Ask Lemmy

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.

I always hated the UX of forums. It was incredibly difficult to follow long threads with loads of pages. Personally I prefer the format we have here on Lemmy where comments are nested off the main post.

I used to mod for a forum. I would not do that again.

Also, isn't this interface just forum+?

Do we have a list of not death forums in 2025, I have been eyeing the following (Spanish forums) and even logged in again!

Emudesc.com Elotrolado.net Forosdz.club

As I only frequented forums as a kid and I didn't know the English language back then, Spanish forums is the only sweet memory that I have, but now I can be part of English forums too, the sad part is they are no longer mainstream 😅

Unrelated but does anyone know how to fix my gpu drivers?

Never responds again

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.

Bodybuilding forums led to a notorious debate on the number of days in a week. I feel like a reddit format would water down the debate by not presenting replies as they are posted in real time.

They still exist, they're just kind of rare. There's even federated forums like NodeBB. I actively read stuff on SpaceBattles, Sufficient Velocity, etc. It's admittedly difficult to find something with absolutely no like/karma system, but for instance the hellhole known as GameFAQs still exists.

I remember back in 2007,2008 etc I had an app on my phone that had tons of forums on it. I spent years on that app reading, learning, screen shorting, so much information. It was my favorite app. Few years later I get a new phone and can’t find that app anymore. There was a woodworking forum, electricians forum, welding forum, weed forum, and so many others. All in one single app.

Couldn’t find any of the forums. Depressing.

Upvote/Downvote/likes is the cancer that ruined it all. Before that one actually had to speak in support or against any given ideas. Now people can assume anything is true/false based on an arbitrary engagement number.

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.

Not particularly.

There was so much to deal with back then. So many different rule sets to follow, so many differences in each community, so many sign-up and on-boarding processes for posting or contributing each.

I miss the internet itself from that time period, and I realize that there is a certain community feel that is missing due to how congregated the current internet is, but I still don't really miss forums specifically all that much.

I miss the individuality of the old internet. Websites, communities, and users being themselves.

ShitNugget9000 on one forum might be SirReginald79 on another.

Policies set for the community, not the leaseholder.

The internet controlled by a hegemony sucks.

I went back to blacksmithforums.com just now, to my surprise, they changed their software. Now I can't find all the posts that I saved about historical researches...

There are still quite many game developers' forums, but what bothers me a little bit is that sometimes the long living ones periodically lost their past.

I miss the community. I was a member of a community forum for about 18 years. You knew everyone and it was generally nice.

Yes, for one particular reason: I've always favored longer, slower posting - structured responses to earlier posts with multiple paragraphs to propose a point, explain, and support it. Including the ability to quote / link back to multiple different posts in a thread if needed. The... for lack of a better way to put it, "Reddit-esque" style of branched comments to a post (which includes Lemmy) is nice because it allows multiple parallel discussions rather than one dominating one, but it also seems to discourage longer, more in-depth responses. It also means that interesting ongoing discussions which I'd love to get into can get buried down later in the comments.

Like OP, I recognize that there's nothing actually stopping me from doing this on Lemmy. There's chat and sort-by-new, and of course I can link as many other comments as I want. But the overwhelming trend is towards shorter, snappier answers before you move on to the next comment chain or post; discussions rarely last more than a few hours, whereas forum threads used to be able to keep them going for days.