This is the biggest single change for me. On Reddit I sometimes see a thread which is exactly in line with my interests, I have extensive knowledge of and would love to discuss with people. And then I see it was posted 22 hours ago, and so it's almost pointless replying to it.
Old forums had the opposite issue (with threads years old being "necro'd" back to the top, confusing everyone) but at least you could have a discussion over a couple of days.
Or you find a 6 months to year old thread, for something like a movie discussion or timeless/semi-timeless topic, and it is locked. Back in the day threads could go for years, there is good (thoughtful discussion across time, changing opinions) and bad (spam, bots) to that but mostly good.
Maybe that's why the web feels so different now from how it used to be. It's like being in a house where the walls and furniture shift whenever you aren't looking.
Being able to (usually) personalize your comments I think also played a huge role in fostering community: avatars, taglines, signatures, etc.
I wrote my own tagging system for HN and it's hard to describe how much it changed the experience for me. only usernames feels a bit like being in a community where everyone wears the same clothes, uses a vocoder, and covers up their faces. if you squint you might be able to make out the nametag.
I love to think back on the early social web and consider how much we got right, particularly with forums. Presence and personality via avatars went a long way to feeling like a community in an era when the masses were still figuring out how to do that via technology.
I still find chronologically ordered, flat discussion threads to be far superior to nested and vote ordered discussions.
> I still find chronologically ordered, flat discussion threads to be far superior to nested and vote ordered discussions
Yes, and not in the least because one can answer/reference multiple messages in one post, thus bringing different conversation 'branches' back together. It also provides a nice chronological order to follow the whole discussions, which is hard in nested discussions.
However, flat discussions have limits: once you have hundreds of participants, it becomes nearly impossible to follow. I estimate that the limit to more or less comfortably follow flat discussion is ~50 posts/day, or 15-30 more or less active posters.
By default HN almost hides usernames. The byline on this comment will be a smaller font than HN's already small body font size. It'll also be a light gray almost fading into the background. You'll need to spend extra effort to notice my username and try to remember it. I'm not likely to remember yours later.
