Fediverse

during the first big migration to lemmy a lot of folks were splitting between discord and here, and a really common refrain was "anything but old school forums" and i absolutely did not and do not get this attitude. old school forums were great! the discussions were always super relevant because everyone was there to discuss whatever specific thing everyone had signed up for, and the people posting were always super reliable, knowledge wise, because, again, it was a dedicated place for discussing something specific, and the frequently asked questions would always end up in a really good wiki. sometimes i wonder if people had bad experiences on those forums because they're much more focused. like on reddit everyone would complain about the arch forums on r/arch, but none of what they said matched the actual tone of the arch forums. it made me think they posted short one liner questions as thread starters instead of giving a full breakdown of the error they were seeing, what they did to troubleshoot the problem, and what errors had come about during that process.

overall, i think we've had a shift in the architecture of the internet thanks to general purpose discussion sites like twitter and reddit. before, the internet was cathedrals filled with texts related to their specific topic. everything on a sportster related forum was going to be about the maintenance and modification of sportsters. maybe there was a subsection where people could talk about their other motorcycles, but that was more of a social lounge than anything, like the equivalent of the fellowship hall in my cathedral analogy.

after reddit and twitter took over those scenes, the internet became a mall. unfocused, impersonal, and only meant to pipeline you into purchasing products. none of the people up front are very knowledgeable because you don't need to be knowledgeable to make sales, you need to be attention getting. especially when what's for sale is disposable