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Bring back crappy forums

tedium.co

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Re: Bring back crappy forums

#51

Post by dleeftink »

doginasuit wrote: post #33

> We tried the forum thing. We wanted something else. Not necessarily because it was better, though sure, maybe it was. But because it was different. I don't think the novelty explains very much, the digg/reddit comment tree format is a clear improvement in the sense that it makes it easier to find and track interesting discussions. I always liked the aspect that you could follow a coherent back and forth where the p…

Depends on what we value, I suppose; a depth-first style that surfaces isolated chains or a breadth-first style that surfaces interleaved replies.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#52

Post by transcriptase »

joe_the_user wrote: post #31
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 difference between forum and a subreddit or discord isn't ultimately the features, it's localism. A forum can make it's own rules whereas Reddit ultimately makes the rules for a subreddit.

The beginning of the end for Reddit was when they started changing the rules specifically to target certain subreddits.

When the mods and users dutifully complied with new rules, the admins got frustrated and began curating r/all and r/popular to prevent posts from those subs from appearing.

When that didn’t work, Reddit would then quarantine or ban subreddits based on obvious and organized spam of against-TOS material and subsequent mass reporting of that material by the same individuals.

Once those purges were done they started the enshittification that continues in high-gear to this day.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#53

Post by root_axis »

kjshsh123 wrote: post #27

Social media won because it's better for the consumer and producer. For the producer, it's free infrastructure but it's also advertising. Having a large subreddit means your game getting recommended to others and potentially being seen being introduced to more people. For the consumer, these social media sites do usually do provide a better experience in showing people what they want to see and keeping away stuff the…

> Social media won because it's better for the consumer and producer.

It's not even a question of "winning", the overwhelming share of people that came online after the advent of social media did so for social media - they never had any interest in niche phpbb style forums.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#54

Post by zippergz »

MrPowerGamerBR wrote: post #46
majorchord wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if reddit just didn't have a frontpage, and you had to navigate to each subreddit manually, that would be enough somehow?

If you removed the front page, the annoying push notifications that push posts from communities you don't even care about, and remove the gamification to push users to keep commenting in posts... then yeah, I suppose that could work. Keep in mind that I only felt what RattlesnakeJake experienced recently, years ago (before 2020) even though Reddit had the same front page it has nowadays, I did not experience so many…

I think you also have to remove subreddits that the member is not part of showing up in search results. Several very niche subreddits I participate in have fairly regular low-quality posts by clueless people who just stumbled across them in search (usually looking for something related but different). The bar for searching for a term and posting in the related subreddit is SO MUCH lower than the bar for finding a forum in a web search, signing up for an account, and posting. It might sound minor, but it's not.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#55

Post by Bender »

Many still exist just many of us make them private or physical community oriented. Making a forum openly public and especially allowing search engines is just asking for high interaction moderation, defending against well funded groups and a myriad of unstables. Few have the level of masochism and perseverance required for that. Hats off to team dang for pulling that off here.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#56

Post by irrlichthn »

I run a small forum and am also the moderator of some small subreddits. I must say the toxicity of sub reddits is so much higher, and people on the old "crappy" forum are so much more polite. I don't know why this is, but maybe because the users flocking to old school forums are maybe a bit older?

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#57

Post by unsungNovelty »

Forums are communities which are curated. If it has a good owner, it will nurture good discussions. Because they have to adhere to rules. Or be banned. There was a tech magazine forum in India which was crazy cool. Learned a lot from it.

But most forums go through a learning process. Way too many great discussions and it gets popular. And then some new/old idiots will start pushing the lines which will lead to over moderation. But once we are done with a couple of this fiascos, the forum will settle down and become a lot better and worth staying.

But this can be off-putting to all the parties involved. So we went to the wild west which is social media where I chip in and leave as u please. And you can talk sh*t as u please as well. You are not invested and don't have to be.

I am still invested in Archlinux forums. Although not very active. And was super active in Manjaro Linux forums until Phillip went super hostile against the users and I moved to Arch. It used discourse.

As am exploring BSD these days, I am in FreeBSD forums and unitedbsd.com - lurking. And UnitedBSD uses flarum.org which I think is the best forum software available as of now. Definitely better than Discourse.

We should have more forums. Coming to think of it, I learn more in forums than from social media communities.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#58

Post by socalgal2 »

donatj wrote: post #42
kjshsh123 wrote: post #27

Social media won because it's better for the consumer and producer. For the producer, it's free infrastructure but it's also advertising. Having a large subreddit means your game getting recommended to others and potentially being seen being introduced to more people. For the consumer, these social media sites do usually do provide a better experience in showing people what they want to see and keeping away stuff the…

Does this hold true in the modern age though? I haven't seen a single thing I wanted to see on social media basically since COVID. It's all famous people, posturing, and things I never followed. Entirely crap I don't care about. At this point I open Facebook like once a day. I used to go on Instagram to see my friend's pictures, now there's nothing of my friends on there and I'll just spam and AI slop... All I want i…

FYI: In Instagram (the mobile app) click the instagram log and pick "Following" and you only see those you follow (and a few ads), no random social media slop

on Facebook (the mobile app), click the 3 bars icon and pick "Feed". Same thing, friends, whatever groups you're following, a few ads, no social media slop

Web apps have the same option. X as well

There's no way to make these the default as they are trying to get you addicted to the social media slop. But, you can still use them as "social networks" (which is the only reason I keep them)

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#59

Post by socalgal2 »

notabotiswear wrote: post #9
naturalmovement wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It notably lacked up/downvoting which is a cancer foisted upon open discussion. Discussions ran chronologically as they would in real life. Imagine having a remote control you could point at people to increase and decrease their speaking volume. That's what voting is.

The irony in me pressing the upvote button on this post…

Yea, I think HN should remove the them. Or at least not display them.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#60

Post by shoobiedoo »

Magi604 wrote: post #21

I miss forums. When they were in their heyday I was an active participant in anywhere from a couple to half a dozen, shifting with whatever happened to be my hobby at the time. And local forums based around hobbies like music and photography were a great way to meet people in person because you already had something in common to start things off. It was also a place to find really in depth information on a topic. I r…

That little bit of personality is what made forums so much fun. The early 2000s somethingawful forums were such a goldmine. I've never laughed so hard in my life at the antics between users. When this person or that guy or some infamous user would show up, it would kick off a thread and it felt so much more "real" and personal.

The ultra niche subreddits have that vibe, but as soon as they get to around 10k users, it turns into nothing but an upvote dopamine chase.

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