Will Internet forums make a comeback?

Post Reply New Topic

A lot of forums, like Wizards of the Coast, were shut down specifically to focus on social media.

And that's a really good example, because Dungeons & Dragons has always been about players (and DMs) sharing information with each other. Social media's bias towards "here today, gone tomorrow" hinders this sort of data sharing and archival.

Wow. I bet that made them mad.

I'm guessing that role players would be much into Facebook. RPGs require patience and Facebook is designed for the impatient. RPGs are all about depth and Facebook seems so shallow.

I don't think they're dying at all. Sites like Facebook and Twitter have a completely different purpose from forums. Forums are for asking questions and discussing a topic, not as a social get together. So asking whether social media has replaced forums doesn't really apply because they have different purposes.

Reddit sort of fills the gap between forums and here and now sites. It's basically like a forum, but the comments are arranged in a tree hierarchy rather than linearly, and there's a voting system that determines what gets moved to the top. Only bad thing is that topics get archived after 6 months, where you can no longer post to them, which I find annoying.

Forums are anonymous, social media sites are not.

to some less than others

think its not gonna make it after probably 2020, too much advertising and monetising will spoil the thing
i can barely justify to afford connection, let alone pay for viewings
my income will be around zero another 10 years, so..
i do not know about all that donating and paying, isn't there a lot of makebelief involved?

I don't know, I see Reddit being much closer to social media than anything. It does slightly resemble the way BBS work, but with the modern day "popularity contest" karma points whatever jacked up to eleven.

Another group I'm in tried to use it once to replace forum discussions, and it just didn't work at all. There was no good way to get news updates when you had to install a bunch of Firefox plugins just to -kind of- get new content to show up first.

Every time I use social media, I just feel like an unpaid employee contributing to the wealth of some company that has little social value. I got rid of my Facebook account years ago.

I am on a number of fora. I like the specialized focus. Maybe fora are a good environment for autistics because of that--shared interest.

Has anyone dug into Usenet? For tech it still seems somewhat decent.

I find the information and discussions on forums to be much better than FB groups and even reddit.

For instance, one of my hobbies, flashlights, has a few forums ( http://budgetlighforum.com and http://candlepowerforums.com ) and the discussions are so much better and more indepth than the flashlight subreddit and certainly way better than facebook flashlight groups. Budget Light Forum even collaboratively designs builds and sells flashlights.

With that said, I do think many people may use FB and reddit more for casual socializing.

Ummm...

How does one have "flashlights" as a "hobby"?

I mean...folks dont build them, nor knit them, nor collect them, nor race them against each other, nor make 'em fight each other.

What do you mean they don't build them? Of course you do. Or modify / upgrade ones you already have. Test the brightness, test the distance they throw.

As far as collecting goes, you should see some of the collections some people have.

And you can them to go on hikes in the middle of night, scba diving, boating, search and rescue, etc.

I mean people even have elevators as a hobby and those are much harder to collect.

A overdriven bright white led 1800 lumen with a crs123, etc.......... just thinking out loud.

It's ironic that so many Aspies here say they don't like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, but yet a lot of members abandon WP to use those instead.
That's where I assume most the people who've abandoned WP have gone to, as that's what people blame the inactivity on WP on.

I miss the days of the Usenet News Groups. Those were great.

Hoping that WP continues