this is an interesting question i’ve had banging around in my mind since well before Reddit’s implosion (and Discord’s enshittification), but which seems really worth asking now.
you can’t blame Reddit and Discord or their imitators entirely for these going out of style, but they’ve sure put the dagger in a lot of remaining ones, and i kind of wonder if they’re just in an irreversible and terminal decline a la USENET. i can only name two or three i even consider checking anymore, and i’m not sure how sustainable any of those are long-term.
I have absolutely no ability to read a several-hundred page thread anymore. I think the dig/etc innovation that killed them was vote-weighting posts and comments rather than chronologically ordering them. It gives you an ordered list of things that are worth your attention. Folks inclined to read deeper than that can get a bit of a rush from finding some hidden gems and helping them rise to the top, either with new posts linking to a comment or otherwise.
I think the new way is much better.
ironically–and probably under the influence of reddit, where this has become completely gamed–i can’t stand this style of information sorting. i think it really only works if you have people mashing inputs for it with good faith and good understanding; otherwise, it descends into muck eventually. i do much better with either forums or real-time chats, probably because i go in with no expectations of what’s good or bad having already been sorted for me
Honestly, same. I decided to start sorting by old, and i find a lot of fun in following the tone of the discussion.
I’ve actually noticed myself doing this by instinct as in the last few months I mostly read Reddit comments sorted chronologically. Part of that is because of the hivemind problem in certain subs, which frankly is even less tolerable the more trivial a subject is, as in, for example, subs for fans of a certain artist where other users jump to downvote people who dare say that not every thing the artist does is perfect. And what’s even the point in discussing things if everything is “how good this is”, “how amazing this is”, etc.?
On reddit, I used a userscript to hide upvotes/downvotes just to avoid that gamification. It made my experience much better because, like you said, I went in without expectations and forced myself to read and reflect on the content (both comments and posts) instead of having them presented to me as being good or bad.
I’m glad beehaw has, at least, the number of upvotes/downvotes on comments hidden by default.