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.
EDIT: given this is my most upvoted post on here to date I’d say the answer is yes.
I think the big problem/reason why people feel the need for anonymity is because of what I mention here. Basically, people always feel on pins and needles with regards to shitty moderation.
I actually think further than this, people in power are almost always too blood lusty and immediately jump to permanent bans all the time.
It results in chilling effects that create echo chambers.
Of course what you talk about doesn’t help as it serves to make people even more trigger happy as real bad faith threats exist and you can’t easily tell intent.
I feel like to have real conversations online, maybe a more ideal hypothetical platform would have any sort of legal binding to follow certain terms, they’d require being connected to a real id without storing said personal information in plain text, and would connect that to specific IDs to completely shut down (meaningfully) the botting, to have people actually talk.
People could then chat as themselves, or anonymously under a username, but there would never be confusion as to whether or not someone was real.
This is very half baked though and I already can think of tons of problems.
People suck. People especially suck when they get even a modicum of power.