>open thread about a problem I’m having
>first reply is by some obviously “respected” guy
>avatar is some incredibly choppy anime gif
>all caps red name, underlined
>VIP member - top contributor
>some other custom subtitle about the sites culture or some shit
>40k posts
>[SITENAME] clan
>Recent achievements: 1000 hours online, 10k posts, achieved years ago
>joined Dec 2005
>10000 Karma
>like 20 fucking red stars under his name
>From: the Underworld or some edgy shit
>MSN, Facebook, E-mail, Skype, AIM, literally everything
>personal website that has the same name as his nick, just a bunch of gifs
>signature is like 4 paragraphs, 2 quotes, like 20 fucking toolbars or irrelevant shit like nvidia user, coca cola drinker, air breather, removed etc
>some edited anime image at the end of his signature with his nick stylized on it
>read his post
>“i dont know lol”

  • @De_Narm
    6•1 year ago

    They kind of were what the fediverse wants to be without the bonus featrues. There were thousands upon thousands of small decentralized communities with tightly knit communities. If a board simply sucked, you could go to another one. Of course they did not federate, you had to create different accounts for each of them and information was only passed on by users being in multiple ones. However, they had traction. Unlike with lemmy today, there were hundreds of active communities for every topic I ever wanted.

    • @[email protected]
      12•1 year ago

      It was the close knit aspect of them that was also a downside.

      Want to ask a technical question on a program’s forum

      Have to make an account

      New users can’t post straight away,

      Have to wait 48 hours

      New users can’t make new threads, can only post

      Have to post to some newbie introduction thread just for the one question

      Post question in the tech support thread

      “Read the rules, you have to make your own post for this instead of hijacking another thread”

      Temp banned for 24 hours

      Wait

      Make a few off topic posts so you can make a thread

      Finally get to ask the question

      “Read the rules, thread locked”

      Make a post asking what rule you broke and why admin locked the thread

      Arguing with that admin? Yeah, banned

      Forums used to have a lot of “character” to them, but the admin/moderator situation was often even worse than now since they ruled those forums like their personal kingdoms and were petty as fuck. And you had to jump through hoops and learn their particular forum’s culture for one goddamn question. This sorta lives on in Discord but at least the account shit is not as bad there.

      I have fond memories of some forums and that time and type of internet but overall I’m not sad to see dedicated forums going the way of the dodo.

    • @RememberTheApollo_
      3•1 year ago

      A webring is as close as you could get to federating. No SSO, but you could use different sign-ins just like going from lemmy to kbin or so.