alt Hacker NewsI remember when a lot of online communities still felt small and human like that. People actually recognised usernames and conversations carried on over days rather than minutes.
Feels like most modern platforms traded that for scale.
Replies
ghaff • today at 1:36 PM
There was also a locality to BBSs (less so the distributed relay systems like Fidonet) because of the cost of non-local telephone calls. I was a subscriber to a BBS is a relatively nearby city (though telephone costs were still high--used offline readers). A number of us would get together in-real-life semi-regularly.
One thing I miss about HN type forums is the "here is what you haven't read yet". When an article has 100 comments and I've already read 75 it is rarely worth my time wading through to see the new ones. Even though I know from experience that writing a good insightful comment takes a lot of time. Most of what I'm missing will not be very insightful, but I'm sure I'm missing some of the most insightful comments. It also discourages me (and I assume others) from writing a long insightful response at times because I most of the people who would be interested will see it.