I have used (and am using) a number of Forum softwares and variations. All have advantages and disadvantages, or at least a lack of features that another has proved to be so useful. At least as configured by their own respective administrators (I imagine most are expandable with options)
SMF is clean and happy, by the defaults Toady has configured and with several of the alternative layouts that I've seen but not tried, but I don't like its equivalent of the 'Watch thread' feature that is more useful on other systems. Also the ability to upload (size-limited) attachments/images-for-inline is missing, at least on the Bay12 implementation. But never mind, we have DFFD for anything Relevent and various (mostly) easily available choices of things like TinyPic for anything that isn't.
ProBoards(/FreeForum) is a little uglier (although fully configurable) in appearance, but does have a sort-of-workable "Watch thread", with both Bookmarking (manual watch-thread, regardless of whether you PTWed) and Participated (automatically what you did contribute to). Except for an annoying tendency to forget the 'read through to' points in a thread that is idle for a long time and then added to (i.e. sometimes even reverting the link to 'New' message staging point back to the start, well before one's
own latest contribution). It's good with forum-uploaded files, though.
One phpBB example that I use seems to be being run
very minimally. There's not even a [spoiler] tag implemented and appears to not even have any "Show new replies to your posts" equivalent (luckily, it's low volume, so I can manually check all sub-boards for new/with-new-posts topics) but it is again clean in design, perhaps due to the same minimality. Another phpBB example
does seem to have a fuller compliment, but is also far, far busier and harder to keep track of. Meanwhile both lack a mechanism for Personal Messages (the web-game they serve, within which is already a player2player messaging system, so it isn't a great loss) but in one of those, particularly, forumIDs link directly to player-pages (which fails if you were lurking without logging in) which seems to deliberately obfuscate the way to check for "last posts from a person" without going doing a manual search by several more clicks.
I've not used (and, even then, mostly just browsed) chan-type boards/imageboards in a long time, and (while I'm not particularly aiming to be unanonymous, behind my pseudonym, here) the propensity of "anons" and obviously long-established in-jokes among the community leaves me feeling disassociated and not keen to participate myself, nor lurk around until I
would be keen.
Meanwhile, I'm perfectly happy to provide anonIP (ironically, to some extent
less anonymous, I know) contributions to Wikis, including the main one. (Though the last thing I added was removed within an hour by a long-term user that I later found had a number of 3RR violations/queries to her name. And the new issue I'd added clarification for ended up being debated in the Talk page several days later, needing clarification similar to my original contribution... Looks like I found one of the bad editors... Never mind; it's been discussed now. I'm not bitter!
)
I
should rather like the various Reddit-style forums (and post-article commentary sections, on various news/blog post sites). Their tree-like threading of topics is reminiscent of Usenet threading, but I haven't partaken in that kind myself. For one reason or other, I have a dislike for 'like/dislike' ranking, though (seen upon that platform and elsewhere). I'm very reliant upon other people's judgement/prejudice/stacking-the-system behaviour, and I don't think I always trust them as much as I ought to.
The big thing is that the virtual world is a much bigger place, these days. I grew up with the mindset that I would read
every message on the very first BBS I was a member of (and, frankly, the capability to do that). I had to moderate that feeling when Usenet became available (I must admit I tried... and it
was before the Eternal September, WebTV, GoogleGroups, etc... but I also resisted the temptation to use the Kibo approach to spreading my wings) and henceforth stuck to a good half-dozen or more key groups to be active in, and a dozen or so more that I'd mostly just lurk in.
I currently can't even read
all the (new) messages on Bay12, as I'd ideally like to (with the time), never mind that the easiest mechanism for keeping up with 'last read post in an unPTWed thread' (or, especially, a contributed-to-thread where you've still a 'gap' to read through, betwixt the old last-read-post and the point at which one
does post) is to create a new tab or save the "...;last_msg=6698073" URL to a text file, to resume at that point. Another, less active, forum I'm on has a large amount of 'back-catalogue' threads (a much smaller community, but created a full year prior to my arrival), including the 'general chat' one that I've a feeling a lot of the socialising goes on in, that I've just not been able to make a dent in reading through. This bothers me, where I'm sure it wouldn't bother others.
TL;DR; for the last bit, at least: The Internet habit that annoys me is that it's got too much stuff on it! Stop it, Internet! You're growing beyond my ability to read all of you! I need to find the Read-Write hole and cover it up so that it's Read-Only for a while, so I can catch up...
(Case in point: "Warning - while you were typing 6 new replies have been posted.")
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Topic: Internet habits which annoy you. (Read 101553 times)