there’s no persistence or community.
That's it right there, that's what you are missing. The older forum communities were small enough that you could keep track of whose who, something that isn't possible when the user counts are in the tens of thousands to tens of millions. I think a lot of us olds would like to go back to that but its impossible; our monkey brains can't handle communities of that size.
To use an extreme example, if I saw someone just spamming the hard-R I would want their comment immediately removed.
In the forum days those users would get attacked and / or blocked by other users. If they caused enough havoc for long enough then the mods / admins would step in. The expectation NOW is that the mods / admins will actively monitor every post and comment in order to remove disagreeable content before it can be seen. That's quite the change over the last 20 years!
The funniest part is that this mirrors real life. If someone did that IRL, I would just leave.
"Mirror" is probably more apt than you realize. IRL you would leave but on the internet you want them to leave. I'm not blaming you or saying that you're wrong, I'm just pointing out the difference.
I agree that all forums require some level of moderation in order to keep from turning into total troll-fests however there's a wide chasm between moderating someone because they won't stop posting racial slurs and moderating someone because they're going against the grain / hivemind.
Being designed around persistent topics rather than the ephemeral post model
Hmmm, you're probably on to something there. I think Lemmy could do that but no one cares to set it up.
and more visible user customisation (more prominent avatars, signatures, that sort of thing).
I'm honestly not sure this is a bad thing. Dear God, remember how threads would get blown out by hyper-configurations? Sig blocks that were 20,000 pixels long and endless GIF spam? Not sure I'm in a hurry to get back to that!
One of my favorite forums has been around since 1999 and is currently running on XenoForo which is very phpBB-esque. Anytime I get a nostalgia hankering I drop in for a few minutes. It's not always as good as you may remember. :)
The fact that most internet discussion happens in extremely censored places is bad.
Many people, including a large chunk of Lemmy, are perfectly fine with censored discussions. They honestly want it that way...as long as the discussion is censored such that it agrees with their opinion.
I want the rest of the world to change and this is another tool to help towards that end, not merely an escape.
It's extremely difficult to free people from things that they want.
What are we going to do about it?
Do nothing, nothing about it. The great hordes of the unwashed have ruined every single place they've showed up starting in the early 90s. They don't want to be saved from the commercialization that has taken over the internet, to the contrary they thrive on it and are willing to put up with nearly anything to attract and keep it.
If most of Reddit shifted over to Lemmy it would get commercialized into a smoking crater. As soon as there's enough regular people using a thing the companies and venture capitalists will show up and at that point the game is over.
The best of the internet has always been built by and populated with people who don't fit into a box. It's that internet people keep trying to bring back but you can't hold the castle once it's being assaulted by the normies.
So the solution is to do nothing. Let the normies stay in their palaces of commercialization and corruption. It's for the best.
As to what we do about it?
Nothing. We do nothing about it. I've literally watched this happen over and over and over and over since the early 90s. $Place on the internet gets popular and is then ruined by the hordes of normies and the commercialization they attract. It's even worse now with rise of influencers, troll farms, online advertising agencies, and power users.
The normie users add almost nothing to the online experience and they take so very much.
So the wisest move is to do nothing and let the flotsam and turds of the internet wash up in harbors like Reddit.
What do you think Lemmy is missing that phpBB had aside from strong user communities built over years where many of the users knew each other IRL?
I think old school internet folks are underestimating just how much of a grip Big Tech has on users’ attention.l, and their devices.
With all sincerity this is fine. Seriously, let's leave it this way.
As someone who was already around when Eternal September happened the Internet was never for normies and inviting them into the space has destroyed it. Everything that attracts the attention of normies ends up ruined; MySpace, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Slashdot and so very many more...they are all trashed because when they attracted enough users the commercialization started.
So maybe lets just leave the Fediverse for those "in the know" as long as we can.
In some ways yes in other ways no. The urge to hivemind and purity test everything is definitely the same however the ability to move to another instance and get away from a group of power tripping mods is different.
Lemmy is essentially a collection of 2000s era forums that have agreed to share user accounts.
Listen, the CT is a joke and I'm not defending it. I'm pushing back on provably false information regarding towing and what to expect from a tow hitch. People get killed believing this kind of bullshit. You absolutely SHOULD NOT expect a tow hitch to be able to stand up the vehicles tow capacity rating. Ever. Even transiently.
They went to great lengths to explain that and why a trailer load may transiently exceed it
Transiently, as in for mere moments, exceeding the 1,000lb hitch rating yes, absolutely. Expecting that the hitch will suddenly experience (and hold) the entirety of the tow capcity rating? Absolutely not. That's the exact opposite of the SAE spec. You'd also dramatically exceed the payload rating of every passenger vehicle in existence if it happened.
The other concern they mentioned was aluminum characteristics over time.
Better not look at the suspension of any passenger vehicle made in the last 30 years then.
No one else in the industry will use aluminum for the frame
The CT is unibody, it doesn't have a frame. This isn't me being pedantic either. The difference between the two is fairly important.
They even admit it fared better than they thought
The CT exceeded it's rating by 8 times. Yes the Dodge 2500 did better but so what? It too was well over it's hitch and payload ratings and if you tried to drive it with that kind of weight you'd quickly crash because you couldn't steer or stop.
And to say, no one expects a thing to do the job that thing is made to do is a dumb comeback.
It's NOT expected to. The SAE has literal standards for this and nowhere in them are you going to find that the tongue needs to support the entirety of the towed weight. In fact it's quite the opposite. None of you know this though because you've never bothered reading them.
Also, what is the point of fighting this?
Because people read this bullshit and then repeat it just like you're doing now. Tons of weight rolling down the road is dangerous. As always the regulations are literally written in blood.
You absolutely should NOT expect your tow hitch to support the entire weight of the trailer. It's NOT in the SAE specs and frankly there's no passenger vehicle in existence that will tolerate that without dramatically exceeding it's payload rating. You probably don't now what is either but when you exceed it you get broken axles, inability to steer, inability to stop, tires blowing up, suspension failure, and structure failure.
Ever seen a truck pulling a camper and the trucks headlights are aimed at the sky while the hitch is nearly dragging the ground? That's what happens when you have too much tongue weight. You can see that's it wrong and yet here's another army of people trying to argue that its just fine because they listened to another youtuber who has no idea WTF they're talking about.
It's wrong and it gets people killed. Stop it.
XenoForo is a bit spendy but they're providing the software, hosting and data storage. IIRC the forum I'm talking about is on the "Business" plan due to how busy it is.