Ask Lemmy

Those still exist. You just have the wrong address.

Does anybody else miss Compuserve, Delphi, etc?

I still mess around in some traditional forums and I do not miss them.

The time bias is much bigger. First comments are usually the only ones people read and replies. If there's a great comment in page 5 no one is going to see it. But if there's a troll comment in page one it is on everyone's faces. Karma system fixed that.

It's true the thing about usernames and avatars. But I prefer not to personalize a lot so for me that's also a plus, I can focus in the comment and not in who has written it.

I took a career aptitude test and it told me I should have been a software engineer and idk if that has anything to do with this, but...

Tl;dr: I got high and there's got to be a way to do it in this here vote-time continuum!

On a superficial level, couldn't you get creative with lemmy community settings (using a new sister community) and create only pinned posts/threads (may be subject to mod approval) which are then autosorted by new comments using some scripty pinned post reordering logic? That probably could only apply to a single community though...

The extent of my web design knowledge is limited to fuckin around with myspace html buuut, with more lemmy UI settings, could users elect that certain posts are "forum" worthy? As in, "this is a meme teehee" or "this is a topic worthy of revisiting over a greater period of time" kind of thing. And barring any weird astroturfing, these posts get "pinned" to be revived at the top of the community whenever some reply or top level comment threshold is passed. Inversely, pinned posts could fall away into an archived state after a certain period of no activity, much like the rest of lemmy that's over a week old (whether it's actually no longer active or not).

Getting pinned (hehe) would probably require meeting various straightforward thresholds (like relative or absolute vote value and/or the ratio of upvotes to "pins"). That could determine a sep for how long a post/thread remains subject to revival by reply.

If this configuration were applied to lemmy in general, I think to encourage participation, I'd say it should be an opt-out situation when visiting a specific community (do you want to see community-pinned posts?) and an opt-in situation when choosing to include "active archives" content in a homepage feed.

Not really sure about implementation, but to me it just becomes a secondary voting system as a means to value longevity of a topic, and various ways of incorporating those data into user sorts, community pages, and news feeds that might want to utilize.

Simple as that, right?

^heh^

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.

Have the same feeling, I actually thought about making an alternative threadiverse client in the style of phpBB. But I believe there should still be an option to display comments like threads, it is just easier to use I believe. Default should definitely be new though for comments and posts. Its surprising how well threadiverse would be compatible with message boards.

Which also brought up the question with the fediverse being so open how different people interact with it using different clients.

I like the anonymity, though.

Luckily there are still some interesting forums around for specific topics and old school games!

I do miss them, but at least Something Awful is still around

and you can sort posts by “latest comment” which replicates the old-school forum experience pretty well, but nobody does it that way

I do it that way, at least on posts with a manageable amount of comments where I actually care about the content of the comments (e.g. threads about someone asking how to do something).

Kinda but in general, I miss when a online community wasn't a walled garden and is open to everyone. I prefer the format of Reddit/Lemmy as I find some forum thread to be difficult to read as there's few different conversation going on.

One of the things I love about forum is that I know that it can be find via online search. Something nice about finding answers from a smaller-niche website that's away from places like Reddit.

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

there are still here, but not very prevelant as before. the problem with some is some mods are very uptight and when admonish you or ban at the slightest notion they think your violating some rule. Also other people giving you snide or condescending response might be harder to deal or report against, and sometimes you cant contradict someone who has older account who gatekeeps the subject of that forum. forum post also dont see much traffic either, usually its gets ignored pretty quickly.

obligatory RIP kongregate

in theory, yes; discussion threads, yes; no for questions and answers. people on modern-style platforms can be assholes, but i have wanted to punch a guy from 2007 more times than i can count.

Yes. I’m still on one or two but they’re definitely diminished. They had a bad habit of degenerating into factionalism, or losing their plurality of viewpoints due to popularist ideological purity purges.

Tremendously. Forums give me a social boost, social media and Reddit-alikes don't. As you say - disembodied voices.

I detest the deliberately ephemeral nature of modern platforms.

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.

I feel unseen.

Might be handy if Lemmy allowed to hide karma altogether. You could still up-/downvote (depending on the instance, only upvoting allowed). Or places where karma is disabled by default.