I've been wondering about different forum softwares recently as well.

The Lemmy software seems like it might not be developed enough for the size of the userbase. This feels to be the case even more so after the attacks on Lemmy.world which would've been less of a problem with better moderation tools.

I've heard people throwing around the idea of forking Lemmy, but I'm not sure how likely that is.

I haven't used a non-link-aggregator forum in a long time, so I might be biased; but I don't personally like the style of them. I prefer the information density of Lemmy/ Reddit/ Tildes style link-aggregator forums. The ability to have multiple independent comment threads for each link definitely helps encourage discussions (in my opinion).

My personal preference would be for Lemmy to develop stronger mod tools, but who knows how likely that would be?

I'm sure it's just nostalgia but I used vBulletin forums for so long, that's what feels like home.

Back in the "good ol' days", I've used several awesome forum software such as phpBB, vBulletin, Invision Power Board, Simple Machines Forum etc. I personally liked Invision the most, it seemed super polished and had a good set of features. phpBB was also nice but lacked features, and vBulletin felt a bit clunky to me.

Oh right, I forgot. I also used Tildes but the UI feels a bit daunting and unwelcoming.

I've spent ages on phpBB and I do kind of miss out to be honest.

It might just be nostalgia talking though because I can't really say exactly what I'm missing about it.

Might just be the old communities that used it.

Really wouldn't call Reddit or Lemmy forums.

Personally I like Invision and XenForo.

I'm a dinosaur so I fondly remember slashdot and the old "scoop" sites. I like information density too.

I think kbin is written in php which is interesting. I like the "feel" of it the best. But I get the impression it has even fewer mod tools than lemmy.

started up a discourse forum recently and it's definitely better than my historic experiences with running phpbb

I doubt anyone knows about it, but I really like the design of WoltLab Burning Board 3.

I feel like the visual layouts of forums (like the one I mentioned) lend themselves to better social interaction between users and let them get to know each other more easily. On here, I often see posts from the same people across communities, but it only becomes apparent to me after some time because the design is very minimalist (there's really just a name over the comment), whereas in forums everyone creates their own profile picture and text and a signature; that makes everything more personal, I think. I can appreciate both though.

i still use mybb to run a writing forum that’s been ongoing for 10+ years. :)

The ones I've used enough to have an opinion on are Kbin Social (current one) and Lemmy World. Out of the two, I liked Kbin the most for being the most minimalist. Even if Kbin is the most unstable/beta forum of the two, I still prefer it over all the visual noise of Lemmy World.

I used Voat back in the day, from the beginning, when it was still called Whoaverse; to right around when it became a Nazi-filled shithole. But that doesn't really count too much since for a good portion of that time, it ran on a modified version of the old open-source reddit code. Whatever it moved to in the short time before the new ""community"" ruined was pretty decent; lemmy-ui reminds me of it a lot actually.

I used to be big into Imzy too, before it shutdown. Its software was somewhat like new Reddit, but like, actually performant and not a bug-riddled mess. I still miss it, but the lemmyverse, especially Beehaw, is filling that hole.

I've also used the old guard of forum software, I don't know what ran what because I didn't really pay attention to that kind of stuff as a kid.

I'm not sure what you mean by software, but I definitely got into the forum style with GameFaqs.

My go-to's were pretty much the Monster Hunter Tri discussion board and Kongregate's room chats (I stayed in The Warehouse).

Glad that they're still around to an extent today, in forms like Beehaw/Kbin/what Reddit was in some communities for a while.

If we're talking about reddit-likes/alternatives, I've tried Imzy (gone sadly), Voat (briefly, and gone thank goodness), and Tildes. Tildes I'm still on.

I lurk Hacker News and Ars Technica's forums. I did sign up for a forum earlier in the year called ResetEra, which is focused on gaming. Still mostly lurk it.

I have been online since the early '90s, and used to be extremely active on many different forums. I even ran a fairly large forum on my own website, using Simple Machines Forums- which, to my surprise, still exists- from 2005-2008 or so.

I can't say I have a favourite- I really liked SMF back in the day but I have no idea what it looks like now. I really can say that I really miss the pre-Facebook Internet when there were loads of extremely active forums in every imaginable topic, and people found them and used them instead of just creating a Facebook group and pretending that everyone will just use that by default (I refuse to use Facebook for anything).

I don't think of Reddit and Lemmy as forums, really, not in the old-school sense. Reddit was a poor substitute, as for many years more weight was put on links than on self-posts, and in the old-school forums I'm thinking of, things like upvotes and "likes" didn't become a thing until they were used on Reddit and Facebook, and I honestly don't think having those features makes the Internet better.

Simple Machines Forum is pretty solid for a traditional style forum.

I ran my own phpBB for myself and friends in high school. It wasn't used much, but I mostly did it to just learn PHP which was growing in popularity at the time over HTML.

I prefer using gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/u/Remy/4754 a lot.

Another ine worth checking out is https://tildes.net/

The most attractive one I’ve ever seen is https://www.amigalove.com/