Hero of Lime said:
And honestly, no one seems to make the effort to really communicate here. Most people just post what they want to say in a thread, and move on. This post right now is on the second page, I doubt many people will even see it, or read it for that matter. I'm guilty of the same thing, I admit that.
You raise an interesting point. A lot of times threads seem to indeed be just people shouting their opinion into the void, rather than striking up conversation with other people in the thread. Or there are a lot of posts that aren't actually about the topic, but a minor aspect of the opening post.
I feel that the set up of forums such as these are a bit outdated in terms of means of communication. Say what you like about sites such as Reddit, Up Vote and Down Vote systems and sub-threading of comments can be used to great effect to keep conversations concentrated, efficient and more importantly keep people engaged with eachother.
See a person who's opinion you share? Give their comment an Up Vote, letting them and other visitors know that you feel the same, this, of course, doesn't stop people from then also creating a comment with their opinion in it.
See something within a comment that you want to comment on? Directly comment on the post, creating a comment sub-thread, keeping sub-conversations bundled, easy to read for those interested and easy to skip for people that aren't interested.
When I first came here, I thought that the Escapist was ahead of the times with its Quote notification system, making it easier to have conversations and thus creating a community, but as time passed, no new functions or anything were added to keep up with other modern developments.