For ages that was Slashdot.

Often enough I find myself wishing hn had the "semantic moderation" of Slashdot, where posts are tagged as e.g. Informative, Funny, Flamebait. That and the pleasure of finding out that you had mod points that day.

The articles could have a tag too, I believe.

Kind of the same crowd but how was/is /. anything like a old school forum? Format is pretty much what HN has emulated, no? Forums are different mainly because you can shit post without the stigma.

Not that I am complaining but this place often elevates pretentious, "high brow" shit posting as opposed to the vanilla thing practiced the us commoners. As if rich tech bro's trolling is better. Gotta say, this place really like smelling its own farts.

However, there's a lot of good stuff, too, and the moderation is better than /. where the majority of visible posts are made by the same 10 guys. Been like that for past 20 years.

Sorry. Got carried away. That beer had 7% alcohol in it. How is this place anything like the phpbb (now, xenforo) style forums?

The medium is the message though, so even if you got the crowd...