as a specific platform is starting to enshittify as well.
I cannot fathom the popularity of Discord. It’s IRC with rich media support - what good is that as a replacement for non-ephemeral communities?
It’s incredibly simple. No one has to host a server, and it works well enough for everything you might try to use it for. Try to get someone to use something different, like teamspeak, mumble, ventrilo, or the copycats akin to matrix, and you will get endless bitching about some little thing that doesn’t get done (usually screen sharing).
It certainly scales like shit, but Discord has a very smooth text chat/video sharing features that work extremely well for smaller numbers of people. Like for me and a dozen friends it is the perfect social space, but anything bigger than that and I bounce off hard.
