Bring back crappy forums

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• Hacker News
• They are called Reddit or Discord these days.

  And many (many many) crappy forums were hosted on crappy free sub domain hosting, so theres little difference moving to a subreddit or discord.

  I remember sending a request for a database export to jconserv and getting nothing, just before the website started to fall apart. Later finding out that the owner just walked off or died or something.

  by protocolture
• Reddit doesnt work because subreddits crosspolinate and float to the top so theyre rather prone to brigading and intermingling. We don't really get distinct subreddits anymore.
  by AlphaSite
• I think they lost something too.

  I'm still active on a UK car forum called PistonHeads. But the user base changed. We lost the calm, car-focused, informative nature of it.

  The main website is still oriented around cars but the forum became overwhelmed with people who only came to post about politics. And their posting was more aggressive and confrontational rather than knowledge seeking or sharing. I can't prove it, but I'm certain some accounts are paid to promote / undermine political parties and causes. The product promotion has a harder time getting through though. And at least it's not Instagram or Tiktok.

  The internet as a whole just isn't what it was.

  by cs02rm0
• I think this was able to occur as genuine new user growth disappeared. So the engagement of the community churns and opens room for off topic discussion. Then politics being what it’s been enters.
  by conductr
• Your observations can largely be applied to pretty much forum out there. Every single one was hijacked with either ignorant/stupid people without intelligence and/or bots pushing particular topic. Oh and the SEO managers, how could i forgot those.

  And now when the knowledge is a golden mine for all sorts of openai/claude/other IA, the situation will likely exacerbate further.

  I really miss a place where intelligent people can talk and exchange ideas with mutual respect. It seems like all these places are largely gone by now.

  by jesterson
• The problem with crappy forums is that young people don't know how they work.

  And forums with only old people die. Because people just tend to die.

  That's why I made my 20+ year old niche agricultural forum a hybrid: a social media like feed plus a traditional forum. It fits the huge amount of image posts better as well. Of course I ran into some user revolt redesigning it this way, but users mostly like it.

  https://www.tractorfan.app

  by spiderfarmer
• I think the nostalgia here is misplaced. No one took the forums from us. They're still around. They're just not fun to use unless you're already invested in the community and its lore. And truth to be told, I don't want to become a part of the furnace enthusiasts community, set up an account, read ten pages of rules, and then get chastised by a moderator for posting in the wrong sub-forum just because I have a furnace maintenance question.

  I think there are greater tragedies playing out on the internet than people preferring Reddit to phpBB.

  by zerobees
• Making a fuss over nothing.
  by DanielHall
• Um... is not this place right here one of these crappy forums??
  by bsenftner
• we need a new moderation system
  by husamia
• poster must not have heard of letsrun.com
  by stra1ghtarrow90
• Reddit, Quora, Twitter, Pinterest won.

  Now facebook is trying to build a new app.

  by returnInfinity
• Crap is literal. Many forums got taken over by people pushing products and services. The closest thing to the general topical discussions in BBSes and forums of old today are disparate social media rabbit holes gathering places. However, niche forums that just don’t have big audiences are still great; you just need to want to discuss something almost no one else cares about.
  by dranimalz
• Bring back server side rendering that just farking worked. Loud sigh every time you visit yet another broken Javascriptastic fucking website.

  Looking at you:

  * statefarm.com

  * tmobile.com

  by exabrial
• some software can federate with lemmy these days, it's like the best of both worlds.
  by RobotToaster
• I still use them. Just been on one.
  by nephihaha
• i feel same good forum sensations on gemini BBS :) gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/
  by el3ctron
• I wonder where people used to forums stand on Lemmy
  by _thisdot
• This remind me of collegue life while enjoying on some Linux forums, good old days

  I always feel lost in social media those days, especially when X got bought by Elon Musk and premium users start to generate CONTENT(*) to get traffic and revenue

  Forums is just for some hobbist and it have didived content by channels(I almost forget what's the name) and have some highlight posts upvoted by users, that's really good stuffs

  How we get to this state I do not know, but a clear signal is that my classmate those days works on a startup that build app for forums by using some forum's API or customized solution, but seems mobile App goes fast and they lost the track, so perhaps forum get lost with emerge of Apps and user just stick to Apps and social media is also sort of Apps people get sticked(Addicted) to

  by mintflow
• As someone who worked as forum member and even hosted his own very successful forum during the 2000-2015 years - it is so much work in a one sided system.

  It is a one to many relationship, where success in terms of forum quality and loyal members and member count are one thing, one bad apple another.

  Moderation and administration looks easy on the outside but the regular members don't see the amount of invisible staff forums, that mods and admins use to handle and balance day to day happiness or survivorship - administrators always do it wrong, all blame no thank you.

  I love and like forums and strictly stick to forum culture. If you can be polarizing here and there, like HN, I use it from time to time in polarizing topics. Strict rule: no flame wars, never. Most of the time I get support, which is ok, I don't troll.

  Most of the time I try to find common ground and add a story or information to a comment.

  Upvotes and downvotes show you the way.

  So maybe it sounds pathetic but a big shoutout to the mods here and all the die hard members who keep HN the best place in my opinion there is. Never change, and I mean it.

  by _the_inflator
• I miss nntp newsgroups :)
  by wazoox
• Great article. I think the problem though is that people changed, fundamentally.

  In the day of the crappy forum, people actually cared about interesting ideas, thoughts, experiments, community. You could join a forum and after a few months, the community would embrace you as one of their own and remember your username. Each user would have their own personality and they would bring a certain quality; humour, creativity, experience, wisdom, intellect... to discussions.

  Now with social media, you're just a consumer. If you share something, it feels like nobody sees your comment and nobody cares. If you don't have a lot of money and aren't famous, nobody cares what you have to say. No matter how interesting your life and career has been, your unique personality, humour, intellect, experiences; they're all worthless now.

  Social media became popular because people changed. Or at least, the average person online changed... But look at me, I'm using social media too and I don't go on forums anymore; clearly even I changed.

  Now only money matters and nothing else. Every person is judged purely through the lens of how much money they have and how much others approve of them. Intrinsic qualities have lost all their value.

  by jongjong
• Spam prevention, moderation and security updates make running a forum require a lot of work
  by b3ing
• Not crappy by any means, but, till date, Elixir forum (elixirforum.com) simply has the best mix of knowledge, etiquette and discussions on any and most topics around Elixir. I hope they never retire it ever. I still feel the community support whenever I participate there. People genuinely are also interested in what you're working on, etc. I could never get this from Reddit.
  by neya
• This made me realize that forums existed only because there was somebody willing to pay for domain, hosting and maintenance with money and time. As a result most had a bus factor of 1. All the forums I know died with their maintainer moving on - and even forums "resurrected" by a community member had that exact problem. There is space for a fully distributed forum that can't die with its maintainer.
  by parasti
• I disagree. Part of what makes forums unique and worth visiting is having the right benevolent dictator at the helm, setting the tone for the forum. Larger forums already share the hosting and maintenance work among a group of people.
  by account42
• The problem is discord and Facebook groups are not indexed so ai can’t search them.
  by qsxfthnkp2322
• Internet is now past 6 billion people. What % do you think know what a forum is? What % of television users know what a transistor is or even an antenna? What % of phone users know what a dial tone is or a party line? As time marches on people use technology differently. There is no going back. The users do not get to decide what they are going to use, that is for the producers to tell us. Bring on the new color TV I'm ready to be jacked in. Industry leads the way.
  by boobtube
• I miss the days when HTML injection bugs were considered a feature.

  The Internet was a lot more innocent before normies and money got involved.

  by sshine
• This post is timely, considering reddit is going to start requiring login for old.reddit.com which they announced in the past few days
  by PostOnce