Are sites like lemmy , reddit and discord the true successors to the old internet forums of the 2000s . or were the forums superior to todays reddit , lemmy or discord

  • PonyOfWar
    link
    499 months ago

    I think a big difference is the temporary nature of threads on Lemmy/Reddit. On forums, a new reply pushes a thread back to the front of the page, which leads to discussions that can go on for months or years. On Lemmy, a discussion is active for a few days at most, with the exception of stickied threads. It leads to a different discussion culture and I do sometimes miss that aspect of forums.

    • DefederateLemmyMl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      349 months ago

      Another difference is that on forums you tend to get to know the members if you hang around long enough. On reddit/lemmy I never got this feeling, you’re just discussing with random usernames and once the discussion is over, you will probably never run into each other again.

      • @Vent@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        189 months ago

        You still get this effect if you are active on specific communities, especially smaller ones.

        • DefederateLemmyMl
          link
          fedilink
          English
          69 months ago

          Can’t say I ever got that from any subreddit, except in the negative way: trolls and overzealous moderators.

          • @candybrie@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            29 months ago

            Definitely happened in my bump group. But it was maybe 50 active users all going through the same intense thing.

          • Gamma
            link
            fedilink
            English
            19 months ago

            As a redditor for over 13 years, the smaller communities were one of my favorite parts of the site.

      • @DrQuint@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        59 months ago

        You can still get to know people on reddit. I know some by name. But only on smaller communities that still use the old style flairs, because it’s easier to notice that the same type of post is generally attached to the same mini image and then the name gets noticeable.

        This effect was entirely gone from medium sized communities and up.

      • Margot Robbie
        link
        fedilink
        29 months ago

        I feel that you get to know the regular users on your instance here pretty well, having a profile picture helps.

      • @davefischer@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        19 months ago

        I think about that a lot. On usenet, I had lots of friends. On modern forums, every conversation is sitting down with a bunch of strangers.

        Maybe it’s just my memory is shot because I’m old? Ha ha.

      • Dark Arc
        link
        fedilink
        English
        19 months ago

        I feel like part of that might be the subtly of the avatars here vs forums where people tend to have unique large pictures and signatures

      • PonyOfWar
        link
        39 months ago

        Good point, though I think that also prioritizes threads with a newer creation date? In any case threads seems to die relatively quickly anyway.

    • @pedroapero@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      49 months ago

      When you reply on Lemmy, it may push the thread on top of the «active» filter, so it is similar to forums. Some forums feature voting but to my knowledge none of them has a display algorithm based on votes.

    • @schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      19 months ago

      As a general rule, I think the things that tend to happen on each kind of Internet platform with user-generated content are mainly the result of how that platform is structured: which posts are shown to whom under what conditions, etc. These are just some examples of this phenomenon.