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Yup, my account is over 11 years old and still going strong! Previous forums I used were: 1. the Joel on Software forum, which was great, with a similar clean

by chubot 6y ago

Yup, my account is over 11 years old and still going strong! Previous forums I used were: 1. the Joel on Software forum, which was great, with a similar clean design, but didn't last as long (Joel got tired of moderating it, probably) https://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/ https://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/ (now has an outdated cert :-( ) 2. Usenet. Epic thread that gives you a picture of what happened to Usenet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24772142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24772142 (a flame war between drummers went on for 20 years, and one of them is even flamed 8 years after his death!!!) Random sample of how bad it could be: https://groups.google.com/g/rec.music.makers.percussion/c/-EhOkArR6BM/m/9zRv-MEZHCwJ https://groups.google.com/g/rec.music.makers.percussion/c/-E...

jjav 6y ago
> Usenet. But that's like saying "email". USENET isn't a forum, it is a standard decentralized distribution mechanism owned by nobody (like email). Some newsgroups were a disaster even back in '90 and many were awesome back then. Most decayed but even today there are a few corners of USENET which thrive (I still read a few newsgroups every week with trn).
- chubot 6y ago
  Well, I'd say it's sort of like "Reddit". Despite being a bunch of different forums, Reddit has a certain feel. Design choices in the software influence people's behavior, as well as influencing which people join and participate to begin with. I imagine Facebook groups are largely different than subreddits for the same reason. I was a pretty early Reddit user, I think 2007 or so. And it definitely got worse, so by ~2012 I had almost entirely stopped using it. But since ~2016, there are a couple communities I like, so I'm back on there. There could be gems on Usenet for sure ... but I checked the forums I used to frequent and you know what happened :)
  - jjav 6y ago
    But reddit is a proprietary platform, not a protocol. What I was getting at is that NNTP and SMTP (and the infrastructure surrounding the protocols) is all standard and non-proprietary, nobody owns them and anyone can run them so there can be as many communities as may be interested.

by chubot 6y ago

jjav 6y ago

> Usenet. But that's like saying "email". USENET isn't a forum, it is a standard decentralized distribution mechanism owned by nobody (like email). Some newsgroups were a disaster even back in '90 and many were awesome back then. Most decayed but even today there are a few corners of USENET which thrive (I still read a few newsgroups every week with trn).

chubot 6y ago
Well, I'd say it's sort of like "Reddit". Despite being a bunch of different forums, Reddit has a certain feel. Design choices in the software influence people's behavior, as well as influencing which people join and participate to begin with. I imagine Facebook groups are largely different than subreddits for the same reason. I was a pretty early Reddit user, I think 2007 or so. And it definitely got worse, so by ~2012 I had almost entirely stopped using it. But since ~2016, there are a couple communities I like, so I'm back on there. There could be gems on Usenet for sure ... but I checked the forums I used to frequent and you know what happened :)
- jjav 6y ago
  But reddit is a proprietary platform, not a protocol. What I was getting at is that NNTP and SMTP (and the infrastructure surrounding the protocols) is all standard and non-proprietary, nobody owns them and anyone can run them so there can be as many communities as may be interested.