Why carding forums continue to live

[Father]

The Internet is an ideal platform for disputes. But there is a big difference in how to argue. Or it's an emotional squabble, where the interlocutors jump at each other like roosters and try to peck more painfully. Or a measured discussion that lasts for weeks, where the interlocutors agree on most issues with each other. They calmly and unhurriedly convey to the interlocutor information that he does not have enough.

Hot cocks and calm intellectuals are the same people, just on different websites. In other words, the platform itself forces people to communicate in one way or another. In some settings, slow, constructive communication is almost impossible, while in others it is encouraged. What are these conditions?

Or let's ask another question: why do the old forums continue to exist in 2023 and still have their own community (mainly on specialized topics)? Although, you probably already guessed it.

Advantages of forums over other community formats​

1. Asynchronous (more relaxed) discussion format
2. The reputation mechanism filters content more effectively here than in other communities (see point 3)
3. Each author's reputation is highlighted in the message. Each message essentially starts with the author's "business card". Just like in real life: you first look at who is in front of you — and then listen to it and read it. After all, without understanding the author's personality, it is impossible to fully understand the essence of his message, to understand the weight of words, irony, etc.
   In normal threads, the opposite approach is used: only the author's name and a small avatar are indicated. The registration date, number of messages, and other key profile characteristics are not shown at all when you hover the mouse. Of course, this makes communication very difficult. For example, this approach effectively masks bots and novoregs, often generating useless flooding.
4. Carding forums are more convenient for technical discussions

Let's take a closer look at the latter — the advantage of forums in technical discussions.

1. Long battery life. Some questions get answered months or years later. The topic may become relevant again after a long period of time — and the discussion will continue from the same point where it left off. This is almost impossible, despite attempts to implement a tracker, a notification system, and bring up old topics on the main page. So people have to constantly publish new articles about the same subject:
   On forums, such posts are considered duplicates. If the forum thread already exists, please go there. This also has an advantage: This is how they attract new users who are not yet familiar with the content of 2012, let alone older ones.
2. Easily publish code snippets, documentation quotes, screenshots, and attached files.
3. Smaller audience. Oddly enough, this is an advantage. It's hard for noobs to survive on professional forums. As a result, most of the posts in the topic are from experienced professionals. There are not many such people, they do not like to communicate with the broad masses, but are looking for their equals.
4. Narrow specialization. Deep dive into the most niche issues that have a separate discussion thread. And if there is no such branch, then the community knows the user who understands this issue best.
5. A unique professional context (see the previous paragraph).
6. Wisdom. Only on the forums do you realize that all the issues have already been discussed earlier and people have come to some kind of compromise. It turns out that in life everything is so — nothing new can be invented, people have encountered any "unique" problem before a million times. If you've come up with something "completely new", then you're probably an idiot.

No other communication platform — Discord groups, messenger chats, IRC channels, and so on-has such a set of unique qualities specifically for technical discussions as forums.

The old web is alive​

Forums are the best thing left of the old web. There are many sites that haven't changed much in the last 20 years — and that's why they're loved. Surely, everyone has a list of places where he goes from time immemorial… And they live quite well, because their main value — veterans, key figures, a community of old-timers - does not go anywhere particularly.

Interestingly, the most resilient forums are primarily highly specialized communities, often on technical topics.

By the way, some BBSS still exist, and you can connect to them. The early forums are still alive, too. Even IRC still exists, and a few dedicated geeks maintain Gopher sites.

You can open the console right now and connect to a real BBS:

$ telnet osuny.bell-labs.co 666
Trying 168.235.81.33...
Connected to osuny.inri.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
+---------------------------------------------------+
| Intellectual Property Policy for OSUNY U.K. BBS |
+---------------------------------------------------+

Specifically, the ISABBS station has a daily audience of more than a hundred people.

As an example of old technologies, we can also mention darknet forums, which are also not inclined to introduce newfangled engines. There, the reputation of individual users has not only theoretical, but also practical meaning, because these people are invited as arbitrators/intermediaries when the parties cannot fully trust each other. The same reputation mechanisms work as in offline life, but only this is the reputation of "virtuals".

When a simple technology suits you — why change it?

By the way, this is the reason why Craigslist and some other sites haven't changed much in 30 years. Now the bulletin board does not differ from the first version of 1995.

A radical change in the interface and engine is often a sign that the owners are dissatisfied with something. That is, evidence of problems. Truly natural changes seem to be more evolutionary than revolutionary.

Evolution of forums and Usenet​

In some cases, the forums evolve. There are more convenient and functional options that try to preserve the advantages of the old technology with new "chips". And these are quite popular communities.

Unfortunately, these platforms lack many of the advantages for technical discussions listed above. Because of this, often constructive discussions sometimes degenerate into "religious battles", where everyone defends their point of view, and all this has already been discussed hundreds of times in other topics. On the old forums, such commenters would be issued warnings for flooding and offtopic-and the issue is settled.

There are also quite unconventional experiments that resemble Fido and Usenet. For example, Superhighway84 is a decentralized, minimalistic Usenet-style conference system. The main difference is support for the IPFS distributed file system, so echo conferences diverge naturally. No one has the burden of hosting (in the traditional sense). The source code is open, and binaries are compiled for Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Plan9, macOS, and Windows.

Now there is a lot of discussion about how to make decentralized (peer-to-peer) alternatives to social networks, including Twitter. Probably old technologies (forums, echo conferences, RSS) they will also get a second life in a new form. Moreover, many people really miss the good old, soulful Internet of the 90s. Do you remember the days when all graphics on a page could be disabled with a single button in the browser?

At the same time, it seems that the forums and mailing lists themselves are basically unkillable, no matter how many newfangled technologies appear to form and support an online community. By the way, mailing lists and RSS received a second life in 2022, including in connection with the blocking of some HTTP sites in the Russian Federation. Now it is more convenient to receive a newspaper digest by email or read RSS (everything is absolutely legal) than to risk subscribing to Telegram channels or VPNs. Still, it's good to have the old protocol in reserve!