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> Make forums great again please I see this sentiment a lot here but people don't seem to understand why reddit "won." You essentially have access to thousands

> Make forums great again please I see this sentiment a lot here but people don't seem to understand why reddit "won." You essentially have access to thousands of forums without having to maintain an account on each of them. You may see this as a feature not a bug but given the popularity of reddit, I'd say most people disagree.

hakfoo 5y ago
That's what it always appeared to me as-- a constellation of forums with SSO. The fact a new account is so low-cost-- not even email required-- makes it feasible to split your identity as necessary. I recall in the old days there were a few services that would do hosted forums, but nobody seemed to think "hey, let's combine them under one hood and ebable discovery."
- hombre_fatal 5y ago
  Actually, forums like EZBoard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezboard) and I think Proboards had a SSO solution (EZBoard Gold). Forums, for reasons we could go into, just never were as compelling to most people as Reddit's solution, though they are good for other things.
marginalia_nu 5y ago
I don't think reddit is what actually killed forums. It was a factor, but what was the final nail in most coffins was the software they ran, which often was old LAMP code that needed constant patching and upkeep. Most of these message boards were run more or less non-commercially, as someone's pet project. They were also extremely juicy targets, not only from a "steal a bunch of emails and password-hashes" angle, but to spam with links for SEO-purposes. I think this constant attrition is what ultimately killed them. It simply became untenable for one person to stem the tide. Reddit lives because it has the economies of scale on its side.
- technobabbler 5y ago
  Great points.
- QuikAccount 5y ago
  I can see this as well. A lot of old forums I used to run on have been hacked and spammed to death.

hakfoo 5y ago

That's what it always appeared to me as-- a constellation of forums with SSO. The fact a new account is so low-cost-- not even email required-- makes it feasible to split your identity as necessary. I recall in the old days there were a few services that would do hosted forums, but nobody seemed to think "hey, let's combine them under one hood and ebable discovery."

hombre_fatal 5y ago
Actually, forums like EZBoard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezboard) and I think Proboards had a SSO solution (EZBoard Gold). Forums, for reasons we could go into, just never were as compelling to most people as Reddit's solution, though they are good for other things.

marginalia_nu 5y ago

I don't think reddit is what actually killed forums. It was a factor, but what was the final nail in most coffins was the software they ran, which often was old LAMP code that needed constant patching and upkeep. Most of these message boards were run more or less non-commercially, as someone's pet project. They were also extremely juicy targets, not only from a "steal a bunch of emails and password-hashes" angle, but to spam with links for SEO-purposes. I think this constant attrition is what ultimately killed them. It simply became untenable for one person to stem the tide. Reddit lives because it has the economies of scale on its side.

technobabbler 5y ago
Great points.
QuikAccount 5y ago
I can see this as well. A lot of old forums I used to run on have been hacked and spammed to death.