-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Does it ever strike you that Resetera is a ‘forum’? Those are practically dead.
- Thread starter Fantastical
- Start date
I've learned to use discord more but it can't replace forums for me. Discord is great when you have a small, dedicated group of active users, but it falls apart when a community gets to big. Message boards are superior for those larger groups but they can become a wasteland for small communities.
I actually like and have been using Reddit a lot more than Era lately but I can still see a charm of this place. Discord on the other hand I have no clue what I'm doing there.
Vs now where bots approved by Zuckerburg are the admin
Lol Gamespot System Wars was my first forum! What a wild place that was when I was there around the start of the PS3/360/Wii gen. Then I heard about the old place when System Wars would reference rumors posted by insiders.
I dislike reddit-style nested forums with votes. I like chronological. It has its drawbacks but it works the best for me.
Discord is awful for having conversations. Constant stream of spam and shit posts even on the best of servers.
It is funny. When there was all that talk about someone buying Discord the younguns were acting like it was the most important thing in the world for them to communicate. I was like, that's what this forum is for?
I agree with everyone who is saying a chronological long term discussion is ideal. Fuck upvoting.
I agree with everyone who is saying a chronological long term discussion is ideal. Fuck upvoting.
Still haven't experienced any online community better than those I've found on these forums of yore.
It's part of why I like Era(and the old place) so much, it's the last bastion of a halcyon era. There's nothing quite like having a good community on the internet where you can talk about almost any and everything. Reddit and Discord have their purpose, but it's not the same. Without this place I'd be more of a schmuck then I already am
I think I prefer it because it's an artificial reality where I can have a safe space. Sure it's a bit of an echo chamber which I feel is unhealthy, but social media is so full of horrific people, by comparison era is quite nice.
Former mod on a fairly big enthusiast forum back in the day.
That shit was not fun being a mod at times, but there were a whole, whole, whole lot of instances that made it worth it.
It was also not a coincidence that the members that caused the most issues really just needed someone to talk to.
And that is why being a Mod was very hard for me and I ultimately had to step away, I took the time in addition to trying to keep it a cool place for people (which was not easy as it was literally the beginning of the console wars) to also talk and help people out. It was worth it though as I know for a fact, as I was told, I did help a few through some very hard times.
To this day, and I was most active on this forum from 2003-2009, I still keep in touch with a bunch of people I made friends with.
I also went from a Mod to a News Writer, so said forum also sent me to Vegas twice to cover CES, I also got to go to Seattle and visit Valve, and also got to go to Texas to visit some spots for articles I wrote. I never spent any of my own money. I also got a lot of cool shit to review and to my surprise got to keep a lot of it (I know shit has changed since then, sorry tech writers).
So for me, forums hold a special place no doubt.
I even started writing a graphic novel called I Mod about 6 years ago, which was about my experience overall. It primarily was about being a new member, having this idea of who the other members were just thanks to their screen names, and then learning how dead wrong I usually was once I become a mod and got to know them. It was a life lesson for me for sure.
To be honest my time spent on the other forums is why I am not active here or anywhere else and fine being a lurker. Been there done that.
That shit was not fun being a mod at times, but there were a whole, whole, whole lot of instances that made it worth it.
It was also not a coincidence that the members that caused the most issues really just needed someone to talk to.
And that is why being a Mod was very hard for me and I ultimately had to step away, I took the time in addition to trying to keep it a cool place for people (which was not easy as it was literally the beginning of the console wars) to also talk and help people out. It was worth it though as I know for a fact, as I was told, I did help a few through some very hard times.
To this day, and I was most active on this forum from 2003-2009, I still keep in touch with a bunch of people I made friends with.
I also went from a Mod to a News Writer, so said forum also sent me to Vegas twice to cover CES, I also got to go to Seattle and visit Valve, and also got to go to Texas to visit some spots for articles I wrote. I never spent any of my own money. I also got a lot of cool shit to review and to my surprise got to keep a lot of it (I know shit has changed since then, sorry tech writers).
So for me, forums hold a special place no doubt.
I even started writing a graphic novel called I Mod about 6 years ago, which was about my experience overall. It primarily was about being a new member, having this idea of who the other members were just thanks to their screen names, and then learning how dead wrong I usually was once I become a mod and got to know them. It was a life lesson for me for sure.
To be honest my time spent on the other forums is why I am not active here or anywhere else and fine being a lurker. Been there done that.
I've always liked forums, I was like 14 when I joined my first one in the late 90s. Early 2000s was peak forums with SomethingAwful leading the way, kinda crazy how much that forum influenced early internet culture.
Forum community I miss most was a forum based around the competitive scene in the game Team Fortress Classic. The Catacombs. Many of the users were also on IRC so people got to know each other quite well. Unfortunately lost touch with most of the people I knew from there. The asshole who was given control of the forum deleted the whole thing in some kind of pathetic rage. Still bugs me to this day.
Forum community I miss most was a forum based around the competitive scene in the game Team Fortress Classic. The Catacombs. Many of the users were also on IRC so people got to know each other quite well. Unfortunately lost touch with most of the people I knew from there. The asshole who was given control of the forum deleted the whole thing in some kind of pathetic rage. Still bugs me to this day.
I've been on SA since 2003 and it's going to be devastating when it eventually shuts down one day, though luckily that bullet was dodged for now after it looked like people were going to abandon it during the Lowtax drama, before he finally sold. The early 2000s humor definitely did not age well when you look at archives, but it's a ton of fun to read live reactions to big news events of the last 20 years.
Considering that the age demographic here on Era skews towards late millennials + early Generation X that "cut their teeth" on forums, it's little surprise to me that this bastion of nostalgia thrives.
100% this. I'm 32, not even that old by this forum's standards, but forums have been a part of my online life for 20+ years and it's just comfy to have them always there. Discord is.. fine. But it's so easy to get left behind in a convo, the mobile experience is garbage too. Maybe if I was at desktop computer more outside of working hours.
The pacing of browsing, posting, and reading forums is gentler on some mental health conditions. The contents...not so much: people are still people and directly tell you who they are just as well as any other social media, maybe more politely though. But the sequential structure is a sound one.
People bring two things to forums which IMO weakens the format. One, absolutism - an insistence there is only one true shade of grey for every not-black-and-white situation or issue. As a result of this, your attempts to share and relate with your own lived perspective could be just as easily lost and discounted in here as it can in a busy discord chat or quickly-fracturing reddit topic.
Two, posting twitter opinion tweets as their own. Often these are missing follow-up tweets, or they are incomplete expressions of opinion. Or the tweets link content where the text of the tweet completely misrepresents the underlying content. Then the resulting conversation is with the tweet and not with the person who brought it into the forum. If people really wanted to deal with tweets they would already be on twitter.
People bring two things to forums which IMO weakens the format. One, absolutism - an insistence there is only one true shade of grey for every not-black-and-white situation or issue. As a result of this, your attempts to share and relate with your own lived perspective could be just as easily lost and discounted in here as it can in a busy discord chat or quickly-fracturing reddit topic.
Two, posting twitter opinion tweets as their own. Often these are missing follow-up tweets, or they are incomplete expressions of opinion. Or the tweets link content where the text of the tweet completely misrepresents the underlying content. Then the resulting conversation is with the tweet and not with the person who brought it into the forum. If people really wanted to deal with tweets they would already be on twitter.
I like how you can follow exactly what you want on reddit. I feel like I have to wade through more stuff on here that I have zero interest in (Marvel movies, Star Wars, etc). Plus you have the topics on here that come up every month or so where OP thinks they are clever and it hasn't been discussed before (American cheese). And just reminded by Wonderment above, people lean on posting Tweets WAY too much on here.
On the other hand, reddit can feel like an anonymous blur. It's nice seeing "familiar faces" on here or knowing certain people have a good amount of knowledge in their respective fields. If I have a quick question about a particular topic (like something specific about a MacBook Pro for example) I'd rather ask on here and probably get more responses here.
On the other hand, reddit can feel like an anonymous blur. It's nice seeing "familiar faces" on here or knowing certain people have a good amount of knowledge in their respective fields. If I have a quick question about a particular topic (like something specific about a MacBook Pro for example) I'd rather ask on here and probably get more responses here.
My internet usage would drop by 90% if this forum (or whatever replaces it eventually) ever goes away.
It's the only website I check multiple times per day, every day unless I'm out camping or otherwise away from the internet.
It's the only website I check multiple times per day, every day unless I'm out camping or otherwise away from the internet.
That's because what we gained is worse than what we had.
Facebook is a boomer hellscape of data-farm quizzes and common-sense fascism.
Reddit is a foreverstream of 6/10 general-interest fluff to numb your brain.
The Rottentomatoes forums taught me a love of Kurosawa.
Facebook is a boomer hellscape of data-farm quizzes and common-sense fascism.
Reddit is a foreverstream of 6/10 general-interest fluff to numb your brain.
The Rottentomatoes forums taught me a love of Kurosawa.
Sadly that's not on android.
I prefer using forums, due to the pace.
never seen people put as much effort into some of those threads/posts like i did over at rottentomatoes.
it could be hilarious too.
I don't understand how people can use discord. You're gone for one hour and it's a million messages. Reddit, people will delete messages constantly and twitter. Also I just hate using twitter.
I love it.
I've tried getting into Discord but it just moves so fast for me and it's really hard to keep up with conversations.
I've tried getting into Discord but it just moves so fast for me and it's really hard to keep up with conversations.
This forum is living proof that even those born in the tech age are resistant to change.
I don't think I would have gotten into forums if it weren't for joining the Zelda Dungeon forums back in 2012 or on a whim to enter a contest to win an Xbox 360. As far as I can tell, that forum still has the exact same structure as back then, complete with the MSN Messenger style chatbox on the home page. I think I ended up joining the IGN forums for a short while around the same time (that place was a fucking dumpster fire). Then joined GAF back in 2014. Remember it took like 3 months for my account to get approved. I will say, the best advantage this site over something like Reddit for instance is the absence of a like system. Likes I've noticed have a tendency to de-incentivize honest discussion and remove nuance.
I don't think I would have gotten into forums if it weren't for joining the Zelda Dungeon forums back in 2012 or on a whim to enter a contest to win an Xbox 360. As far as I can tell, that forum still has the exact same structure as back then, complete with the MSN Messenger style chatbox on the home page. I think I ended up joining the IGN forums for a short while around the same time (that place was a fucking dumpster fire). Then joined GAF back in 2014. Remember it took like 3 months for my account to get approved. I will say, the best advantage this site over something like Reddit for instance is the absence of a like system. Likes I've noticed have a tendency to de-incentivize honest discussion and remove nuance.
Last edited:
Embracing Discord and twitch more over the past 2 months, I'm of the exact same opinion. A lot of Discord communities seem to be a tight 10 people who are basically logged in 18 hours a day constantly talking and a bunch of drive by conversations for people that dwindle out or you can't keep up with over time. 🤷♂️
Yeah but I much prefer forums, I find discord and Reddit to be far too disorganised.
Yes very much a "it's the children who are wrong" energy from me on this one
Yes very much a "it's the children who are wrong" energy from me on this one
Discord is fantastic for discussing live events / watching shows at they air and stuff like that. It's horrible for discussing anything else, I don't understand how it has replaced forums, it's basically a modern IRC with similar limitations and a fancier interface.
I tried Discord for a while but it just didn't work for my lifestyle. I'm not online enough and it's not really easy to go back through and track prior conversations.
People swear by it, though. I get how it's probably useful for voice chat while playing an online game but the text chat feature just didn't seem useful to me.
People swear by it, though. I get how it's probably useful for voice chat while playing an online game but the text chat feature just didn't seem useful to me.
I'm glad era never implemented liking posts, it would affect the way people post negatively I bet.