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I still see forums around but I hate them. PHPBB and similar things don't seem to have evolved past what we had in 2000. They desperately need threaded discussi

by MBCook 4y ago

I still see forums around but I hate them. PHPBB and similar things don't seem to have evolved past what we had in 2000. They desperately need threaded discussions. I’ve got a car forum open in another tab. I see a number of posts with 5 pages of replies. At that point it may be impossible to read the thing coherently. Various people are replying to each other in their own (invisible) threads. Some new posts on page 5 reply to things from page 2. Once things get over a few pages their worthless. But that’s where the gold is. There is often a few big threads to address a big issue. People don’t read 30 pages, so they post asking for the solution. And people say “Look at BobFrank72s posts on pages 12 and 14.” In a threaded discussion like HN or Reddit those answers could rise to the top and be easy to find. Subthreads wouldn’t get in the way and the 75 “me too” posts wouldn’t hide the wheat in their chaff. I like the idea of specialized forums, but the user experience is just terrible for me. I almost ever join them. When I do, despite the value, I tend to be frustrated on most visits.

cheschire 4y ago
UBB had this feature in the early 2000’s. It was rather terrible to navigate using the default skins of the time and some sub threads would go on way too long. You take for granted the things that make modern threaded discussion work. Those concepts didn’t exist back then.
- MBCook 4y ago
  I don’t remember seeing someone do it well until Reddit, but thats my experience + memories that stuck. I’m sure it can be done bad, but I’ve been on Reddit for 13 years and I know I wasn’t too early. This was figured out by then. Yet it’s 2022 and the two car forums I look at work just like the forums I remember from the turn of the century. I will say threaded doesn’t work well for a discussion where 2 or 3 people hold a conversation (like you would on chat). But that doesn’t seem to be the common case, at least for the forums I’ve been to (I could see other topics being different).

by MBCook 4y ago

cheschire 4y ago

UBB had this feature in the early 2000’s. It was rather terrible to navigate using the default skins of the time and some sub threads would go on way too long. You take for granted the things that make modern threaded discussion work. Those concepts didn’t exist back then.

MBCook 4y ago
I don’t remember seeing someone do it well until Reddit, but thats my experience + memories that stuck. I’m sure it can be done bad, but I’ve been on Reddit for 13 years and I know I wasn’t too early. This was figured out by then. Yet it’s 2022 and the two car forums I look at work just like the forums I remember from the turn of the century. I will say threaded doesn’t work well for a discussion where 2 or 3 people hold a conversation (like you would on chat). But that doesn’t seem to be the common case, at least for the forums I’ve been to (I could see other topics being different).