alt Hacker NewsI miss forums. When they were in their heyday I was an active participant in anywhere from a couple to half a dozen, shifting with whatever happened to be my hobby at the time. And local forums based around hobbies like music and photography were a great way to meet people in person because you already had something in common to start things off.
It was also a place to find really in depth information on a topic. I remember doing research for my multi-day hikes and outdoor travels by browsing the threads in the stormfront survival subforum (note: I do not condone what they represent, but lots of them were paranoid and preparing for "the coming race war" and they just had good prepping and survival info).
To me Reddit and HN have filled the void left by the decline of forums, but it's not the same. Perhaps the thing I miss the most is the ability to have avatars and custom signatures and titles to give your online persona a little bit of personality and flair.
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Same here. I have very fond memories of old forum culture. I was a mod/admin on several and an actual community developed. With the avatar and signatures it was easier to recognize people and see them as a person instead of just an opponent to debate, especially for the regular posters.
With how long the communities stuck together and the daily posters on the smaller ones, life happened there. People graduated from college, got married, went through parents dying, cancer, career growth, retirement… I had a very good sense of who many of these people were as people, not just faceless opponents for a debate, which often feels like what modern mega sites have become. It’s not a conversation with people you know, it’s a conversation with the hive mind.
That little bit of personality is what made forums so much fun. The early 2000s somethingawful forums were such a goldmine. I've never laughed so hard in my life at the antics between users. When this person or that guy or some infamous user would show up, it would kick off a thread and it felt so much more "real" and personal.
The ultra niche subreddits have that vibe, but as soon as they get to around 10k users, it turns into nothing but an upvote dopamine chase.