Re:I've skimmed 66520 newsgroups trying to find some life on...
by jwr on Wednesday July 26, 2023 @05:36AM
(#36875068)
No, it is a matter of functionality.
Web-based forums are objectively worse. The only thing they have working for them is that you can upload/include images. Otherwise, everything is terrible, beginning with their inability to hide stuff that you've already read. You have to wade in a sea of content every time you visit every forum.
Add to this the terrible usability (for example, you only see several posts in a thread, and then you have to find the tiny tiny numbers at the bottom to go to the next "page" of posts), we've really taken a huge step back.
Re:I've skimmed 66520 newsgroups trying to find some life on...
by MichaelZuo on Wednesday July 26, 2023 @10:07AM
(#36877972)
So the majority of internet users cared more about posting and viewing images then every other downside combined?
I missed the heyday of Usenet by several years and instead landed right in the middle of the phpBB/InvisionBB/vBulletin era, but also made heavy use of RSS/Atom and was curious about other protocols, and so at one point played around with Usenet by way of the Panic client Unison[0].
It might've just been the client (though that'd be surprising, given Panic's knack for UI design) but I didn't find it any more intuitive than web forums. The ability to search numerous groups at once was nice though.
That's not to say that web forums were or are good however. They're a step above something like Discord at least because they're open, but forum search is notoriously bad and I've never come across forum software where navigation isn't somewhat clunky.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unison_(Usenet_client)