Great write-up.

Forums definitely had, on the whole, a better quality discussion, friendlier discourse (but not always), and less spam. That said, I feel as though we are romanticizing them a bit as a knee jerk to the cess pool that reddit became.

The Achilles heel of forums, in my opinion, always was how disparate they were. Each one with different sign up rules and clunky interfaces. And you sometimes really had to go searching to find one that was appropriate for your needs!

Also, forum owners would shill out to vendors, and some members weren't always welcoming to newcomers. "We answered this four years ago so go rtfm" is not good for conversation and discussion, no matter how true it may be.

I'm not saying all this to be negative, but rather to say that the fediverse improves on all of these negatives. It can being everything to one place, apps are coming that will further improve the user experience.

And hopefully those managing the code behind the scenes tweak it along the way to minimize karma whoring and spamming (not sure what can really be done about AI).

In short, I too am really happy to be here and am thankful for the (probably inevitable) fall of reddit for making me realize how wonderful this is.