Sorry I'm late, but yes exactly! And all the comments here are 100% too. I got into fandom late-ish in LJ's heyday, 2006-2007, but I have scrolled through so many old discussion posts/threads on various comms and various people's journals and it's just boggling how amazingly clean and clear and visible and easy the discussions were, so out in the open so that anyone could see the entire progress of the discussion and jump in at any time, and so well-organized so that potentially dozens of people could join a single discussion, and you could see exactly what each person was saying to whom, where, and when, nothing hidden or obfuscated at all. There's only a few comms that still have that, and they are all so very broad and multifandom it's hard to get the same group-sense as more specific posts and journal entries.