eh in practice it just meant threads often became dominated by a couple of people replying back and forth. Any tangents or side discussions made threads difficult or impossible to follow. The forum model only works if you want threads to be singularly focused on one idea like stackoverflow. The reddit model is much better for casual discussion and using the op as a starting point to branch off from.

I suppose that's fair too. Fortunately, decentralization also allows for a diverse range of solutions, so that not everyone is stuck with the same model of presentation, organization, or moderation.