I miss traditional message boards. No karma, no sorting algorithms, you just get new topics on top and replies are sorted oldest to newest.
You can have forum threads that go on for decades, but Lemmy’s default sorting system quickly sweeps older content away. I’m aware you can mimic the forum format by selecting the “chat” option in a thread and sorting by old, and you can sort posts by “latest comment” which replicates the old-school forum experience pretty well, but nobody does it that way, so the community behaves in the manner facilitated by the default sorting algorithm that prioritizes new content over old but still relevant content.
I also notice that I don’t pay attention to usernames on Lemmy (or Reddit back when I was on it). They’re just disembodied thoughts floating through the ether. On message boards, I get to know specific users, their personalities and preferences and ups and downs. I notice when certain users don’t post for a while and miss them if they’re gone for too long.
I can’t miss them because I was too young when they were relevant, but I do love the early days of home computing specifically because I was technically alive and aware but not old enough to know what was going on. Anything from the 80s has a surreal dream-like quality for me. I’ll hear a random word like “CompuServe” and instantly be transported back to the floor of the living room when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, when I heard the word on a TV commercial or overheard older kids or grownups mention it. Then I’d be like “Oh yeah that really did exist and wasn’t just the product of my tiny baby brain.” It’s also why I like synthwave music and cassette futurism.