Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a bit controversial because people like to remember Sourceforge fondly for some reason, but it was never good. It was merely unchallenged. Google Code was never good either, but people gladly moved from SF to Google Code. And when something actually good came along (Github), Sourceforge simply vanished. Sourceforge was never a hero. It was a horrible website, with horrible UX. It always had pretty terrible ad…
People remember Sourceforge fondly because the service they offered, for the time, was good. Everything internet sucked around 2000. Search engines where either semi-curated listing or covered a fraction of what was a much smaller internet. Free hosting was a joke, affordable paid hosting was not much better. Your bandwidth at home was not good and anyway your computer was not the powerhouse it is today - you needed…
I disagree, and in fact preferred the internet of 2000 to the internet of 2015.
Google search worked fine in 2000: although SEO existed in 2000, it was much less refined and extensive than in 2015. The main problem in search results today is that profit-motivated content crowds out and makes it difficult to find not-profit-motivated superior content.
Not all the changes are bad, of course. Video in particular (not just bandwidth, but the convenience for consumers and amateur producers provided by Youtube) is much better (but text is more important to me than video). A computer with adequate performance is a lot cheaper in real dollars.
>A lot of websites had terrible UX.
I preferred the UX of the web of 2000 to the UX of the web of today. Searching a web page for a string, copying from a web page, then pasting, scrolling, use of keyboard shortcuts, bookmarking (some sites today have all content sharing the same URL, making bookmarking virtually impossible) all were simpler and more consistent across web pages, therefore requiring less deliberative thought to use, and IMHO thereby better.
In other words, on the web of today, I have to direct my attention to the mechanics of the web page, e.g., how to dismiss the interstitial asking me to follow them on Facebook or whatever so that I can start to see the actual content, which keyboard shortcuts have been overridden by the site, how to scroll and whether scrolling even works. In the web of 2000, I spent more of my time and attention on the actual content (particularly, textual content).
For those who remember the web of 2000: what about the UX of the web of today do you prefer? I have a theory that some people are more easily bored than others and that those people appreciate the web of today because the increase in variety, color and motion (of elements on the page) helps keep them from getting bored. Is that it?
(I remember the Sourceforge of 2000, but have nothing to say about it.)
ADDED. I neglected to consider that Wikipedia did not exist in 2000, which significantly changes the balance. I still disagree with "Everything internet sucked around 2000". In particular, I miss web sites created by individuals not expecting to make money from their writings. Although many (most?) of those web sites still exist, they've become vastly harder to find with a search engine because of content farms and other professionally-produced professionally-SEOed content.
