As is Something Awful, which OP lists as inspiration. The forums are apparently still self sustaining financially, but I don't believe the user count has moved significantly for around a decade.
It's unfortunate that classic web forums are dying, they're so much more useful as repositories of information than the subreddits, Discords, and Facebook groups that have replaced them over the years.
The main thing is the chronological ordering and lack of karma ordering leads to more freewheeling, breezy conversations. People aren't ego posting as much and are more liberal with speaking their minds, even if their views are unpopular. There are less flamewars, though you also miss out on some deeper discussions. This is also why I like Blind so much, where anonymity has caused it to be the best source of advice on tech careers by a mile. Blunt, harsh advice there has been life-changing.
Additionally, topics being sorted by "what post received a comment most recently" meant that high-quality threads stayed near the top for a long time, leading to much better discoverability. When I want to learn a lot about some obscure hobby, a dedicated forum is an extremely good place to go. Read the top 5-10 threads in most of the categories, and you've got a fantastic jumping off point.
Exactly, Reddit and HN are pretty decent replacements for Slashdot and the like for discussing the day's news, but they're not places for long term projects, megathreads, etc.
