Are Forums going away? Dead?

John Welsh said:

The problem must be that forums don't send you a message every time someone takes a picture of their oatmeal...  

(one of my favorites...so true)

I thank you all for keeping this place going.  I'd be sad to see it ever end.  

BoxheadTim said:

I suspect a fair number of forums went the way of the dodo because the original owners got fed up of the unappreciated effort and cost involved and sold the forum to the handful of companies that were out there trying to make money from (car) forums.

yep.  For sure.  Outdated forum software, cost to upgrade, hosting fees, etc.  All of that is "baked in" to one of the other platforms mentioned in this thread.

One other thing I thing is a huge factor in some people moving: mobile support.  Mobile support has always been pretty bad for forums. Many used to (still do?) require a secondary app you had to pay for that still wasn't great.  Navigating an older vbulletin or phpbb forum via mobile is a chore.  Heck, composing a post that has any quotes on this forum via mobile is a special kind of nightmare.

Facebook, Discord, and Reddit are all much more mobile focused.  And as much as I think mobile is the wrong tool for content creation, I bet the majority of the population disagrees.

Over the years I have been active in a bunch of forums. These days I only belong to 2, this one and the Cadillac Forum. The Caddy forum is awful and this one has turned into an online friend group for me. Tons of great info and a lot of good people. 
Thank you owners and moderators for hosting this wonderful place. 

and a couple are too big , HAMB and Garage Journal  have too many posts and if you skip a few days you never catch up !

This forum has about the right amount  of posts with a great mix of information and BS :)

Really makes me wonder if this Forum is a loss leader for the Suddards. Can't be cheap especially with the photo function. 

This is why I'm happy to be part of GRM+ to keep it afloat. 

I think it bares repeating: thank God for this place.

In reply to OHSCrifle :

Its Amazon sourced....

Forums are slower than they used to be. However, for those of us who won't use FB and have quit other platforms (here's looking at you, Reddit: Eff you, Spez), this is what's still available.

I'd like to think that we're part of the groups of people bringing fora back.

Ranger50 said:

In reply to OHSCrifle :

Its Amazon sourced....

So - overpriced?

Example: https://basecamp.com/cloud-exit

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

RevRico said:

I don't get it, forums are just all around better, when managed properly. 

Welcome to being old -- this is just a repeat of what forums did to email mailing lists. :)

The difference is that forums were objectively better than email lists. Facebook groups are worse than forums in essentially every way. Unfortunately, they are where the people are, much like Facebook Marketplace. Zuckerberg's tentacles reach into everything online these days...

Let me guess, you got into using the Internet in the late 90s/early 2000s?

The big advantage to email mailing lists was that all of the information was on YOUR computer, and could be displayed, sorted, referenced, and archived in any way you wanted.  Forums took that ability away and forced a "least common denominator" user interface onto every user.  Photobucket would not have been able to play stupid games with hosted images had they all been sent out on mailing lists, for example.

That said, there are a few advantages to forums over mailing lists -- it's easier to set up persistent build threads and web archiving and visibility to random users on the internet is built-in.  (You could do that with a mailing list, but it required extra work on the part of the admin).  Forums also have a lower barrier to entry, which is the major reason why it they took over.

The same thing is true of Facebook -- lower barriers to entry because it's all built-in to the social media juggernaut that everyone is already using.

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

Flashback to Outlook express (is that what it was called)?

OHSCrifle said:

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

Flashback to Outlook express (is that what it was called)?

Dunno, I never used that, I'm more of a Unix guy.

My email client of choice went from /bin/Mail to elm to MH/exmh, then finally to Thunderbird once the transition to using POP/IMAP was forced on me. :)

Seems like this has been a yearly question ever since I first got on the Internet.  Some go away, others evolve, but I don't think the concept of a message board will disappear altogether.  A lot depends on how well they are administered - many of the ones that are struggling pretty much have absentee owners who don't fix problems or make updates when needed.

Is the Miata Turbo forum dead? If not, I hope it will be soon. I love forums (this one especially) but I've never been more mistreated by absolute a-holes that run that forum. It more toxic than the Sloppy Mechanics Public facebook page, if that's even possible. 

Treat people like dirt and they won't come back. It's pretty simple. Other forums had that god complex moderators that would absolutely ridicule you for missing a comma - but nothing on the level of MT. 

In reply to Scotty Con Queso :

Oh that's one of my favorites.

Me: hey, how do I do this?

Them: IT'S IN THE WRITE UP READ THE berkeleyING WRITE UP

Me: the important pictures are BROKEN in the write up, that's why I'm asking

Them: banned

Scotty Con Queso said:

Is the Miata Turbo forum dead? If not, I hope it will be soon. I love forums (this one especially) but I've never been mistreated by absolute a-holes that run that forum. It more toxic than the Sloppy Mechanics Public facebook page, if that's even possible. 

Miataturbo.net is still there, although it gets less posting these days than it used to, in line with the general decline of most forums.

As for the toxicity, IME miataturbo is a place where you get back what you put in.

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

RevRico said:

I don't get it, forums are just all around better, when managed properly. 

Welcome to being old -- this is just a repeat of what forums did to email mailing lists. :)

The difference is that forums were objectively better than email lists. Facebook groups are worse than forums in essentially every way. Unfortunately, they are where the people are, much like Facebook Marketplace. Zuckerberg's tentacles reach into everything online these days...

Let me guess, you got into using the Internet in the late 90s/early 2000s?

Son, I go back to dial-up bulletin boards, then later Usenet. I'm old. 

And I maintain that forums are better than the old listservs, of which I was a member of many. I don't know too many people that were sharing images over email in the 90s. How many of them had a searchable archive? Sure, you could save emails on your machine if you wanted to (I still have some!), but with a forum you could search the entire database.

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Son, I go back to dial-up bulletin boards, then later Usenet. I'm old. 

Fair enough (and same for me!).

There wasn't a lot of image sharing over mailing lists in the 90s, no.  OTOH, digital cameras were pretty expensive and scarce at that point, and most people weren't going to bother shooting film, developing it, and then scanning it just to make a build thread. :)

As for searching, most web forum search engines are terrible.  Hell, even here we do it using google!  I'd much prefer to have the text on my own computer where I can use grep or some other search tool on it.  So yeah, I'd save the messages from the lists myself.

This and one other forum (for event listings) are the only ones I frequent.

I remember even the Scion forum I used to be on at the end (Scikotics) ended up turning into people posting every day "whats up" just so their post count would grow.  Kind of like Youtube video comments of "FIRST".

With my Star Wars group, they have forums (completely separate forums not just sub folders) for every location, every costume (detachment), every group...  With my 7 costumes between 501st Legion (bad guys) and Rebel Legion (good guys), I figured out there are 17 different sites I would have to go to to stay up to date.  berkeley that.

I go to the event list/calendar site for upcoming troops, and forgot I use the Ohio Garrison forum for troop count tracking and occasional merch sales.  I'm on all the others but it's rare when I visit.  We tend to post on Facebook groups as appropriate and include a link to the forum post.  Much easier to track.

But even the calendar forum isn't great, it's outdated, hard to post more than text sometimes, can be a hassle viewing on phone vs desktop, etc.

I vastly prefer forums. I have an intense dislike of the software GRM uses but I just curse it in the background while still participating.   The only other forums I frequent daily are ADVrider and a Royal Enfield forum. Everything else has migrated to FB, which sucks.

With the attitude of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" I admin a Ford Falcon group on FB. I'll pat myself on the back and say it's one of the better ones because I'm a dictator, not a moderator. I delete irrelevant posts and ban anyone for clearly violating the few rules we have. The biggest part of my job is blocking fake accounts trying to get in. Good grief, I probably nuke at least six every day on average. FB is a complete cesspool, but it's what is popular right now so what choice do I have?

Reddit can suck it. I've been banned from two subreddits over there for daring to post anything not completely fawning over far-left ideology. Nobody wants to have a discussion; it's just an echo chamber.

In reply to ddavidv :

Which Ford Falcon group is it? I'm going to be getting started on mine this weekend and will probably need information.

It seems forums have stabilized to some extent. In addition to GRM, I still frequent a regional mountain bike forum, two other mtb websites that have a forum component along with one other car forum for Triumphs (but I don't go there as often) and a forum for Sportsmobile RVs. 

I still participate in one relic from Yahoo Groups for the Volvo 1800. It is now on iO groups. My mtn biking team/club also uses iO groups as an group email communication means.  It basically works exactly like Yahoo groups did and you can have messages sent as either individual emails (I have my mtn bike group set up that way) or in digest emails of combined messages (I have the Volvo 1800 messages sent this way).  The Volvo group is still the best resource for 1800 information, although similar to social media platforms, the search function sux.  However, since everyone knows this we are tolerant of the same questions getting asked every few months. 

While I do participate on Facebook and to some extent Discord, I wouldn't say I'm a huge fan. I still don't really "get" Discord.  I have started getting used to using YouTube videos for DIY info. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not.  I am also a moderator on a couple of Volvo 1800 FB groups a friend started. We delete a lot of posts and reject about half of the requests to join. 

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

The latest vbulletin search is pretty damn good.  Much better than here.

RE: Discord

I am a member of 3 different discords, but they are all basically a platform to gather on for sim racing, primarily because of the voice chat.  You can talk and share pictures and stuff but it's more like a chat on the deck with beers than it is like a forum.  Nothing is grouped by subject, there isn't anything close to a build thread, etc.  if it's not being discussed by the group at that very moment, it's basically out of view. 

In reply to ProDarwin :

Bluegrass Garrison (the KY region of the 501st Legion) uses Discord instead of Facebook. I got signed up and one of our locals helped me figure it out, at least basics. Definitely felt more like a chat.