Online forums have not changed since the dawn of the online forum. Tho. Just look at any online forum (and dare I say a Lemmy forum). Same shit, different decade or even century or millenium! Just look at me. I'm drunk and bored and playing with my phone while watching crappy movies. Only time i turn to an online forum. Because i know better.
I don't know, forums were much smaller back in the day. You could find a good community, because it was possible to organize one. But I don't think that's possible at today's scale.
I've never found a "good community" IR or online. Since, like, when I learned how to say my first words, which was in the late 1970s. What I have found is a lot of bullshit about creating community and communities. People are mostly in everything for themselves. It makes sense. You can join a community and leave one. To summarize: Communities exist in the imagination.