How did we move from forums to Reddit, Facebook groups, and Discord? - eviltoast
From the first moment I first went online in 1996, forums were the main place to hang out. In fact the very first thing I did was join an online forum run by the Greek magazine "PC Master" so I could directly to my favourite game reviewers (for me it was Tsourinakis, for those old [...]

A bit of an effortpost :)

Please do crosspost in more fitting communities if you think of any

    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      121·
      3 months ago

      reddit started as a link aggregator, but morphed into a de-facto forum, yes. But link aggregation was also a big part. But when I say forums in this piece, I am talking about old school ones, as existed before reddit. Lemmy can function as a forum replacement however, which is why I suggest it at the end as a suitable replacement.

      • SupraMario@lemmy.world
        9·
        3 months ago

        Sorting and bumping. Lemmy and reddit and can never be a forum from the past. As all content is continually drowned out and replaced with new posts. So no it cant.

        • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
          41·
          3 months ago

          The “New comments” sort is quite useful.

          I go back to months old thread from time to time due to a new comment

          • SupraMario@lemmy.world
            3·
            3 months ago

            Which is what you might see, not what everyone else does. Old school forums are literally built so everyone is seeing the same layout, so that month old post that just got bumped, everyone is seeing it now.

          • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            I enjoyed seeing that on the RiF (Reddit Is Fun) app - it even helped me moderate a sub bc it would show the newest comments regardless of what posts they appeared in, so that a single new reply could be isolated out from the hundreds of older comments already in a post. Though those were available as well, being just a click away.

            Another thing that drove people away from Reddit, besides the horrible ethics of its CEO, and also wanting to be in solidarity with content creators and mods, was how not only were the third-party apps killed off, but the official app just absolutely sucked in comparison. It provided only the tiniest fraction of the functionality found in those other apps - especially the ones preferred most by mods.

            Not that the users left on Reddit care about such. All they seem to care about is the ability to doomscroll endlessly, but whether the content is made by AI, scraped from X or Mastodon or Lemmy, seems to matter not at all. Long live Reddit! No seriously, it might not even die at all at this point, just be relegated to obscurity while forever limping along, desperately attempting to achieve for Huffman the payday that he believes (unfounded on facts) he “deserves”.

          • SupraMario@lemmy.world
            5·
            3 months ago

            Not to the point old school forums do. The sorting is one of the main things in a old school forum as it will bump a post to the top with a single comment. Subforums are also something you don’t have on reddit/lemmy scrolling aggregators.

            • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
              32·
              3 months ago

              What are you talking about? Each community is effectively a subforum. Why do you need nested forums?

              Also, being able to bump up threads was a curse as well. Anyway, of course lemmy is not identical to old-school bbcode forums, but I’d argue this is for the best. But I’m also hoping Discourse will make lemmy integration better, then it can be used by people who prefer that format.

              • SupraMario@lemmy.world
                3·
                3 months ago

                Look at xda and then reask that question. Subforums exist because some topics still fall under the same forum. Like android roms is a sub forum in xda, so its rooting phones. All the same umbrella but has different subforums.

                This seems to be an issue with those who never used forums or grew up with them. They just want rolling topics over and over.

                • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
                  23·
                  3 months ago

                  There’s no reason for subforums even in that case. You can easily have multiple communities the same way XDA has.

                  • SupraMario@lemmy.world
                    21·
                    3 months ago

                    Which is a nightmare for searching and knowing where to post. Forums are still one of the best mediums for topics with multiple Branches