3 ms·

I remember the way that old style internet forums used to work. It was the posts that generated the most active discussion that naturally "rose to the top" sim

I remember the way that old style internet forums used to work. It was the posts that generated the most active discussion that naturally "rose to the top" simply because forums were designed to display the posts in order of recent activity. And there was no signal such as "likes" or "votes". So you had to read through the entire thread to decide what you thought about an issue or what your takeaway should be.

lethologica 5y ago
Most forums did have reputation systems though, which I would argue were the primitive form of likes. But I agree, I do miss the old forum style of communities.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  The reputation was often just the age of the account, which was displayed prominently, while the actual comment date was hidden away somewhere else.
  - lethologica 5y ago
    True, but I always found that those with higher reputations were given preferential treatment or seen as “superstars” of the forum. Similar to how people with large followers are considered the same these days.
droopyEyelids 5y ago
It had a milder version of the same problem, though. The more contentious threads or posts got more responses.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
They were also self-contained. What you wrote on a forum about skyscrapers didn't have an impact on how you were perceived on a forum about bocce ball. Sites like Reddit that aggregate all of these interests into one place, with one reputation score across all interests, end up leaking the outrage from the most contentious areas into everything else. It used to be that niche hobbies were safe from this but more and more of them are getting overflow from the geysers of outrage coming from the more mainstream areas. If you're the moderator of one of these niche subreddits, trying to keep this out will often lead to raids and complaints to higher management who can replace you at will. This puts more power into the hands of the outrage manufacturers to leak over into everything and everywhere they want.

lethologica 5y ago

Most forums did have reputation systems though, which I would argue were the primitive form of likes. But I agree, I do miss the old forum style of communities.

frosted-flakes 5y ago
The reputation was often just the age of the account, which was displayed prominently, while the actual comment date was hidden away somewhere else.
- lethologica 5y ago
  True, but I always found that those with higher reputations were given preferential treatment or seen as “superstars” of the forum. Similar to how people with large followers are considered the same these days.

droopyEyelids 5y ago

It had a milder version of the same problem, though. The more contentious threads or posts got more responses.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

They were also self-contained. What you wrote on a forum about skyscrapers didn't have an impact on how you were perceived on a forum about bocce ball. Sites like Reddit that aggregate all of these interests into one place, with one reputation score across all interests, end up leaking the outrage from the most contentious areas into everything else. It used to be that niche hobbies were safe from this but more and more of them are getting overflow from the geysers of outrage coming from the more mainstream areas. If you're the moderator of one of these niche subreddits, trying to keep this out will often lead to raids and complaints to higher management who can replace you at will. This puts more power into the hands of the outrage manufacturers to leak over into everything and everywhere they want.