Showerthought: old forum debates vs. social media pile-ons

I miss the old web forums where you'd see a wild theory and people would actually pull up old news articles or government docs to debate it. Now it's just a bunch of people yelling 'do your own research' without ever linking a source. Anyone else remember a specific forum that was good for that back in the day?

2 comments

2 Comments

julia62212d ago

Wasn't that rule actually from the Something Awful subforum for serious topics, like the one for politics? I think @troy_ross is right about the standard being great, but it wasn't a site-wide thing. It made those specific threads feel like a real debate club.

troy_ross12d ago

The old Something Awful forums had a rule requiring citations for factual claims. It forced people to back up their arguments with actual links and text. That standard made discussions so much more valuable than today's social media shouting.

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