Ask Lemmy

Wake me up when Usenet comes back around.

I don't care much about karma (that would be up and downvotes, around here) but I do miss the old forums not being centralized and/or owned by a single entity or authority or, more exactly, not being the only space available no matter who owned it.

This allowed for a lot more divergence of opinions and dissent. There was no such thing with the advent of centralized social media. Which is the reason why I was so happy to jump onboard the fediverse when I heard about it: no more owerpowered centralized/unique owner and censor. Worst thing happening around here, I would still be free to move to another instance, or even create my own. To me, even though I don't think I will ever need it, it's great.

Another thing I miss of back then are blogs. They still exist, but I miss the thriving (and exciting) communities that existed around them, with its engagement(s).

Blogs sometimes allowed for incredibly interesting conversations, between very different persons expressing their various and oftentimes conflicting opinions. It's something I think is badly needed today more than it ever was. Something that would help a lot of us rediscover the true meaning of the word 'discussion' (which is not to agree with one another singing Kumbaya) and would help us re-learn/rediscover the importance of being able to debate with people we disagree with without calling for them to be censored or worse... That neutering logic of the 'either you agree with us/me, or you're out of here' (or, I insist, worse).

That variety (and healthy tension in debating), I miss. It still exists online, but it's rare. It's much simpler to find it offline, irl while having discussions with close friends who are not afraid to speak freely. And inside books... those books whose authors are challenging to read at least. Which sadly means avoiding not all but a large chunk of the contemporary production to focus on long gone writers, classics or not, who trusted/expected their readers to be smart enough to be able to read even the most disturbing ideas without immediately suing them or calling for their cancellation.

I miss them, too. I was a member of a writing forum. There were maybe 30-40 very active members. You'd come to know them even if you didn't know their real names. But you'd read from Flower123 in one post and then there was always a category for smalltalk and you'd recognize Flower123 when they wrote about being sick or their hobby. We even had regional meetings for a big poetry forums where 10/15 came to a café. There was just a feeling of being a community.

Unfortunately I am not sure if this would even work today, even if we replicated the forumstructure 1:1. People are more used to consuming media online. You can see that here in Lemmy, too. Many people complain about the lack of content, but not many post or engage. People want to consume, not take an active role in a community. The only reason reddit still kind of works, apart from the bot content, is that it has a giant, international user base so it still feels like a lot of content even if only 10% are very active.

The whole internet culture has shifted from a light-hearted playground to a consumption-based minefield. People use the internet for different reasons. It's a huge difference if I come home from school, ask my parents to use the internet for an hour, go on that one poetry forum that is 80% of my internet activities and interact with the same 30-40 people every day or if I have the internet with me every second of the day and have an endless supply of consumable content that is enjoyable without interacting. People don't really feel like they can/should be an active participant in the discourse anymore unless it's by posting their own, standalone content on platforms like tiktok. And then it's not really an interaction with other people, it's more like everybody is yelling into nothingness.

Kinda but in general, I miss when a online community wasn't a walled garden and is open to everyone. I prefer the format of Reddit/Lemmy as I find some forum thread to be difficult to read as there's few different conversation going on.

One of the things I love about forum is that I know that it can be find via online search. Something nice about finding answers from a smaller-niche website that's away from places like Reddit.

Except for the fact that a lot do the "create an account to see the link". Aside from being annoying, encouraging dead accounts is a security risk, not for the forum but for the users.

No, I never liked the interface with all the conversations mixed so you had to copy most of the thread for context just to add half a line.
I always found them tedious and confusing.

Personally I think that this Reddit style is an upgrade design wise. And as far as recognising people goes, I'm using an app that lets you tag users (Summit) and this has gone quite a long way. It's also made the start paying attention to other usernames to an extent, so if I notice that someone often posts content that vibes with me or whatever, I can give them a ⭐ or something.

What I do miss from the days when forums were dominant is that people stayed in their lanes a little more. A particular forum or board or even thread is for a particular topic, and people who derailed or came along just to insult and shit on everything were dealt with, without this crying about 'free speech'.

Current day social media has spawned a bunch of people who feel entitled to say whatever they want to whoever they want in any space they want, and cry about blue haired SJWs or something if there's consequences. And they act like the internet used to be this place where forum moderators didn't rule with an iron fist, or like the 'real world' is somewhere that you can behave this way without being punched in the face.

I just think a lot of problems could be solved if jocks went back to discussing sportsball and cars and stayed in their lanes, instead of considering themselves to be experts on biology and sociology and vaccines. There's a fine line between 'free speech' and letting the inmates run the asylum, and the last 10 years have proven that.

Basically what I miss from the forum days is that back then, the conspiracy theorist idiots would've probably been banned, and would've stayed in the fringes of society instead of going mainstream.

I still mess around in some traditional forums and I do not miss them.

The time bias is much bigger. First comments are usually the only ones people read and replies. If there's a great comment in page 5 no one is going to see it. But if there's a troll comment in page one it is on everyone's faces. Karma system fixed that.

It's true the thing about usernames and avatars. But I prefer not to personalize a lot so for me that's also a plus, I can focus in the comment and not in who has written it.

Ah, the good old days of the internet. Yes, I miss them. There are still a few around, like the Linux Mint forum, and some other tech-related ones. But it used to be you could find any topic you were interested in and your account and username were specific to it, and they were separate domains (in the normal, non-tech sense of the word). So you might show one aspect of your personality in one forum and a different aspect in a different kind of forum. Just like you would with different friend or acquaintance groups.

Old-school forum with under a hundred people and a couple mods that give a shit is peak but does have problems with stagnation and over-specialization. Casual chat rooms or a -chan style board are a good counterbalance and nobody should exist in only one social space. Reddit et al. is a weird in-between and Discord feels like worse IRC.

I like forums, but maybe I'm part of the problem. I've read a forum obsessively for years without registering an account. Even when I have an account, I rarely post/comment. I've been reading Lemmy almost daily for over a year before registering an account and don't reply much even with an account. Decentralization starts with individuals, so I'm going to try to add signal to the fediverse.

I generally prefer the traditional flat forum UI with oldest first, but that's mostly a client issue. The problem though is if others are using a different UI the conversation may flow differently (think threaded vs flat forums).

RE karma, a lot of forums show post counts and like counts next to their forum profile, which is often included in every reply, so in some ways, the likes (karma) was a little more in your face. I think there was less astro turfing due to scope of benefit. What I mean is that while traditional forums were decentralized, so was the account and its reputation, so karma (like/post count) farming was isolated to that specific forum/community and if you were astro turfing, you'd get banned and lose that and could not transsfer that to other forums. Services like reddit effectively make this transferrable between forums. I'm concerned about how this will play out as decentralized platforms grow. It could be worse than reddit. I've been trying to come up with ways to handle this, but I can find flaws in every idea I've had so far.

Yes. I’m still on one or two but they’re definitely diminished. They had a bad habit of degenerating into factionalism, or losing their plurality of viewpoints due to popularist ideological purity purges.

I loooooved online debating back in the day you used to really get interesting and diverse conversations, they'd go on for pages and have a range of perspectives. On a good board you'd have well reasoned and well sourced arguments, and really learn a lot. All that's gone and sadly I don't see it coming back

there are still here, but not very prevelant as before. the problem with some is some mods are very uptight and when admonish you or ban at the slightest notion they think your violating some rule. Also other people giving you snide or condescending response might be harder to deal or report against, and sometimes you cant contradict someone who has older account who gatekeeps the subject of that forum. forum post also dont see much traffic either, usually its gets ignored pretty quickly.

I really miss the shit-talking forum on one of my old pirate BBS systems. You could just go a post something with the intent of having a mini flame war with someone… blow off steam. Good fun ☺️

Tremendously. Forums give me a social boost, social media and Reddit-alikes don't. As you say - disembodied voices.

I detest the deliberately ephemeral nature of modern platforms.

I also notice that I don't pay attention to usernames on Lemmy (or Reddit back when I was on it). They're just disembodied thoughts floating through the ether. On message boards, I get to know specific users, their personalities and preferences and ups and downs. I notice when certain users don't post for a while and miss them if they're gone for too long.

I feel unseen.

I like the anonymity, though.

Have the same feeling, I actually thought about making an alternative threadiverse client in the style of phpBB. But I believe there should still be an option to display comments like threads, it is just easier to use I believe. Default should definitely be new though for comments and posts. Its surprising how well threadiverse would be compatible with message boards.

Which also brought up the question with the fediverse being so open how different people interact with it using different clients.