Ask HN: What to do with text from old, unarchived, online forums?

BUT... in a more colloquial sense of how "web" might be used retrospectively, as sort of a loose synonym for "online", then absolutely. Going back well into the 1980's, and then into the 1990's, we had all sorts of online services, including discussion forums. There were the big services like Compuserve, The Well, AOL, Delphi, GEnie, Prodigy, etc. And then there were individual small dial-up BBS's[2] by the bushel-load.

At their peak there were many thousands of them in the US alone. There were entire magazines printed and distributed that were effectively nothing but lists of dial-up numbers for BBS's, and magazines like Computer Shopper had big sections dedicated to listing those as well.

And then there was, as you mention, Usenet.

So yeah, even back in 1991, there were plenty of forums that might not have strictly been part of "the web", but that someone in contemporary times might casually describe as a "web forum".

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system

I grew up on AOL 2.5 and the hacking/warez scene there. So many good times with 1IM punters, cchats, scrolling, and phishing OH and INT accounts.

I have a couple of GameFAQs discussions and cheat lists for various PS2/GameCube games from the early 2000s. They're stowed in a folder because it was a hassle to run between the family room and my bedroom when referencing.

Also, for the longest time, a household shared a single computer. So printing off the pages meant I didn't need to compete between family members for computer use.

Edit: A friend just reminded me of navigating in the passenger seat with a stack of Mapquest prints.

Edit-2: If anyone wants to relive this in the modern world, print to PDF blog posts, news articles, etc., and store them on your Kindle (or equivalent). You'll notice you'll comprehend the article way better than on your phone or laptop.