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Bring back crappy forums

tedium.co

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Re: Bring back crappy forums

#11

Post by eleventen »

RattlesnakeJake wrote: post #8
eleventen wrote: post #7

I'm not sure I understand the difference between "crappy forums" and subreddits. They have all the same features. Tags function as sections. You can sort threads chronologically. Karma. I suspect there's no actual difference, the author just liked the sort of people who were willing to deal with the traditional "crappy forum" interface for the sake of connecting around some niche hobby, and it provided enough frictio…

The crappy forums don't have to let anyone register without a vouching process if they don't want to. They also don't accidentally end up on the Reddit Front Page and get swarmed by a mob of overly-enthusiastic or angry strangers who don't know or follow the community's etiquette.

Valid points. I was never a member of any forums with closed, invite-only registration, and I've never been part of a reddit community that had to deal with front page traffic or brigading, so I sort of assume this is the median experience.

The maker communities, music subs, and local/city subs I'm in do not have any of these problems.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#12

Post by ranger_danger »

RattlesnakeJake wrote: post #8
eleventen wrote: post #7

I'm not sure I understand the difference between "crappy forums" and subreddits. They have all the same features. Tags function as sections. You can sort threads chronologically. Karma. I suspect there's no actual difference, the author just liked the sort of people who were willing to deal with the traditional "crappy forum" interface for the sake of connecting around some niche hobby, and it provided enough frictio…

The crappy forums don't have to let anyone register without a vouching process if they don't want to. They also don't accidentally end up on the Reddit Front Page and get swarmed by a mob of overly-enthusiastic or angry strangers who don't know or follow the community's etiquette.

> They also don't accidentally end up on the Reddit Front Page and get swarmed

Wouldn't this by definition mean the size of the community must always remain small enough (whatever that magic number is)?

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#14

Post by a1o »

One thing about these old school forums is they are something you host yourself (directly or paying a server somewhere), and this requires but knowledge on doing so, and time to do its maintenance (beyond moderation and stuff). Additionally, I don’t think simple machines and phpbb development has kept as strong as the people trying to spam it.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#15

Post by protocolture »

They are called Reddit or Discord these days.

And many (many many) crappy forums were hosted on crappy free sub domain hosting, so theres little difference moving to a subreddit or discord.

I remember sending a request for a database export to jconserv and getting nothing, just before the website started to fall apart. Later finding out that the owner just walked off or died or something.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#16

Post by DocTomoe »

ggm wrote: post #2

I have a lot of sympathy with this. I use some topic specific old school web forums and they feel better all round than the discord channels/forums. I suspect it's an age/attitude thing. The implicit "My forum my rules" autocracy shows its upsides on a well curated space: trolling and spam dealt with rapidly.

The generation before that (yours truly) still remembers the usenet glory days, and the liberal use of the kill file [1].

[1] https://www.catb.org/jargon/html/K/kill-file.html

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#17

Post by gkanai »

The best forums still have users and traffic. For instance, for Toyota Land Cruiser owners, the best information has always been at ih8mud. Reddit doesnt hold a candle to Mud for the depth of information available (for that community.)

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#18

Post by MrPowerGamerBR »

ranger_danger wrote: post #12
RattlesnakeJake wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crappy forums don't have to let anyone register without a vouching process if they don't want to. They also don't accidentally end up on the Reddit Front Page and get swarmed by a mob of overly-enthusiastic or angry strangers who don't know or follow the community's etiquette.

> They also don't accidentally end up on the Reddit Front Page and get swarmed Wouldn't this by definition mean the size of the community must always remain small enough (whatever that magic number is)?

Not quite, a forum for a specific niche wouldn't have their posts pushed to random users that do not care about that specific topic because those users wouldn't be on that community in the first place.

The Reddit Front Page and especially the Reddit mobile app with their push notifications, keep pushing posts from random communities to the front page AND to push notifications, which makes random people that do not know anything about the community to post random stupid things. I also blame the fact that the Reddit mobile app incentivizes people to comment with gamified streaks, so people are more incentivized to comment useless things on threads.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#19

Post by Ozzie_osman »

eleventen wrote: post #7

I'm not sure I understand the difference between "crappy forums" and subreddits. They have all the same features. Tags function as sections. You can sort threads chronologically. Karma. I suspect there's no actual difference, the author just liked the sort of people who were willing to deal with the traditional "crappy forum" interface for the sake of connecting around some niche hobby, and it provided enough frictio…

The main thing is the old forums were sorted by recency (how new a post was or how recently it was replied to) rather than some AI-driven engagement mechanism. They were structured (you'd have several rooms for different topics on the same forum).

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#20

Post by Terr_ »

DocTomoe wrote: post #16
ggm wrote: post #2

I have a lot of sympathy with this. I use some topic specific old school web forums and they feel better all round than the discord channels/forums. I suspect it's an age/attitude thing. The implicit "My forum my rules" autocracy shows its upsides on a well curated space: trolling and spam dealt with rapidly.

The generation before that (yours truly) still remembers the usenet glory days, and the liberal use of the kill file [1]. [1] https://www.catb.org/jargon/html/K/kill-file.html

While I recognize the name of the domain, I'm getting some weird TLS cert warnings.
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