As internet forums die off, finding community can be harder than ever

Re:As internet forums die off, finding community can be hard... by gabereiser on Thursday November 19, 2020 @02:46PM (#25153577)

Reviving old threads was also a reason. I like those that add new information but 99% of the time it’s some dude who didn’t check the date on the thread and posts “omg me too!” on an 8 year old post.

I also think a technical reason due to the scale of reddit, etc. I see no reason to do it other than what I mentioned on discourse, phpbb, vbulletin, etc.

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Re:As internet forums die off, finding community can be hard... by lopmotr on Thursday November 19, 2020 @03:47PM (#25154152)

I run a small forum and occasionally somebody will post a new question on an old thread that's about the same topic. My two theories are that either they searched, ended up on that thread, then just replied because it was in front of them, or that they hope the original participants are going to be notified of their reply so it'll get more attention than a new thread. Unfortunately, on some forums that's actually true and encourages this mess-making behavior.

I don't see the problem with "omg me too!" on an old thread as long as "omg me too!" is acceptable on a new one.

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Re:As internet forums die off, finding community can be hard... by throwaway0a5e on Thursday November 19, 2020 @05:11PM (#25154980)

>or that they hope the original participants are going to be notified of their reply so it'll get more attention than a new thread. Unfortunately, on some forums that's actually true and encourages this mess-making behavior.

Just last week someone posted a question on a thread from over a decade ago asking what the end result of building something was.

I and several other people party to the original discussion explained the result, the performance of the system over the past decade and that options were different now

Let's see Reddit do that.

Bumping threads from a long time ago is a feature. Not a bug.

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Re:As internet forums die off, finding community can be hard... by lopmotr on Friday November 20, 2020 @01:55AM (#25157915)

Oh sure. I think it's important too. Just that people misuse it which is probably why they get locked.

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Re:As internet forums die off, finding community can be hard... by loopz on Thursday November 19, 2020 @05:07PM (#25154932)

Overzealous admins do see big problems with that.

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Re:As internet forums die off, finding community can be hard... by zone411 on Thursday November 19, 2020 @05:48PM (#25155278)

We handled this on our forum just by having an indicator that it's a revived thread. Worked well.

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Re:As internet forums die off, finding community can be hard... by cutitout on Thursday November 19, 2020 @07:20PM (#25156041)

> 99% of the time it’s some dude who didn’t check the date on the thread and posts “omg me too!” on an 8 year old post.

Comments could be marked by mods (or voted on) to not bump a thread, making it a minor occasional annoyance rather than a real problem.

> I also think a technical reason due to the scale of reddit

Reddit also just stopped working on UI (other than to make it worse) a long time ago. Why not have an additional view to "new", "top" etc. that sorts threads as if new comments bumped them?

That one should only talk about what a lot of other people currently want to talk about, or only for a certain amount of time, is really a dead end to me.

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