Comment by hombre_fatal
4 hours ago
> I think the key here is, if you don't want to read what other people have to say, why are you here?
It's not reference material. It's a conversation people who aren't around anymore had days, weeks, months, years ago that is no more important that what anyone today might be saying. And only a fraction of it is relevant. Yet you have to scan each post to check.
Maybe that's useful if you have a very specific technical question to see if anybody found a solution for error E193A8 on version 1.02.1223b2, but otherwise people are trying to have a live discussion.
> Honestly, want to know who actually has this figured out? 4chan.
Yeah, but it's ultra-ephemeral, definitely not the model of a forum thread. I think short-living discussions (Reddit, HN, 4chan) model the realities of human interaction better.
>It's not reference material. It's a conversation people who aren't around anymore had days, weeks, months, years ago that is no more important that what anyone today might be saying.
That doesn't actually answer my question, it just makes me want to repeat it: if you have that attitude, why be there at all? The existence of a forum instead of an IRC chat or some other immediately-forgotten medium means that someone considers the discussion worth preserving. If you disagree with that, if you think past discussion is worthless, then you're not the intended audience, so why should you be catered to? Go hang out on Discord or whatever.
>Yeah, but it's ultra-ephemeral, definitely not the model of a forum thread.
I don't really know what you mean. 4chan threads are typically short-lived, but that's not an inherent property. You could have an imageboard or forum implementation modeled exactly after 4chan, but where threads are permanent. In fact, there are 4chan archives that let you browse past discussions at will. The only difference with a forum is that you may no longer be able to reply, if the real thread has 404'd. Those archives cost money to run, so clearly there's people who disagree with you that past conversations are unimportant, to the tune of thousands of dollars each month.