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Bring back crappy forums

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Re: Bring back crappy forums

#91

Post by Gigachad »

shoobiedoo wrote: post #60
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…

The era of niche subreddits is over these days. Reddit started ignoring subscriptions and just pooling all posts together and suggesting things the algorithm thinks you are interested in regardless of subscriptions.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#92

Post by LooseMarmoset »

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 is better and more profitable for the producer/site owner.

It is objectively worse for the consumer:

* Algorithms that push content the user didn't ask for/dark patterns

* Prioritizes low-attention span/doomscrolling

* Magnifies the most virulent outrage-driven content, often by the very people that commit the outrage, and profits from that outrage

Social media as currently implemented by everyone is a cancer.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#93

Post by Gigachad »

a1o wrote: post #14

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.

Discorse is probably the best forum software these days. It's incredibly nice and works just as well on mobile and desktop.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#94

Post by ggm »

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

I think I was on more than I added. I kept seeing these posts which said "plonk" and then.. nothing.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#95

Post by boobtube »

Internet is now past 6 billion people. What % do you think know what a forum is? What % of television users know what a transistor is or even an antenna? What % of phone users know what a dial tone is or a party line? As time marches on people use technology differently. There is no going back. The users do not get to decide what they are going to use, that is for the producers to tell us. Bring on the new color TV I'm ready to be jacked in. Industry leads the way.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#96

Post by hhjinks »

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…

Unironically, image boards are the best. All replies available chronologically, and you can click any post number to follow whatever thread of conversation you find interesting.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#97

Post by lyu07282 »

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

it was just a few years before my time, I sometimes read through old threads on usenet it feels like internet archeology. If you still remember it, what do you think about how it compares with today's discussion culture?

Killfiles are interesting, but nowadays it seems almost impossible to block everyone crazy on X/Twitter, perhaps more feasible back then

a few months ago for example from my usenet archeology: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47160709

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#98

Post by conductr »

apexalpha wrote: post #77

Many people are not aware that this is mostly a English internet thing. I still frequent a few forums in Dutch and Germen. Still around, still modded by volunteers, still great. Since AI essentially solved translation I even frequent Russian forums again. Still rocking PhpBB often!

There was a huge wave of everyone jumping to Facebook groups in the US. I feel like facebook likely wasn’t at critical mass yet everywhere so they probably missed it. Then it became pretty quickly obvious that sending your traffic to facebook wasn’t necessarily the best idea. So hopefully they learned from our mistake or had better foresight

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#99

Post by jesterson »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #49

I think they lost something too. I'm still active on a UK car forum called PistonHeads. But the user base changed. We lost the calm, car-focused, informative nature of it. The main website is still oriented around cars but the forum became overwhelmed with people who only came to post about politics. And their posting was more aggressive and confrontational rather than knowledge seeking or sharing. I can't prove it,…

Your observations can largely be applied to pretty much forum out there. Every single one was hijacked with either ignorant/stupid people without intelligence and/or bots pushing particular topic. Oh and the SEO managers, how could i forgot those.

And now when the knowledge is a golden mine for all sorts of openai/claude/other IA, the situation will likely exacerbate further.

I really miss a place where intelligent people can talk and exchange ideas with mutual respect. It seems like all these places are largely gone by now.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#100

Post by conductr »

dchuk wrote: post #6

Oh how I miss old school forums. It’s crazy to me how communities are wholesale embracing discord, which just is not the right form factor at all for anything but ephemeral real time chat. I remember engaging in threads on real forums for literally years. It was so great

I feel discord is the same medium IRC served, there’s not really a contemporary equivalent for forums. Reddit is closest but not quite it.
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