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I miss forums too, I really like reddit for finding interesting stuff, but the community aspect isn’t there so much. Back in the late 90s early 00s I was a mem

I miss forums too, I really like reddit for finding interesting stuff, but the community aspect isn’t there so much. Back in the late 90s early 00s I was a member of a forum for a chain of video game stores in the UK, it was an amazing community. The store went bust in ‘05 and one guy created his own forum software where most of the displaced members flocked to. That forum is still going, although there’s probably only 10 or so regulars left - but we still talk on it every day. I’ve even met a few of them in the real world. EDIT: I think you've hit the nail on the head, the thing that was so great about forums is, while the original point of the forum was to bring together people with a like minded interest (video game(s)/whatever) - the forum would also have separate boards to discuss cross over topics or something completely unrelated. This meant you were talking to people who you might recognise from other areas of the forum and share other common interests, so could build that sense of community. Whereas reddit just feels more siloed, I wouldn't recongise anyone who visits subreddit X who also happens to be on Y etc

heisenbit 6y ago
I believe this is the dividend and curse of Web2.0. Things can be so easily mixed, matched, shared and are federated. Boundaries have been eroding in the digital as in the real world. We've lost the sense of closed group, community and with it some natural short feedback loops. There are huge benefits to this like minorities gaining scale to be heard. But I feel a lot of benefits are of the type of taking something very good and scaling it up to a global level. What is less seen is the destruction of a lot of other good solutions elsewhere which might have had a chance to develop into something even better with a little more time. We are loosing diversity in products and ideas. Finding ways to restore smaller scale in some areas may be beneficial but it is not clear how to make it work. Arbitrage across boundaries levels differences. The benefits of tearing down the boundaries accrue with the rule breakers who gain scale. Google+ was an attempt to stem the tide. It may have been flawed but it also tried something fundamentally hard.
marcosdumay 6y ago
The best part of forums was that they didn't have much temporal dependency. People posted things there, and it was expected that other would reply days or months later. It made for a much more calm and lively discussion. When Reddit puts something on the hot tab, there's one hour or two for anybody to say what they want to say, no time for anybody to reply, and it's gone. HN is slower, but not very different. It's a completely different kind of site.
- annadane 6y ago
  This is also what I fucking hate about Facebook's desire to make you spend all your time there. They do the same sort of thing.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  Also my lamenting the loss of newsgroups for just that effect. Used to be in alt.callahans and I can't imagine how many threads I just collapsed and moved on because I knew that conversation wasn't a topic of mine. And still managed to ping in at least a few dozen messages of varying size/quality a week.
  - intended 6y ago
    Eternal september is more powerful than any form of site design or BBS format.
- ChainOfFools 6y ago
  i think this may be strongly correlated with the end of dialup and the rise of always-on internet, and then again in the rise of always-on-hand smartphone internet usage (and its pervasive push notification capacity), each stage raising the ground state of expected response times. speed then proceeded to kill everything in its way.

heisenbit 6y ago

I believe this is the dividend and curse of Web2.0. Things can be so easily mixed, matched, shared and are federated. Boundaries have been eroding in the digital as in the real world. We've lost the sense of closed group, community and with it some natural short feedback loops. There are huge benefits to this like minorities gaining scale to be heard. But I feel a lot of benefits are of the type of taking something very good and scaling it up to a global level. What is less seen is the destruction of a lot of other good solutions elsewhere which might have had a chance to develop into something even better with a little more time. We are loosing diversity in products and ideas. Finding ways to restore smaller scale in some areas may be beneficial but it is not clear how to make it work. Arbitrage across boundaries levels differences. The benefits of tearing down the boundaries accrue with the rule breakers who gain scale. Google+ was an attempt to stem the tide. It may have been flawed but it also tried something fundamentally hard.

marcosdumay 6y ago

The best part of forums was that they didn't have much temporal dependency. People posted things there, and it was expected that other would reply days or months later. It made for a much more calm and lively discussion. When Reddit puts something on the hot tab, there's one hour or two for anybody to say what they want to say, no time for anybody to reply, and it's gone. HN is slower, but not very different. It's a completely different kind of site.

annadane 6y ago
This is also what I fucking hate about Facebook's desire to make you spend all your time there. They do the same sort of thing.
zentiggr 6y ago
Also my lamenting the loss of newsgroups for just that effect. Used to be in alt.callahans and I can't imagine how many threads I just collapsed and moved on because I knew that conversation wasn't a topic of mine. And still managed to ping in at least a few dozen messages of varying size/quality a week.
- intended 6y ago
  Eternal september is more powerful than any form of site design or BBS format.
ChainOfFools 6y ago
i think this may be strongly correlated with the end of dialup and the rise of always-on internet, and then again in the rise of always-on-hand smartphone internet usage (and its pervasive push notification capacity), each stage raising the ground state of expected response times. speed then proceeded to kill everything in its way.