Forums were great. I miss them greatly. Not only were they better for debate, but they fostered a sense of community. They were welcome to discussion and collaboration and experimentation. People could learn from each other and form lasting bonds. Everything on sites like Reddit is too ephemeral and anonymous.
Forums also let you choose the level of anonymity you wanted, and other people to choose the level of trust that they had in you. I think this feature came from the simplicity of having a purely chronological timeline of posts on a given topic.
Once you have Facebook-style mandates or recommendation algorithms and voting mechanisms (like Youtube and Reddit), that goes out the window. Now, people look for and find the "popular" perspective or the algorithmically-favored perspective instead. By removing the work from the process, they have turned off the critical thinking that was involved.
Comments
Forums were great. I miss them greatly. Not only were they better for debate, but they fostered a sense of community. They were welcome to discussion and collaboration and experimentation. People could learn from each other and form lasting bonds. Everything on sites like Reddit is too ephemeral and anonymous.
Forums also let you choose the level of anonymity you wanted, and other people to choose the level of trust that they had in you. I think this feature came from the simplicity of having a purely chronological timeline of posts on a given topic.
Once you have Facebook-style mandates or recommendation algorithms and voting mechanisms (like Youtube and Reddit), that goes out the window. Now, people look for and find the "popular" perspective or the algorithmically-favored perspective instead. By removing the work from the process, they have turned off the critical thinking that was involved.