Ah yes, who can forget the quality curious engaging debate, such as first post!1, hot grits and the GNAA. What wonderful life they brought the place. To your point though, the tools available with reason- based pointing, and meta moderation, were far superior than later forums have.
Communities of people who spend their time together in quality intellectual discussion, like researchers, might still head for the pub, organize barbecues, or go fishing where they just want to blow off steam and make jokes, and among their own people where they can base those jokes on nerdy shared lore. There’s room for both serious things and frivolous things in life.
