My first introduction to the Internet, in 1990 before commercial Internet was available, was at university.

In those days FTP was common (mostly for sharing games, but also for technical docs. I adjusted an MFM drive to my controller, using assembly, thanks to various spec sheets.)

But Usenet was the killer app. There were newsgroups for everything and I consumed it voraciously. And I still remember getting a reply from someone at JPL to one of my questions. To 20 year-old me that was simply mind blowing.

Usenet fell out of favor later on, partly driven by the www,and partly because once the Internet became open to everyone, it didn't scale well with lots of users who didn't understand the conventions and social contract.

I guess Facebook is the modern alternative, but the dross overwhelms the grain.

Interestingly though I still use NNTP (News) daily. One community I participate in still makes use of a (private) NNTP server as the forum of choice. Only the lightest amount of moderation is needed, and trolls are swiftly booted.

I've come to understand that the tech matters little - for an effective online community it's the people that matter, and excluding those who would ruin it for everyone else.