I miss traditional message boards. No karma, no sorting algorithms, you just get new topics on top and replies are sorted oldest to newest.
You can have forum threads that go on for decades, but Lemmy’s default sorting system quickly sweeps older content away. I’m aware you can mimic the forum format by selecting the “chat” option in a thread and sorting by old, and you can sort posts by “latest comment” which replicates the old-school forum experience pretty well, but nobody does it that way, so the community behaves in the manner facilitated by the default sorting algorithm that prioritizes new content over old but still relevant content.
I also notice that I don’t pay attention to usernames on Lemmy (or Reddit back when I was on it). They’re just disembodied thoughts floating through the ether. On message boards, I get to know specific users, their personalities and preferences and ups and downs. I notice when certain users don’t post for a while and miss them if they’re gone for too long.
EDIT: given this is my most upvoted post on here to date I’d say the answer is yes.
I feel like forums sucked too because of the lack of sorting.
They just don’t scale well to many users. Once you hit a certain number of users, without some method to sort, its just information overload.
Hell, forum threads that are too long inevitably go completely off the rails and become off topic troves.
I think there has to be a better intermediate format, like perhaps a mix of systems, but I think the main thing that makes reddit-likes suck, is their systems of governance.
Something I realized very quickly with lemmy for instance, is that its the not at all benevolent dictator positions that are the big problem. The main incentives for people choosing to spend their time in mod positions still remains to impose their will, whether that be their opinion or power over others speech.
There is something at its core which is wrong with this system at scale. It allows for mods to collect up critical masses of people before then knowing that due to that critical mass they have captive audiences where there is high friction to leave or start something else.
Lemmy has a very bandaid “solution” for this in that there can be multiple of any given community/subreddit, but they all suffer from the fact that whatever a moderator wants is what happens, and even in the worst case scenarios, that is just moved up one layer to admins, who are incentived to appear as hands off as possible on moderators, lest they get turned on by the people who “help” them.
Reddit sucks because of a lot of other profit driven reasons, but I think this is the main structural problem and lemmy shares in this.
Forums have this problem too by the way, but its just that forums are so separate and so bad at handling massive amounts of casual users, that they run into this far less.
I like forums, but maybe I’m part of the problem. I’ve read a forum obsessively for years without registering an account. Even when I have an account, I rarely post/comment. I’ve been reading Lemmy almost daily for over a year before registering an account and don’t reply much even with an account. Decentralization starts with individuals, so I’m going to try to add signal to the fediverse.
I generally prefer the traditional flat forum UI with oldest first, but that’s mostly a client issue. The problem though is if others are using a different UI the conversation may flow differently (think threaded vs flat forums).
RE karma, a lot of forums show post counts and like counts next to their forum profile, which is often included in every reply, so in some ways, the likes (karma) was a little more in your face. I think there was less astro turfing due to scope of benefit. What I mean is that while traditional forums were decentralized, so was the account and its reputation, so karma (like/post count) farming was isolated to that specific forum/community and if you were astro turfing, you’d get banned and lose that and could not transsfer that to other forums. Services like reddit effectively make this transferrable between forums. I’m concerned about how this will play out as decentralized platforms grow. It could be worse than reddit. I’ve been trying to come up with ways to handle this, but I can find flaws in every idea I’ve had so far.
The problem though is if others are using a different UI the conversation may flow differently
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. You CAN recreate the message board experience on Lemmy pretty faithfully by sorting posts by latest comment (like the bumping system of forums) and setting comments to “chat” which flattens the comment tree, and sorting oldest to newest, but nobody does that so the community doesn’t develop around it.
I also notice that I don’t pay attention to usernames on Lemmy
I’m not sure if this is a Lemmy-wide thing or if it’s just because I use the Connect app, but I can add User Notes that function as a little tag next to people’s usernames. Since I started doing that I’ve noticed just how small Lemmy is, or at least how few people actually are posting content.
Most of my notes are just to let me know not to bother getting into arguments with them on stuff. Conservative trolls, tankies, AI slop enthusiasts, people who steal content from others, etc. But occasionally I’ll mark someone down as a notable quality poster.
Gimme a good tag and I promise I’ll always upvote you and support your views comrade 🤝
I wish there was a way to sync those comments between apps and devices.
Get on some Linux forums.
That forum structure worked for nice forums with like a hundred active users, it doesn’t work when it’s tens of thousands of people. I mean I miss old time BBS forums, for what it’s worth, but the “reddit style” system is much better in my opinion.
Nested comments aren’t the problem, at least I don’t think they are. It’s how posts/topics are sorted by default that creates a strong bias toward recent content, rather than older content that is still active.
I think there are pros and cons to both nested and unnested systems. With a nested comment structure you pretty much can’t have a single comment that replies to multiple upper comments, you can only reply to one comment at a time. But nested comments allow for branching conversations that don’t derail the main topic.
I loooooved online debating back in the day you used to really get interesting and diverse conversations, they’d go on for pages and have a range of perspectives. On a good board you’d have well reasoned and well sourced arguments, and really learn a lot. All that’s gone and sadly I don’t see it coming back
I used to mod for a forum. I would not do that again.
Also, isn’t this interface just forum+?
I used to be a forum admin. My God.
Still miss forums, though.
You guys are missing out on my badass image signatures.
I had a ton of great ones back in the day on fbody.com (if you’re not a car person, it’s not what you think.)
Not really. There are so many comments in a single Lemmy thread that continuing it would be a fools errand. Old forum threads were not much better besides often having more direct conversations with people. But I find that to be much better on Lemmy than on Reddit too.
Similarly to forums, Lemmy is small enough that you often recognize usernames and recognize who it is and what they’ve talked about recently. E.g you might kinda know what’s going on in their lives.
Unrelated but does anyone know how to fix my gpu drivers?
Never responds again
I fixed it!
never responds again, especially if it’s a issue no one know the answer for
I fixed it here is a screenshot with the instructions (which is on a external file hoster)
Picture can’t be displayed because it has reached the maximum view count.
Yes and no… I miss the internet from the time period of traditional forums; but the forums themselves… I’m not 100% sure. The community feel was arguably better back then, and I do agree with you about not paying attention to usernames on Lemmy or Reddit vs getting to know specific users. There’s something about associating an image, or a signature with a user that we don’t really get on the more modern platforms.
I think it’s a problem of scale. Lemmy and Reddit have very large user-bases for a plethora of topics and interests, all congregated within a common location. Forums were for specific sets of interests with recurring, smaller user-bases.
Maybe we could get something that’s a hybrid of both by bringing back signatures with animated gifs at the end of each post we make on Lemmy.
hmmm I hadn’t thought of avatars and sigs being part of it but you have a point. Did Reddit even have Avatars before they started pushing their profile pic customizer thing? Even then they’re pretty small, likewise on Lemmy, so there’s not much room for personality, and as can be seen here a lot of people just don’t bother.
Did Reddit even have Avatars before they started pushing their profile pic customizer thing?
I don’t believe so. At least, I don’t recall anything like that. That profile pic customerizer thing was stupid AF.
I think the closest we can really get is when people put an icon next to their name… which works on the browser, but not if you’re using an app.
No, I never liked the interface with all the conversations mixed so you had to copy most of the thread for context just to add half a line.
I always found them tedious and confusing.They’re still alive and kicking.
Any good ones? Was sad to see NeoGAF kicked the bucket
knockout.chat is great but small.
But search engines try to steer you away instead of help you find them.
Old-school forum with under a hundred people and a couple mods that give a shit is peak but does have problems with stagnation and over-specialization. Casual chat rooms or a -chan style board are a good counterbalance and nobody should exist in only one social space. Reddit et al. is a weird in-between and Discord feels like worse IRC.
Are there forums on Lemmy? I thought it was just memes.
You’re in one right now. Lemmy is basically a forum: people can make posts and reply to them. The only difference is the points system.
Like I say in the OP, Lemmy and other Redditlikes have a default post sorting algorithm that prioritizes new posts over old but still active posts. This has a huge impact on the culture of the site. Topics are more ephemeral. Once they drop off the first page nobody will ever see them again.
On a forum, if a person wants to make frequent updates over a long period of time on a single topic, they can make a single megathread that stays visible as long as new replies keep coming. On Lemmy et al. the topic quickly drops off the radar no matter how many people reply, meaning if the OP wants to make frequent updates on a similar topic they have to keep making new posts if they expect people to reply.
Let’s say I’m on a car enthusiast forum, for example (IDK anything about cars). And let’s say I’m restoring an old car and want to share my progress over the course of months. I can make a single topic about my project and post replies to it with pics and updates about what’s going on. As long as I keep updating or as long as people keep commenting on what’s already there the topic remains relevant and more importantly visible, and could remain so for years or even decades.
Now let’s imagine the same project on a Redditlike site like Lemmy. Yes I can do the same thing as above, make a single post and keep replying to it, and people can chime in with comments. But because the default sorting algorithm causes older posts, no matter how active, to drop off over time, I’ll be replying to the void since nobody will see the post. In order to maintain the same level of visibility and interaction, I have to make new posts for each update. It’s less likely that my project will become an enduring part of the community’s history because it will either get swept away by new content if I use a single topic, or be scattered across several disparate posts.
Other differentiating factors that people have brought up are signatures and avatars. Avatars are really small on these sites and there are no sigs at all. These were modes of self-differentiation on forums, allowing individual users to be more recognizable and allowing connections between users to develop. On Redditlike sites you’re just a username and maybe a little icon, making it harder to see anything but disembodied ideas floating in the ether.
Yes I can make Lemmy behave like a forum by sorting posts by latest comment and using the “chat” display option for comments, but nobody else does that so posts will get swept away by new ones for them even if they aren’t for me, meaning the culture never grows around this system.
It’s not what I would consider a forum. Traditionally forums were built around an interest or topic, Lemmy like Reddit is a conglomerate of communities or subreddits some of which I’d consider forums. Lemmy doesn’t have the population to support nitch groups like Reddit does.
