In the 90s, USENET was lively and active. It was federated, decentralized, and you could use any client you wanted to access the information. Web based forums came along and shifted that control away from the loose internet and into the owners of the forums.
I don't remember it quite that fondly.
I also remember the missing replies, broken threads, spam you couldn't really do much about, endless flamewars about top-quoting vs bottom-quoting, etc.
Plus the pace was just glacial - it could take hours for some posters posts to appear.
Maybe is was better in the REALLY old days - a bit of quick, non-exhaustive google groups searching shows my first usenet posts in June of 1997.
I don't mean to glorify USENET. The web based forums brought many cool new features -- you could post images that worked reliably, the Slashdot-style moderation stuff was a big boon, etc. I just meant to point out that the internet moves in cycles, and those cycles seem to lead towards newer technology and more centralized control.