Is it true that internet forums, or fora or whatever, are dying a slow death

Imipolex G

raocow said so



and he knows everything usually, but is it true? :o

Tatterhood

The answer probably depends entirely on whether reddit counts.

eriophora zia

All of humanity and its myriad creations are dying a slow death in the grand context of the universe. 

glennmagusharvey

I think that forums as a medium may experience turnover, as people gradually pick up new communities and leave old ones behind, but there is still fundamentally a need for a format that conveys large amounts of text in a well-organized manner that is durable in time (i.e. not easily superseded by more recent communications, in contrast to a chat room format).

While text is not the only format of information, it's still the most versatile by far, especially as technology has made it possible to convert between different formats albeit to limited extents, as well as to use text to point to information resources.

Tatterhood

Well mostly I just think there are fewer forums now (again, unless you want to count individual subreddits, which maybe you should).

Things that mostly still exist:

• official forums made by game publishers about their games,
• forums attached to websites that people already go to for other reasons,
• really big fan forums that have been around for years.

Things that mostly don't exist anymore: forums with twenty members exclusively devoted to talking about a specific JRPG.

The decline in the latter can, I think, mostly be attributed to Reddit and Tumblr (and to a lesser extent Twitter).

Fossilmaiden

Yeah, hyperfocused forums are just kinda obsolete nowadays, thanks to Reddit existing and being way easier to use than hosting a forum.

Sredni Vashtar

And Discord servers, natch.

Klinotaxis

centralize the fuck out of

glennmagusharvey

Sredni Vashtar said:

And Discord servers, natch.

well Discord servers are still more of a chat room type setting than a permanent record forum type setting.  also not easily searchable by outsiders, unlike a typical forum.

contrast, say, someone posting a big list of where to find fan-translation patches for games, which is something you'd want outsiders to be able to see.

Sredni Vashtar

Yeah, Discord servers are deep web stuff in that respect—unsearchable communities outside the network itself and often permission-blocked. But so are a lot of forums.

The fan-translation patch thing seems extremely specific. Like, most other forum functions can be served through the aforementioned formatted chats, subreddits, even imageboards, but you've chosen a fairly niche example.

Imipolex G

it just kinda makes me sad because I like the pacing of a forum as opposed to chat or whatever

glennmagusharvey

Imipolex G said:

it just kinda makes me sad because I like the pacing of a forum as opposed to chat or whatever

Me too; I usually prefer more laid-back chat rooms over the more crowded ones that just go at a zillion miles per hour, too, just because they're not as much work to keep up with them.

Sredni Vashtar said:

Yeah, Discord servers are deep web stuff in that respect—unsearchable communities outside the network itself and often permission-blocked. But so are a lot of forums.

The fan-translation patch thing seems extremely specific. Like, most other forum functions can be served through the aforementioned formatted chats, subreddits, even imageboards, but you've chosen a fairly niche example.

That's one specific instance but it's not uncommon that one can find something posted on a forum somewhere that one would like to share with someone who's not on the forum.