Bring back crappy forums • Hacker News Board

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#301

Post by cmacleod4 » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

jwr wrote: post #265

I also wish we brought back interesting discussions in a medium that is not corporate-controlled, but I do not long for those crappy forums. I always thought they were a major regression. We had Usenet, and it had easily filterable threaded conversations with a plethora of good readers. The only thing it lacked was good inline image support, but that could have been bolted on. Instead, we started implementing those t…

"The internet today still does not have a good discussion medium like Usenet, and I am not sure if it ever will." Several web interfaces to Usenet exist, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-based_Usenet#Web-based_sit... . I operate one of these at https://newsgrouper.org/ .

Many Usenet groups have been abandoned, or are haunted only by a few cranks, but a few still have worthwhile discussion. A couple of years ago there was a tidal wave of spam, but that mostly stopped after Google Groups disconnected. So the infrastructure is still there, still free of adverts and manipulative algorithms, just waiting for more people to use it.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#302

Post by hasteg » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

doublepg23 wrote: post #298

hasteg wrote: post #274

Anyone here used to be on HackForums? I lived on there from 2011-2013/4... was pretty young back then but I learned so much and attribute it to getting to the spot i'm at now. I remember being so obsessed about "rep" on there, at one point I hit over 1k and it was like a huge achievement for me lol. Seems like that was the precursor to "followers" on X/Insta/whatever. Looking back, it wasn't the best place for a kid…

If I recall correctly, I was obsessed with the PBS show "Cyberchase" and had Googled the main antagonists name "Hacker" which lead to me HackForums. It ended up being a very significant influence on my computing career!

Haha that's a great intro to it. I remember very clearly I was obsessed with minecraft griefing/team Avolition at the time and found it to ask if someone could make me a hacked minecraft client for my first thread (yikes). Wasn't a great intro to the community for me but ended up staying after that. Also was very significant to my computing career, glad I was on it. I think that era of the internet was very special and I miss it dearly. Also seems like back in 2015 or something someone somehow got into my account and Omni deleted it. Sad.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#303

Post by denotes » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

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…

Defining superfluous as off-topic, the format does not inherently invite superfluous content. In both the traditional forum and engagement ranking schemes, the off-topic post will be ignored and the poster has the same experience in both settings. I argue that the culture of some forums may invite noise, but the forum has several mechanisms to make this invitation a net-positive attribute.

If a post has negative value, then the moderators will probate or ban a poster and the offending content becomes an example for everyone to learn from. If the community deems an off-topic comment to have neutral value, then it is ignored and the individual poster gains information about what the community does not value. There is also the subforum structure which tends to create dedicated threads oriented towards off-topic noise. In turn, these subforums spawn subcultures, each with different relationships towards content and posting styles.

The result is that forums become more representative of their members than upvote ranking communities. The forum benefits come at the cost of higher friction to assimilate as a new poster. The forum structure is also fragile; moderators must operate with high judgement and pulse with the beat of their communities.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#304

Post by abruzzi » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #188

Findecanor wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on a few classic forums with threads that are over 20 years old, with a wealth of information about a topic. It is easier to revisit a thread and find new posts when posts are in chronological order. Most such forums remember the last post of your last visit, and takes you to after that position the next time you enter the thread. Tree views get tedious to revisit after they have reached a critical amount of post…

> Tree views get tedious to revisit after they have reached a critical amount of posts, especially if subtrees can shift position from up/down-clicks. So threads with no revisits don't last as long. Tree/threaded views are an implementation detail: in e-mail clients you can toggle the threading offset view ("by converstaion"), e.g.: * https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/mail/view-email-... Is there any reason…

If you were able to toggle HN from tree view to chronological view, it would be borderline incomprehensible. With tree views like HN, nobody bothers to quote what they are reacting to because the placement of the post will usually make that obvious (I note that you did quote, but none of the responses to your post quoted you.) I see the same on reddit. There are UI change you could make that might solve this, but classic forums and HN/reddit each encourage different behavior.

To me HN and reddit are single use. I go in and read comments once, but I never go back, because when they go back, there is no way for me to know what I have and haven't read (maybe there is in reddit--I don't really use it and have no account.) There are probably things HN could do to mitigate that issue and still retain threading.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#305

Post by exabrial » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 4:20 PM UTC

Bring back server side rendering that just farking worked. Loud sigh every time you visit yet another broken Javascriptastic fucking website.

Looking at you:

* statefarm.com

* tmobile.com

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#306

Post by Austiiiiii » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

arexxbifs wrote: post #273

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…

Reddit and HN aren't forums, they're factories for quick takes and reactions (and yes this is one of them). It's a transitory experience. The good old "crappy" forum format isn't gamified with upvotes and often have long-running, slow-burn threads that go on for months or years. Even once popular, high-traffic forums such as SomethingAwful had a different pacing and community feel to them. It's like a pub with its lo…

In addition to the "gamified" aspect, the votes allow special interests to trivially control the perceived public opinion on an extremely broad scale. Opinions with downvotes are perceived as unpopular, and this has a chilling effect on free discussion.

A real person who expresses an idea and gets downvoted by a passing Russian propaganda bot may see the vote (and subsequent Reddit weighting algorithm fuckery that turns the one well-timed vote into 10 votes, which a lot of people aren't aware of) and feel ridiculed, which will discourage that person from expressing the same idea in the future.

Other people who see the same post with X downvotes will take note that that idea is unpopular, and may unconsciously realign their own views on the idea to fit what appears to be the prevailing opinion.

And of course crappy old forums have the other advantage of not having any single standard registration process or API that can be exploited by bots en masse. That's not going to keep them out entirely, but it drastically increases the logistical cost.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#307

Post by iamnothere » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #149

This is the most rose tinted thing I've ever seen. phpBB rightly has a reputation for being awful. In fairness it is possible to do old-school forums well, but the only example I have ever seen is the D language forum. https://forum.dlang.org/ It's super fast, no signatures taking up 80% of the page. It does still have the "page 1 or 423" problem but I guess that wouldn't be too hard to fix. Apparently it even can be…

I agree that phpBB itself was awful, especially setting up mods and keeping everything patched, but the vibe at the time was great. That’s what people are nostalgic for.

The Dlang forum software is truly excellent and I think more people should use it. Not sure why it doesn’t get more notice.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#308

Post by krapp » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

abruzzi wrote: post #304

throw0101a wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tree views get tedious to revisit after they have reached a critical amount of posts, especially if subtrees can shift position from up/down-clicks. So threads with no revisits don't last as long. Tree/threaded views are an implementation detail: in e-mail clients you can toggle the threading offset view ("by converstaion"), e.g.: * https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/mail/view-email-... Is there any reason…

If you were able to toggle HN from tree view to chronological view, it would be borderline incomprehensible. With tree views like HN, nobody bothers to quote what they are reacting to because the placement of the post will usually make that obvious (I note that you did quote, but none of the responses to your post quoted you.) I see the same on reddit. There are UI change you could make that might solve this, but cla…

You can have a chronologically sorted tree view - sort each subtree chronologically and then the root comments, keeping the hierarchy. HN doesn't do it because it would undermine the goal of karma sorting, and potentially lower the quality of conversation*. You could arguably do it with a flat view (I've seen some alternate HN views posted as Show HNs that do so) but you would have to add chan-style greentext links to everything which IMO makes things uglier.

* It probably wouldn't really but HN is incredibly paranoid about that sort of thing. Pun intended.

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#309

Post by b3ing » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

Spam prevention, moderation and security updates make running a forum require a lot of work

Re: Bring back crappy forums

#310

Post by hombre_fatal » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 5:35 PM UTC

fluoridation wrote: post #277

hombre_fatal wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But replies in forum topics weren't a single chronological conversation either. Especially in those huge threads with many posters. It was people replying to posts who knows how far back in the stream, maintaining a bunch of smaller conversations, or just interjecting a top-level comment based on the 1st post or title. The upside is that ideally these subconversations can split and merge into a larger conversation. B…

>On the other hand, long threads pick up too much baggage nobody is going to read I think the key here is, if you don't want to read what other people have to say, why are you here? Suppose it's a discussion on a technical topic. Maybe people have gone off on a tangent that should have been split off into a new thread/topic, or maybe the discussion being had is necessary context to get an idea of where the real answe…

> I think the key here is, if you don't want to read what other people have to say, why are you here?

It's not reference material. It's a conversation people who aren't around anymore had days, weeks, months, years ago that is no more important that what anyone today might be saying. And only a fraction of it is relevant. Yet you have to scan each post to check.

Maybe that's useful if you have a very specific technical question to see if anybody found a solution for error E193A8 on version 1.02.1223b2, but otherwise people are trying to have a live discussion.

> Honestly, want to know who actually has this figured out? 4chan.

Yeah, but it's ultra-ephemeral, definitely not the model of a forum thread. I think short-living discussions (Reddit, HN, 4chan) model the realities of human interaction better.