@qwert@mastodon.technology I wasn't there for forums in the 90s, but I was on lots in the early 2000s and I think they were pretty similar. The major thing was the stability of the userbases: it was *hard* to find communities of any sort of like-minded individuals during that era of the internet, so any that you did find became very valuable. A good forum in 2005 could well have a significant chunk of the members it had had in 1995, as well as newer people making an effort to integrate with the already-existing community.