Have you tired using signing up to more plesant servers rather than the nasty ones?
Do you envisage Social media changing the future of Moderated Forums?
- Thread starter Ice Tea
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Now that is an interesting take. I'm curious as to why you think the layout of reddit is better than discord?
The main disadvantage i find with discord is going back to previous messages and finding messages aimed at you.
Discord is way better listed/organized than Reddit. Not that Reddit is hard but it's still a mess.
Yeah, you can be scrolling forever. Jumping back and forth to the present time.
Yeah, you can be scrolling forever. Jumping back and forth to the present time.
OP's question is really vague tho.
Does he mean the popularity of forums?
Does he mean the audience of forums?
Does he mean the way people use forums (of which they were already a member)?
Some of those have been impacted by places like Reddit, some haven't. I wouldn't imagine the old-timers here have changed their use of this forum much. They may visit less often, tho. Who knows? And honestly, who cares?
OP's question is really vague tho.
Does he mean the popularity of forums?
Does he mean the audience of forums?
Does he mean the way people use forums (of which they were already a member)?
Some of those have been impacted by places like Reddit, some haven't. I wouldn't imagine the old-timers here have changed their use of this forum much. They may visit less often, tho. Who knows? And honestly, who cares?
You know what it means. Everything is about trend following and not being left out in todays society.
Well, not really. He didn't give us much to work with. The title could be interpreted any way you like, and the text was pretty much "see title".
You may well be right and that is what he meant, but it could mean any of those things I listed, and a whole bunch more.
But also the age demographic of people who use forums (a lot) is probably considerably different to those people who just use Reddit, et al. If the people using forums are on the whole older, then trend following is likely less of a concern.
Or maybe we're too diverse to draw any conclusions at all. Maybe there are a whole bunch of teenagers and 20-somethings using this forum right now. Or maybe they're all on Discord. I don't claim to know either way.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58501172
One of those articles that i found impossible to read as it's so Boring.
One of those articles that i found impossible to read as it's so Boring.
I have been on forums since late 90's but I don't use them anywhere near the level I use to because the groups I chat with most exist in different WhatsApp groups. Forums become a place you go to when someone says "did you see that thread about" or if you need specific help about something. I think WhatsApp has had a bigger impact for my generation (45 plus) as we tend to not really do social media that much because it's not really the domain of people like us.
It already has, my town used to have a couple of websites with forum communities and they closed due to the emergence of a facebook group. It's a shame, because forums tend to provide lengthier, more structured debate.
Really though, forums are just a primitive form of social media with less focus on images and video (specialist forums aside), most of them have alerting, messaging, up-voting etc
Really though, forums are just a primitive form of social media with less focus on images and video (specialist forums aside), most of them have alerting, messaging, up-voting etc
That's the thing I've always loved about forums. Anyone can join in. I don't want to take part in discussions that's only locked to a certain group through social media. Plus, I hate trending. Everybody else seems to love the trending aspect.
The thing is, even this forum has an element of 'trending'. Some people just use the "New posts" feature. If you post in a thread that hasn't had any replies for a while, it's all "LOL NECRO!!!" etc. There's an absolute goldmine of old topics on this forum that warrant revisiting but for some reason people turn their nose up when it happens.
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Sort of agree though I signed up to VWROC recently and it's fairly active and a goldmine of info.
If a new member necro posts in an old thread with a single word reply, or with a clearly commercial post then it gets jumped on but worthwhile replies to old threads are absolutely fine. Another forum I'm a member of introduced a rule where threads automatically closed after three months of inactivity but the membership successfully managed to get that removed. It was just something the admins rolled out because they thought it was warranted. It wasn't.
/edited because I got the time period wrong
Same for a lot of the smaller/more specialist ones
and a lot of the older fan sites that used to have their own small site and are now to be found at least superficially on some social media site that might go bust next week, or change the interface completely.One of the reasons I think the likes of facebook took over a lot of the small communities that at one time might have had forums is because it was far easier to set up a facebook page, and far easier to maintain than a proper forum.
The downside is that facebook is terrible for actually finding stuff that is older and imo is an awful interface compared to a forum. My local wargaming club uses FB and it feels like i'm always struggling to find things I know are there, because there seems to be no reasoning to how it gets displayed.
FB groups are easier to setup/join and tend to have a better mobile experience than (some) forums which is how a lot of people consume content these days.
It also implicitly aggregates the forum with the other things on Facebook so people can just have FB as a one-stop-shop for a range of different discussions rather than having to explicitly go and visit multiple websites. As someone who have used forums since the 1990s that doesn't bother me but I know there are a lot of people out there who want to use 'portals' as much as possible rather than a distinct array of different experiences.
Discovery is another issue, social media inherently promotes sharing of content so people are sometimes more likely to come across a FB group compared to a forum. I think I joined the main local FB group when it had under 700 members and last time I checked it has over 11k.
One issue with FB groups however is the ease of setup lends itself to fragmentation i.e. you get 'rival' groups springing up on the same topics whereas the barrier to entry for forums is a lot higher.
It also implicitly aggregates the forum with the other things on Facebook so people can just have FB as a one-stop-shop for a range of different discussions rather than having to explicitly go and visit multiple websites. As someone who have used forums since the 1990s that doesn't bother me but I know there are a lot of people out there who want to use 'portals' as much as possible rather than a distinct array of different experiences.
Discovery is another issue, social media inherently promotes sharing of content so people are sometimes more likely to come across a FB group compared to a forum. I think I joined the main local FB group when it had under 700 members and last time I checked it has over 11k.
One issue with FB groups however is the ease of setup lends itself to fragmentation i.e. you get 'rival' groups springing up on the same topics whereas the barrier to entry for forums is a lot higher.
Totally agree, social media is a downward slope for humanity.
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I don't want OCUK banning, I'd be lost.
