many people who have joined have related their extended stints on communities Reddit, Dig, Slashdot, or even older places like Usenet, and i’m super interested in what your best memories and favorite experiences on places like that have been in your time using them
I’ve had great experiences as part of some old-school blogging and website-building communities, making zines and collaborating on articles, that kind of thing.
As a teen, I used to have a static site on a platform called ‘Freewebs’ (it was kind of like a late-Geocities knock-off) and would spend hours exploring the little websites people made there. Communication was limited to sending messages via guestbooks (anyone remember those?), email, and a little webmaster forum, but the community vibe was great anyway.
And now I realize how much I’m showing my age…
I wish so badly that all those geocities sites hadn’t just vanished off the face of the internet when geocities went down. I never got to experience them but they always sound cool when people reminisce.
it’s not the same but some of the modern experience can be replicated by browsing neocities–it’s a nice simulacrum of what could be, if nothing else
I’d second Neocities as the best modern equivalent to static web communities. It’s not the same experience, but its kind of evolved into its own unique thing. Also, the marginalia search engine is a great tool if you’re looking for other weird and wonderful personal sites around the web that Google ignores.