What I miss in the transition from forums to Reddit and Lemmy is the longer forum discussions that could go on for years. They had their issues, they regularly went off topic and resulted in insults being traded and trolling but they also got to a depth that we don’t see anymore. They were much better for getting to the detail of a thing and with Reddit/Lemmy being so focussed on today the entire discussion is gone tomorrow. The tree format is better for the branching discussion but its also got a real depth limit.

We lost something important when most of the forums shuttered. I really miss usenet for that as well, it alas didn’t evolve with the increase in spam but it could have been something still in use if it had.