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What happened to fora/forums? How could a whole medium just puff off from the internet? I heard social networks took over that role but tumblr and tweeter don't allow for much discussion and I have yet to see what facebook is like. I been thinking about starting a forum and adressing the issues that killed them the last time but that's too much work for me.

I think it was social media as you say, also places like reddit, also blogs. Blogs allow a user to have a personal soapbox to preach from and collect <3s whereas a forum is an open community where all voices get an equal chance to participate. Blogs can be an exercise in ego and vanity in a way posting on forums isn't. People feel their individuality is compromised by our current social climate and especially online so I suppose it makes a kind of sense in that light. I'm going through this thing now where a forum I was part of and at one time was an admin has sort of imploded and been taken over by people that are alternately assholes and just boring idiots. Everyone else deserted us. Some refugees want to start a new one for us but there's like six of us. I keep telling them it's pointless.

Forums do still exist, but those that do are usually more than 8 years old. Forums just don't get made as much as they used to. I still have a few that I go to, but they cater to fairly niche interests and have well knit communities. A lot of the time, that prevents others from wanting to introduce themselves. It also doesn't help that forums often have strict rules and structures, antiquated account creation methods, antiquated design etc. Still, forums are one of the prime sources of information I find online, and I notice many are not dead. They just aren't as popular as they once were.

>>7303 I see what you mean, but I been using tumblr the last few weeks and it feels so barren, Most of the time I'm not interacting with people and that feels so hollow, how could anyone like it by itself s beyond me. >>7312 depends on the niche because on some hobbies any forum based community is dead The issue now is what can be done to upgrate forums into the current internet customs

>>7301 >I been thinking about starting a forum and adressing the issues that killed them the last time It's not like the forums completely disappeared, there are still a few lefts here and there, but the main problem is users, that are disappearing. I think the main problem is Millennials, they aren't interested or they just don't know that forums were once a platform where people used to discuss different topics and issues without any pressure of upvotes, likes, karmas, etc.

>>7316 Most millenials probably used a forum when they were younger.

they are and were always soykaf, good riddance

>>7318 this, they were nothing but inflated egos and elitarism it was always faster to check on wiki or just read a whole book rather than ask some asshole only to be pointed that your question wasn't precise enough (or probably - they just couldn't admit they know soykaf) there are few forums still alive in my country, but when you don't want to insider trade and ask some questions, they most likely tell you to use google and not waste their "precious time" what you find in google is another thread from years ago with exact same replies, and this recursion is spreading further >>7316 those damn millenianls, always breaking things people always were dicks

>>7317 Don't compare those good old days with today's bullsoykaf. Back then, there were many competent users who honestly like technology. Now it is completely different, see https://www.lainchan.org/r/res/6407.html Also, these days everybody like attention, they are living for dopamine that they get from likes, retweets and followers.

>>7322 >>7323 That is something I've wondered about, a way to fight against that culture of elitism and self complacency

>>7322 >it was always faster to check on wiki or just read a whole book rather than ask some asshole There are other ways of approaching the problem. As long as getting an answer is more important to you than looking like an idiot or hurting someone's feelings then trolling will get you much further than asking politely. http://bash.org/?152037 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law

>>7341 > a way to fight against that culture of elitism and self complacency In my opinion you just can't break this culture alone. Once you're good, really good at something even your enemy won't ignore you because they know if they can bring you on their side they will be unstoppable. To get rid of this culture you've to adulterate their smugness and core beliefs.

>>7342 >As long as getting an answer is more important to you than looking like an idiot or hurting someone's feelings this, who gives a flying fuarrrk about feelings in the internet. You must be ready to look like an idiot if you want to learn something.

>>7354 Well I was just thinking of breaking the traditions of having ranks based on post quantity and not allowing for signatures. plus less strict moderation about some stuff like visitors asking questions.

>>7358 You can always divide forums like novice, moderate, and gurus, this way nobody has to feel inferior or some soykaf.

>>7301 Your question has already been discussed extensively in >>5692, welcome to continue the discussion.

I think some forums still exist and thrive, it's just that they only serve and can only really serve people with the kind of personality and maturity that fits its format, and a high dedication to a certain hobby. Let me get in detail. One aspect that I think led to the traffic loss of forums is that by nature most people care more for the social aspect than the technical aspect. They do their hobbies so they can have something common with, to be together with other people, and the hobby is almost secondary. (Note that this is _not_ true of the average lainchanner, but the average lainchanner is not an average person.) For this reason, social media is more popular with most people, who can now be social without having to put all that effort or money into a hobby. And then there are those who care more about the technical aspect than the social aspect. This does not have to mean they are introvert or asocial like most of lainchanners, just that they put the technical aspect first. Thus things go two ways here: a) If there is some niche hobby with <10000 people into it, and most of these people are introverts/asocial, you end up with an imageboard. People will be glad not having to bear the consequences of an identity and not being expected to share anything real about themselves, just stay on topic. The social minority including moderation inside an imageboard makes an IRC channel. b) If there is a niche hobby with <10000 people into it, and most of them are social and want to form a sort of social circle, even if that only works on the internet because they are far away generally, the perfect medium is a forum, as it tracks the identity of users, who can build reputation and karma and get to know each other in general. I think the appearance of social media did two major things as far as I can tell: - It turned a fragmented internet of many, many websites into the walled garden of 100 or so big ones dominating, which is detrimental to technical discussion but immensely luctrative for social chat, thus pulling average people out of forums. - Its strong integration to the everyday life of normal people through smartphones (that is, they are not bound to spots with internet access and a computer anymore) means that they "don't miss out the internet" and yet are never forced to pay prolonged attention to anything - which is a requirement of the kind of communication forums embody. My post here is about where a forum post begins in size, there is no way in hell someone on a phone or tablet would type this out just for a few people to read it. With just these two changes, forums lost most of their traffic.

>>7360 That is just the same problem but more broad >>7363 Yes, very interesting, thank you >>7384 All of that sounds logical but right now I'm using tumblr and there is a terrible sense of loneliness that the site gives you, if you want to be social you must engage with other users across all the content and that isn't simple. Its not a social network as it is a content network and from what I've heard other sites like facebook or tweeter are the same.

>>7389 I have some experience on facebook (and no excuses), it's highly social. The part publicly visible (some profiles, pages of businesses etc) are very vain and all about showing off how great and cool you are, but most people I know barely use that. The one un-social aspect they use often is the news feed, which is mostly posts from their acquaintances and groups, memes, funny stuff or content related to their favorite vidyas, streamers, etc. Beyond that, people mostly seem to be using Messenger and Groups. The group setup at my uni is somewhat like this: - every subject has an unofficial group where people ask questions and post materials, these are pretty much dead. questions are specific to the subject. - every year there is a new group for new students - there's a group for the whole department questions in these are mostly administrative or technical - there are a bunch of groups where the uni's various offices and organizations hype soykaf and nobody cares - I'm in a group with 10-12 students who I go to classes with, we mostly discuss deadlines and ask absolutely any question related to studies. it's nice because you can ask the dumbest soykaf and nobody makes fun of it, because everyone has seen everyone ask dumb soykaf a dozen times already and it's just not funny anymore. - every dormitory has a group, and boy these see some traffic. basically, if someone in the room above yours is making noise, you complain about it in the group instead of going there. when there is a false fire alarm, people meme about it in the group and the few ones that genuinely think it's a fire ask there. if you need any item, have food to sell/give away or want to get, you post in the group. - there are clubs in the dormitory, each with their own private group and messenger group. there are a few large yearly events and they make a group just for that every year All of these are pretty much integrated with real life, meaning that most people use it to organize real-life (meet), or for things not worth meeting. It's pretty normal to not talk to people one on one but interact a lot in the groups, just like IRL. Tumblr doesn't seem to have this sort of ""privacy"" (oh boy this is golden) as it's all about the profile part, which is in general toxic, vain and abused.

>>7391 Fascinating, I heard Zuckerberg himself said that facebook is about groups now And maybe that's the problem with tumblr, no groups means the interaction is tedious Ouch, maybe I should have had made a facebook but thinking about it it may have not been so good.

>>7303 The best forum I was ever part of was just 3 people. I was pretty young and it might just be that I was inexperienced online (probably why most of us feel like the internet goes to soykaf), but you can make it work if you're dedicated.

I used to basically live on a couple of martial arts and webcomic forums, but they all died out, either from Bullshido harassing them or from the cartoonists giving up. Now it's just Disqus, and that's so goldfish-retarded with its stupid topic auto-locking and posts rising and sinking and becoming invisible according to some recondite algorithm, you can't even have a decent play-by-post RPG or collaborative fic. Disqus is a glorified comment box, and is no replacement for a forum.

Fora are not disappearing, it just appears that they evolved and merged into the reddit superforum. Of course it's not exactly the same, but it serves the same purpose. One main advantage of reddit is that you can browse many different topics with only one id, instead of having to manage an identity for each forum you wanted to participate in.

>>7433 I try to avoid reddit as much as possible. I know the voting system is well intentioned but every time I've been there it looks like the biggest hugbox I've ever meet. You can't post an opinion that goes against the main hivemind of the thread/subreddit or you'll be downvoted to hell and you can't have actual discussion without counter points. Also usually most voted comments are almost always stupid ""jokes"" . That aside I prefer a thousand times to remain anonymous instead of having an id for every discussion I participate with, but that's most of my thing and not a complain about reddit.

>>7434 It really depends on subreddits. The small or very topic oriented ones are usually good. The big ones are often full of cancer, but I think that's just because that's what happens when too many people are in the same room, not because of the voting system.

>>7435 >>7434 Reddit is a really important case-study in Web 2.0 thinking. Basically, it takes the old forum model and solders it onto the new content mechanisms driven by links, arbitrary internet points ("karma") and fractal communities (pioneered by GeoCities, Proboards, LiveJournal, and other host-your-own-page sites). Unlike Facebook or Twitter, it preserves a lot of the old mechanics, allowing us to observe the effects of the new mechanics independently. What Reddit foresaw, I think, is that the enormous influx of internet users, facilitated by smartphones and a number of other factors, was going to flatten conversation into a mass discourse, so they needed other triggers to reward users: discussion on Reddit can't last more than a few comments, even on small subreddits. The algorithm controlling the rise and fall of an OP means that your encounters with other users are necessarily fleeting, with none of an imageboard's cultural mechanisms. For instance, bumping the (often recurring) threads you like on an imageboard actually has the result of changing the board's discourse. Conversely, you cannot bump threads on Reddit, you can only vote on them, and you can't count on the threads as a place to encounter the same group of users, even though you all have consistent names. I don't think imageboards are all that great, but we can't deny that they possess cultures that reddit communities simply don't. While we're all anonymous, Reddit is the real hivemind, not because its individual users actually hold "hivemind" opinions (let's be real--most of us use Reddit and we as individuals are not that different from average Reddit users) but because all the content that you actually encounter on Reddit is the result of a machine that uses a hivemind structure to display and produce content at all times. What we need to be watching out for, I think, is what's coming next.

>>7440 (continuing previous post) Rather, I think one of the reasons we feel like the internet has changed so much is that as the internet changed, we moved right along with it without realizing what was happening. If we're going to maintain perspective, and not give up all hope of having communities online, we need to be conscious of fighting against the stream (not for elitist reasons but just because that stream is carrying us to places we don't want to go) and prepare to develop new methods of online discourse that can preserve what we've got with the old methods (BBS, imageboards, etc.).

>>7434 >You can't post an opinion that goes against the main hivemind of the thread/subreddit or you'll be downvoted to hell and you can't have actual discussion without counter points I think the point of voting systems to it protect the community by preventing outsiders from polluting the discussion. In theory, if a community actually valued interesting discussion, then the voting system wouldn't get in the way. I think having unique names coupled with a voting system is a mistake though because then downvotes are not just filtering posts, they turn into attacks against people's egos and status in the community.

Somehow I still use Gaia Online.

>>7440 what do you think the next thing would look like? >>7452 the problem without having votes is after the site is popular how do you sort through thousands or hundreds of thousands of comments? imagine if each thread on here had thousands of posts. It would be a mess to try and participate in discussions on here

>>7391 We use Slack for all that at my university, at least in the CS department. There's not as much of an emphasis on facebook groups at my university, though maybe I'm out of the loop. My freshman year, there was a group for freshman, but I got derezzed from it for the phrase, "I don't really like Justin Bieber," lol. There was also a meme page for my university as well, but it stopped updating after it got spammed with racist memes. Yik Yak also killed Facebook groups for university-related discussion at my uni since it allowed people to complain about loud neighbors anonymously. In it's golden age, before requiring a phone number and forced usernames, it was great. After it shut down, the other platforms didn't seem to get their local user bases back. I guess people just realized anonymity is nice. >>7415 When I was in middle school, I made a Geocities website for a garage band I was in and used one of the free forum websites of the time to make a forum for it. Like 10 people from my school registered for it and it died quickly enough, but it was the coolest thing in the world to me back then.

>>7503 The votes dont work well if that is the case. I only use reddit at work and I just see so many thread of people just blasting links to some news, site, or article b/c they know they are going to get those garbage karma points. Those votes are also used part of the hivemind to hush opposing views and to virtue signal.

Forums are dead because of technological and cultural changes. Social media are simply much more usable on phones than forums and because of network effect they're much more populous as well. So that's technology. As to culture. The people who run forums, the admins and moderators are for the most part mentally stuck in the 90s and early 2000s, in a time when forums had virtually no competition and users had to recognize their power to be able to participate in discourse. This just isn't the reality anymore. Users from 21st century cannot put up with moderators from the 20th. They choose alternatives.

I miss Barbelith. Yeah, yeah, I know, fuarrrking Barbelith, but at one time it was the coolest thing on the net. The SJWs who killed the place weren't the fuarrrking status quo IRL yet, so there was still a air of sticking it to the man, and we honestly thought Grant Morrison was a member, and not resident stalker The Knowledge impersonating him. But then Tom Coates put Haus and Flyboy in charge to try and stop The Knowledge, and it all turned to soykaf. I made the parallel at the time of George W. Bush destroying everything good about America trying to catch Osama, but you try telling SJWs that they're turning into totalitarians...

They evolved into imageboards

>>7506 Yik Yak was golden. So much interesting and local knowledge was shared there. The address to our house party was posted there and some people stole alcohol but it was still worth it. I dream for the day that some meshnet-y (sorry for the meme) version of it pops up that gets popular again.

I miss them precisely because of the whole social aspect that usually ends up destroying the forums in the end. Over time forums would degenerate and become glorified social hangouts for "regulars", "veterans" whatever you call them. I used to feel like I really belonged to those places. I haven't felt that way in a long time. After the drama got too personal with me I left and never looked back, ended up on the chans. Anonymous discussion channels are so much better than forums when it comes to discussing things but I never really met anyone through chans in the same way I did back then. I used to have friends from all over the world on MSN... Now it's just me, the stuff I like and anonymous people posting about it.

>>7312 > to fairly niche interests and have well knit communities. Pretty much this. Still lots of good forums around especially for very niche interests.

>>7440 >let's be real--most of us use Reddit and we as individuals are not that different from average Reddit users Speak for yourself.

>>7440 Please go back

>>7440 >let's be real--most of us use Reddit and we as individuals are not that different from average Reddit users fuarrrk right off. Reddit's worst mistake is thinking that it's the front page of the internet and that it represents a majority when it's just facebook for socially inept people. It's just a huge echobox for people that never learned how to talk to a real person and that think they're cool just because they have more imaginary point than the next person. The exact same display of fake superiority that you're showing right now is why the rest of the internet hate reddit. Your points and karma and whatever doesn't matter for soykaf when you're just another anonymous user and then only your ideas matter. And ideas like yours don't hold up on the outside of your hugbox.

>>7322 If you think the point of forums was a source of information like wiki, you missed that point. Besides which, wiki was NOT considered a reliable source of info for some years at the outset, until it gained a critical mass of editors and more than that, there was a time when it didn't exist at all... believe it or not.

>>7401 >>7315 tumblr really isn't designed for interaction or discussion, it's more like "show and tell". It's a useful platform for people who have something to share (whether it's science related, art or just porn) but 99.99% of the blogs there are worthless combinations of a daily diary and a constant scream for attention (but also easy to ignore).

>>7594 A lot of people use tumblr like a discussion forum these days. Tumblr doesn't use the weird text layout anymore and you can simply comment on posts. It works very well for smaller groups with niche interests.

>>7598 Yeah, I replay to lots of posts with comments but very rarely do I get a replay back. Tho tumblr has a built in chat client but I rarely use it

>>7598 Oh... do I need their stupid app to take part in that? All I see there is the same scroll of posts as before. I have never actually participated there, just followed the blogs I like.

>>7635 Not that anon but I'm on a desktop PC and I can comment on tumblr without any app. Just reblog posts and add your comment on the reblog or there is a button next to the reblog button that lets you comment without rebloging

>>7642 Oh ok... I could have read the FAQ I guess but I have never, ever actually posted there. I just set up an account to follow others, plus you need to be logged in to see the naughty bits >_>

>>7650 Its fine. I used my tumblr to lurk for many years before I got engaged

Overchan (https://miku-nyan.github.io/Overchan-Android/en.html) being a thing makes me think that the whole "not usable on phones" thing is massively overrated. Sure that's one specifically for imageboards, the but point remains one could easily adapt it for phpbb or xenforo.

>>7694 Look at Dashchan's github page, they allow developers to make dashchan plugins for their site. The library is really rich too, I didn't have any problem adapting it to a textboard with no images, no capcha, no capcodes and no email field, but it supports all those things and more for any plugin you want to throw in there.

>>7694 That's actually a good idea but if you to to proboards and see the forums highlighted on their front page you'll see they haven't had a post in a couple of years or they're too fringe.