cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/28930199
A bit of an effortpost :)
Please do crosspost in more fitting communities if you think of any
Great post!
I would be curious to know how many people on here have found memories from BBcode-style forums.
Personally I kinda skipped web 2.0 - I had some accounts, sure, but I hardly interacted with anything else than direct messaging. However I used to hang out on phpBB for probably hours every day before Facebook took over, having been lured in by needing help progressing in Pokémon on my GameBoy Advance.
I guess I’m a minority around here in never having used Reddit much. But I’m wondering if we’re, in general, a bunch of ageing nerds who are nostalgic to web 1.0, or if we’re a more diverse bunch than that. ;)
Edit:
Oh, and speaking of nostalgia, I’m sad LemmyBB is not maintained any more! It makes perfect sense that it isn’t of course, but what a blast it would be.I used to use them a lot before Reddit, but I never really liked them. Too many to list or even remember at this point.
I guess a large part why I liked them was that I was really only active on one or maximum two, and I was happy just embracing the community there. It was also in my native language rather than in English, which feels excotic in retrospect.
I am very biased in this stuff, I’ll say that up front. I was in the “in-crowd” for multiple forums over the years, ran my own for many years (essentially a personality cult, as per your article), and so of course I have a warm and fuzzy view of the medium. Importantly, I found my time on forums to be socially stimulating. By that I mean that the interactions were strong enough that I didn’t feel lonely, despite being stuck in various isolated places. I have never felt that way about the interactions I’ve had any other platforms, with the exception of direct IM clients.
With that preamble out of the way, something that’s come up in the comments below but I don’t feel has been explored sufficiently is permanence. Modern profit-driven platforms focus on transience. They are built around the endless-feed model and keeping users engaged as long as possible. This is built into their very bones - it’s always about new content and discussion isn’t designed to last more than a day. Old content is actively buried.
That’s antithetical to the traditional forum model. Topics on a subject would persist for as long as there was interest (sometimes too long, of course) and users’ contributions would form a corpus of work, so to speak. I found that forums that allowed for avatars and signatures were particularly good in this respect as they served as “familiar faces”, allowing users to become visibly established community members.
I’ve used Reddit for 14 years (although lately I’ve given up on it) and not once in that time have I felt a sense of community. The low barrier of entry and the minimal opportunity cost of leaving a community makes the place a revolving door of (effectively) anonymous users. It’s my opinion that a small barrier to entry is a good thing, coupled with persistence of content. It’s not enough to have much of a chilling effect, but it provides a small amount of consequence to users’ actions and that’s arguably good for community formation and cohesion. A gentle counter to John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory ( https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies ).
I run a Facebook group and we have an entrance question - the answer to the question is basic knowledge for the target audience, however the question itself also includes directions for where to find the answer (the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article OR the group’s rules). Most people just give the answer (and some overthink it and put a load of extra info in, because the question is suspiciously easy) but a subset of people either can’t be bothered or don’t even finish reading the question. In my opinion, the community we’ve built is better without those people.
This ties into the concept of profit-driven vs. community-driven platforms. A profit-driven platform wants as many eyeballs as possible, regardless of what the owner of those eyeballs can contribute to the community. The community exists purely to facilitate profit, something which feels to me like a terrible basis for a community.
Something I do feel OP is correct about is discoverability - that’s particularly an issue in the modern era of garbage search engines. I don’t have any particular thoughts on the subject, I just wanted to say “Yep! Agreed!”, haha.
If there was a Reddit/Lemmy style website (where people create communities for various subjects but it’s all available from the same website using the same credentials) with forum style discussions I would be outta here in a moment.
Ongoing discussions with bumps are so much better for knowledge accumulation (that’s the reason why they’re still used by specialized communities), the major issue with forums, as pointed out, is the hassle of having to go from one website to another to talk about various subjects and needing to sign up to each one of them.
As for solving the “little Kings” issue, dumb backend, smart frontend. Remove admins from the equation, those hosting are only there to host. People moderate communities but communities can easily be replaced. People create a frontend to access the backend but from a user point of view it doesn’t make a difference what frontend they use, they will get access to the same content.
The fact that I’ve written this comment a dozen times since last year proves a point, Reddit/Lemmy style websites just lead to content being repeated again and again. This comment will get lost to time just like all the other times I shared my opinion on the subject. On a forum it would be part of the ongoing discussion and anyone who wanted to go through the whole thread where all discussions on that subject to place would read it, no matter how long it had been since I posted.
I don’t disagree.
There is one forum I still participate in:
https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/
It’s mostly tech-focussed and Australia-centric, but it does have other topics like sport, TV etc…
I wish there were more like this.
I hate that the bulk of online discussion is now owned/monopolised by a couple of huge corporations.
There are many forums like that, especially if you’re not limited to one language. Most of the ones I frequent have been around for 10 or 20 years or more, but kind of fly under the radar. ilxor being a very good example. AFAIK, the latter also adds only one new user per day. I’d say that’s a good thing, even though I had to apply several times.
Specific forums for certain things are still the best.
I have an Aprilia motorcycle from 1999, and the Aprilia forum has 20 years of info, discussion, and advice on that specific motorcycle.
It is also a bit surreal seeing someone reply to my question and see that they joined the forum itself back when I was less that 1 years old.
It seems to me the only thing you’re missing from the functionality you want on lemmy is a sorting system which just bumps any threads with new comments to the top. I don’t like that approach myself, but if that’s what you want I don’t see a reason not to have it. Why don’t you suggest it to the lemmy devs? It doesn’t seem like it would be difficult to add it.
EDIT: Actually, nevermind, this already exists with the “New Comments” feature. Why don’t you just use that? https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/?dataType=Post&listingType=Subscribed&sort=NewComments
Only works if everyone’s experience is the same and discussions are centralized in threads. I added to my comment but on a forum that discussion would be part of a thread where all similar articles/discussions would be centralized instead of having a new thread being opened on the same subject every few weeks and people having to rewrite the same opinion every time (or just not sharing their opinion anymore because they’re tired of repeating themselves every time someone wants to talk about that subject).
There’s no knowledge accumulation with the way things work on Reddit/Lemmy, just repetition and things being forgotten.
I can’t disagree enough. There was little knowledge accumulation in oldschool forums either. There were constant arguments about thread necromancy and people not searching before asking. It sounds like you’re describing a parallel idyllic universe.
This kind of knowledge repository is why were have megathreads and/or attached wikis.
Regardless of that, if you really wanted to run a lemmy instance like that, you can do that right now. You can set up a lemmy instance where you default to sorting everything by “New Comments” and discussions as “Chat” and you get an identical model to old school forums. Hell, as long as you find a good amount of like-minded folks and you all agree to sort the same way, you can build up your “knowledge accumulation” inside the existing lemmy instances and communities.
Everything you’ll ever want to know about a specific model of motorcycle, all in a single thread:
https://advrider.com/f/threads/yamaha-wr250r-threadfest.936588/
Ask a question and people will tell you what page to look at if you can’t find it, post something that has already been talked about and they’ll refer you to the page where people talked about it.
On here? You could repost the exact same text tomorrow in a different community and the same discussion would happen again. Post it again in this community in a month and the same discussion will happen again without anyone noticing that you’re reposting.
Necroing in order to continue talking about something and build on the base already established is much better than the constant repost and knowledge reset we see on here where the same questions are asked again and again and again and people need to explain the same things again and again and again.
Ask a question and people will tell you what page to look at if you can’t find it, post something that has already been talked about and they’ll refer you to the page where people talked about it.
You are relying on some random people being around to serve as your search engine. Cmon. You can do the same thing here with megathreads and wikis. Hell you can also ask around on megathreads and people will link you. Nothing you describe here is unique to forums.
Necroing in order to continue talking about something and build on the base already established is much better than the constant repost and knowledge reset we see on here where the same questions are asked again and again and again and people need to explain the same things again and again and again.
The same happened in forums. Even in forums with megathreads like these, people asked the same question again and again. This is a matter of culture, not of software. You just happened to find a forum with a good culture and assumed it’s the result of the software.
Just build that community here and you have the same results AND federation with other topics if needed.
Also I lowkey find the expectation that you rely on people with thousands of bookmarks to be around to point you to a page in one gigathread to be quite disturbing.
Let’s say you find a month old discussion with a reply to a question you’ve got but you have further questions, here’s the major difference.
On Reddit/Lemmy you have two options, you reply to that same discussion and only the person you replied to knows you replied, no one comes to help OR you create a new discussion leading to the knowledge on that subject being split up between two discussions, meaning that the next person who has the same issue will probably find that first thread and repeat the same process.
On an old school forum you just reply to the original discussion, it gets bumped up, everyone sees that you have further questions, no need for a new discussion, all knowledge is in the same place, next person who needs an answer to that question now finds all the info they need in the same place, no need to ask further questions of the issue is resolved, if it isn’t they just bump that thread and more knowledge is added.
Megathreads are locked at the top and people see new replies only if they bother looking. Nested comments mean that you need to go through all branches to check what’s new (hell, nested comments leads to people repeating the same thing as others,in the same thread, at the same time without realizing it because the same discussion is happening simultaneously in multiple branches!). Wikis are just a third party solution without any discussion happening and where only the people who bother editing the Wiki (or that are allowed to) add to it (which isn’t as easy as just writing a message on a forum).
Edit: Just want to say that I agree with you on something though, having to rely on other users can be a pain on forums but that’s mostly a forum internal search engine issue that has always been an issue…
Let’s say you find a year old discussion, you don’t bother to read 120 pages, so you just ask your question at the end. If you’re lucky enough not to be in a forum that won’t flame you for necroing and not searching, you’re given a link to a page. You visit that page but don’t find the answer. Then ask again. Maybe this time you get a correct link, or maybe you get flamed this time.
See how it’s easy to make hypotheticals? Not to disrespect your preferences, but this approach is downright inane. What you’e describing is working despite the software, not because of it. As others mentioned in this thread, you get the exact opposite reactions to another forum about automobiles.
You know what is superior to this? Having a lemmy community about this one motorcycle model, with an FAQ or wiki on the side. People can ask a question as a new thread, and guess what, people can link them to a previously answered thread, just like they would link them to a specific page in your gigathread. Nothing functionally changes here. The lack of threading or sorting by new comments doesn’t change the experience. It’s the willingness to be nice to newbies that matters.
What you’re describing is simply changing a lemmy community into a single thread in a bbforum. It is an objectively worse scenario.
In lemmy you start with a generic topic. Say, automobiles. If it starts getting too busy, you start two new communities, cars and motorcycles, if those get too busy, you expand to brands and models. Each of them nicely organized and easily searchable by titles.
What I see here is a community that coalesced around an old forum software and did the best it could. Unlike most others, it happened to have the right people to make the best of it and find a working system with what they got. But again, it’s not the software, it’s the people, which is proven by so many similar communities in similar software just failing miserable instead.
I would argue that this community would work much better with a software much better suited for it.
If there was a Reddit/Lemmy style website (where people create communities for various subjects but it’s all available from the same website using the same credentials) with forum style discussions I would be outta here in a moment.
My brother, this is that website
No, it’s not. Unless they only allow the sorting of threads based on which discussions has the newest comment (bumping) and remove comment nesting (so discussions are ongoing instead of branching off which makes it difficult to keep up with what’s new in the different threads), it’s not that website.
Can’t someone make a client or a UI which does this?
Again, unless it works the same way for everyone then people are just replying to old discussions and no one knows about it except for the person they’re replying to.
How so? I generally scroll to the bottom on here
Look at this conversation, it’s old enough that it doesn’t show in my feed anymore (sorted by top 6h), if I wasn’t taking part in it no matter how many people replied to it I would never know it took place.
That’s what I’m talking about, if sorting is up to the user then most people only see “fresh” content, not ongoing conversations that they might want to take part in if they realized they’re happening. Same for the comments sections, threaded makes it harder to check what’s new (have to go down each branch to get the context).
I see this comment two days in the future.
We probably could promote using “New comments” more.
You can use “New comments” to see, well, new comments.
Lemmy already has both of those sorting options built in
If there was a Reddit/Lemmy style website (where people create communities for various subjects but it’s all available from the same website using the same credentials) with forum style discussions
Isn’t this just Discourse?
I’ll go take a look, but isn’t it just the software behind the various forums and you need separate credentials for each one?
the major issue with forums, as pointed out, is the hassle of having to go from one website to another to talk about various subjects and needing to sign up to each one of them.
Honestly the “having to sign up” part would be trivial to solve if topical forums just globally adopted OpenID sign-in or similar. No need to have one account per community if you already have (or “are”) an account in the World.
But even then, there’s a point to having to go through a sign-up process. At least some sort of vetting. We have seen how far have fallen all the communities that have ever relaxed sign-ups (as another comment in this thread shows, there was once a time when FB only allowed educated people in).
Hosting a forum costs money, and we ain’t got that
There were plenty of free forum hosts back in the day. (edit: just did a search and there are still free forum hosts)
But then social media came out, and everyone got addicted to the gamified dopamine mechanics like upvotes and shit. So now everything has to have upvotes, or likes, or whatever other stupid bullshit shit that has absolutely ruined human interaction and discourse and is single handedly to blame for the extremity in modern discourse, because the need to drive clicks and upvotes leads to extreme polarization where no common sense, honest discussion can be held.
because you either 100% agree with me (upvote) or you are a baby killing bastard who disagrees with me (downvote), and there can be no middle ground! /s
Great post!
How did we move from usenet to forums?
Browsers and the internet protocols were pretty sweet, man
Didn’t usenet also have a lot of spam problems associated with it?
Yes. Still does. Though blocking Google groups cuts down on most of it
Much easier access.
You make a reddit account or a discors account and you have limited access to thousands of forums.
Imagine giving your email address and making a password and solving a captcha hundreds of times instead. Who would choose to?
And don’t even get me started on the ease of operating these subreddits and discord channels instead of building and hosting websites.
I’m on 3 active forums and 2 lemmies and 2 mastos and I just leave myself logged in. It’s nothing like that. Somehow that’s still a better user experience than discord
Discord and Reddit also had uniquely improved their UIs over the existing options.
I don’t know, but every fucking group’s reliance on Discord pisses me off. I’m very much into modding my games, the problem is that every damn mod author wants to do support only on Discord, which means probably more than half of my 200 servers are just for that.
Discord is a terrible platform for communities and for support, because it’s one giant group chat and the messages scroll by. You really need a forum type environment for these types of things and while discord does have a forum format option, it’s still really sucks and also gets little use on the count of how the rest of Discord is structured.
While I do agree with the problems identified, I can’t help but think they also made forums a lot better. Due to the lower discoverability and higher effort to actually join communities felt more personal. You interacted with smaller groups and came to know specific people. I still have friends from back then.
On larger platforms, I never had that. Even lemmy, which is small in comparison has enough people that I barely even think about specific users. Let alone speak with them on a personal level.
Even lemmy, which is small in comparison has enough people that I barely even think about specific users. Let alone speak with them on a personal level.
I have a different experience but I’m on a very smaller instance than .world. Your instance is big, generalist but their is lots of them that are location- or topic-oriented. Such instances are not only smaller with a more personnalised local thread but the people on it share already identified common points with you.
Unfortunately, there is no instance matching my interests. There are a number of communities across different instances, but it seems like several people tried to make their own, didn’t interact with each other and all of them are long dead.
Once I find such an instance, I’ll switch over. I’ve been meaning to leave .world anyways.
We trusted corporations.
I’d like to think we’ve collectively learned our lessons, but watching people migrate from Reddit to fucking Discord makes me think that we really have not and probably never will.
Corpos are spending countless resources to infiltrate anything with as much as a iota of traction so that they can bleed the cow cash dry and sell its carcass for money.
Even if you distrust the corpos and want them to die, the majority of the population has so much trouble just surviving that its hard to raise up against that bullshit
Usenet and bbs erasure.
I was considering mentioning that GenX stuff, but I felt it was too obscure and would only serve to posture my creds :)
People prefer centralization, and it makes sense. The Fediverse resolves most of the issues with decentralization, but so does centralization, which came way sooner, and arguably did it better.
Also, people seem to forget that Facebook was pretty cool back then. It had superior features, and was not the buggy mess it is today.
Anything big enough becomes a public restroom. Cooperation and syncronization between groups small enough not to devolve in that way seems to be an especially promising path forward.
This is a fantastic read. I wasnt around for the prime days of forums but I did experience them a bit.
I’m becoming extremely concerned about the number of topics and projects that are migrating to Discord. My main issue is that it is not and never will be publically indexed, and among other problems, is itself a corporate walled garden we consider to be “one of the good ones”.
I really hope we find and establish a “low executive cost” solution before the next time Discord fumbles (which is inevitable) and we can claw some of that activity back.
But people are so used to seamless voice and video chat nowadays - and that’s a technical hurdle that AFAIK, no open-source self-hostable projects have come close to solving.
Matrix+elements is very easy to selfhost in any homelab. works well enough for goverments. Federated and easy end to end encryption. And one can easily set up a web archive bridge forvarchiveable rooms.
That beeing said i still think IRC is the best for pure text chat.
But neither have seamless voice chat/screen sharing, which is a staple of Discord that users are very used to.
What do you need screen sharing for? This comes up so, so rarely for me.
Besides the expensive Matrix option the parent suggested, IRC covers text fine. Mumble handles low-latency, low-resource voice chat with positional audio for games. XMPP uses more resources that IRC (but can have encryption) but a ton less resources than Matrix which makes it suitable for self-hosting—my partner & I do voice/video calls over my home server fine & Movim is working on group calls with a Web UI (tho it should be noted both Zoom & Jitsi use XMPP under the hood).
boomers figured out the other mediums.
No, boomers invented forums (and the internet itself). Millenials invented Web 2.0 (as they called it), the corporate takeover of the internet.
the other users forced me to do it by moving
Article claims the forums were expensive and difficult to maintain. I thing it more likely that Facebook groups are epopular because people are already there.
Discord has done an amazing job at convenience. It’s free, they have a rather generous API. The communities have created fantastic bots. But it’s important to remember discord isn’t a forum it’s a live chat. Two people having a live discussion is a very different thing than two people carefully curating their responses in a forum.
Reddit and Lemmy are curated knowledge repository wrapped in discourse. Which brings an advantage over old forums.
More or less I would argue that the article is missing convenience as a driving factor.
Edit: I poorly skimmed this article and mistook some of its points. This comment deserves no upvotes and I’ll circle back later and give some credible feedback.
More or less I would argue that the article is missing convenience as a driving factor.
Did you…uh…read the article?
Saying that I mentioned paragraphs from the actual article … yeah.
I’m not a researcher, but I was there from the start and I saw the same process play out multiple times in the old forums I used to be in. Accessibility and convenience won.
…how?
Article claims the forums were expensive and difficult to maintain
Not to mention that the article never even mentions “expensive”. Wait, you fed it to an LLM and asked for a summary, didn’t you?
I’m sitting here trying to figure out why you’re coming out on the attack so hard, it’s your own blog. That makes perfect sense.
LLM? no, I skimmed it because it’s extremely long and very fluffy. I mistook some of the fluff, my apologies. I’ll go back and thoroughly read it when I have time later today and give you credible feedback. Off the cuff, I’d recommend you try to tame the writing down a little, you’re obviously very excited and feel strongly about the topic, but that doesn’t always translate to a good read for others.
I’m not upset, mate. I’m just perplexed why you’re confidently making statements which directly contract the article and appear as if you didn’t read it. But you do you.
