In my lifetime I've gone from private BBS's to Fidonet to Usenet to listservs to forums to Facebook and whatever comes next. They all had some inherent advantages, at least at the time, and a lot of disadvantages. While I am very nostalgic for a lot of those (and still engaged in a several!) there is indeed a lot of viewing the past through rose-colored glasses at play here.
Forums certainly had their strengths, but also tons of weaknesses. Low effort posts, poorly moderated, highly dispersed, mostly anonymous (For better and worse). I suspect the forums that stuck around and added value for their members were a very small minority.
The one common thing I noticed about online communities that flourished long-term was actual engagement between members outside of the stated topic. I was on a listserv over twenty years ago that was ostensibly about a certain band, but typically ventured well off-topic most of the time. Everyone went their separate ways, but a lot of the core members have reconnected on Facebook and know each other better than ever. Conversely, I've been on a certain well-known forum for almost as long, and while I know a lot about people's lives through various engagement I have almost no connection with them outside of the actual forum itself.
Forums certainly had their strengths, but also tons of weaknesses. Low effort posts, poorly moderated, highly dispersed, mostly anonymous (For better and worse). I suspect the forums that stuck around and added value for their members were a very small minority.
The one common thing I noticed about online communities that flourished long-term was actual engagement between members outside of the stated topic. I was on a listserv over twenty years ago that was ostensibly about a certain band, but typically ventured well off-topic most of the time. Everyone went their separate ways, but a lot of the core members have reconnected on Facebook and know each other better than ever. Conversely, I've been on a certain well-known forum for almost as long, and while I know a lot about people's lives through various engagement I have almost no connection with them outside of the actual forum itself.