Are Forums going away? Dead?

I probably check 6 forums?  This one, rennlist, 6speedonline (pretty much dead), advrider, ih8mud, rising sun (local toyota 4x4 forum), vw vortex (pretty much dead).  I'm sure the volume is down but the main ones I check still do have people posting.  Photobucket definitely screwed up a few of my large build threads, like my LS 951 swap thread.  I much prefer forums, they're easy to search and read, establish build threads, etc.  I prefer to read and look at pictures for DIY's vs watching a video too

ProDarwin said:

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

I have yet to see a web search engine that lets you do regular expression matching.

Forums are not dead, but shifts are certainly happening.  I'm part of 5 right  now- this, college hockey, cruising, DIY solar, and WWII/Time Ghost History.  The last one is interesting- it's almost as if people got tired of asking questions about WWII, although the volume was never really that high.  (I used to be part of the Miata forum, but stopped checking it a few years ago- who knows if it still exists).

Of those, the most volume is in DIY solar and cruising, but in terms of real discussions, the solar one wins.  The cruise one is more about bitching than anything constructive.  But every once it a while, I learn something interesting that I can use.

FB isn't going to be a thing for me.  Just not worth all of the trade offs.  One "group" I was part of did reditt, but I could never really follow what was going on, so I've abandoned it.  That's the real issue with the discussions- being able to see what I want and avoid the noise.  The mail groups were more noise than information- that's why I don't like them.  And seeing the structure of reddit, how is FB any better than that?  

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

I think you are in the 0.0001% needing that feature.  I can't recall ever needing to search that way.

With vbulletin I can search topics, dates, titles vs post content, who posted it, basically by any field associated with a post or thread.  its light years ahead of the search here and pretty damn adequate for 99.999 % of users.

Toyman! said:

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.

 

 

Forgotten Falcons. It is for 66-70 only. There are some decent ones for earlier birds like the Poor Man's Falcon Group.

I only frequent two forums this one and Saxontheweb for saxophonists.  Both are polite, useful and the users don't flame each other.  I won't put up with BS, so I stick to these two quality forums.

In reply to alfadriver :

Woah, woah, woah, I'm gonna need to know more about the WWII ghost stories thing, please.

Appleseed said:

In reply to alfadriver :

Woah, woah, woah, I'm gonna need to know more about the WWII ghost stories thing, please.

LOL- they are not ghost stories- the historians call them selves Time Ghost History- they did a live WWI series and are still in the live WWII series.  Have done some coverage for the inbetween the wars history as well as the Cuban Missile Crisis.  This is the forum- https://community.timeghost.tv/categories  which is for patreons of the channel.  Not much goes on there- one person is posting newspaper headlines to macth the YT coverage timing.  And the questions have dropped off quite a bit.

They have plans to do some post-war work which should be interesting.

For the most part yes, I know in the BRZ stuff especially. 

"What should I do to my car? What wheels will fit? Should I do an EL or UEL header? OFT or EcuTek? What do I need to run E85?" etc etc etc

It's like all that information is on the forums and easy to find. But it seems the younger guys refuse to use Google or the forums to find information. 

z31maniac said:

It's like all that information is on the forums and easy to find. But it seems the younger guys refuse to use Google or the forums to find information. 

You have no idea!

I moderated Reddit's r/cars for many years (though I quit Reddit in 2023 when the CEO showed his character to be the human equivalent of  a broccoli fart). The sheer number of questions posted that were shockingly basic was astonishing. It would've been faster and more reliable for the people to just type their query into Google or, in the case of a business, just call them directly! It was all manner of stupid crap. After removing the posts I'd often call people out and ask why they didn't just Google it, and if they replied at all they virtually always said something along the lines of "I never thought about that."

We live in a transformative age of information exchange. In the whole of human history it has literally never been easier to get answers to questions or learn new skills. We as a people have developed incredibly powerful tools for archiving and searching nearly the breadth of human knowledge. . . and people just ignore those tools.

In reply to brandonsmash :

A bit of Devil's Advocate though...  Google something, almost anything, and you get 293675456382 hits, and every single one will be relevant, accurate, and not full of bullE36 M3 conversation.  I try searching, but often after looking at a dozen links and every one is for the wrong year/make/model, full of dude-bros just trash talking each other, or plain wrong, then I say "Ok who has actual pertinent information?"

(But I will agree a lot of those posts are probably people that opened the forum and said "how do I do this simple thing without looking anywhere?"

I found one of the more irritating aspects of zuckerbook groups is that they are so easy to construct that everything becomes diluted.  Aprilia RS250?  Where there was a very active forum (apriliaforum.com), there are now 5 or 6 fbook groups.  There's a public one with a lot of bot members and an indifferent admin but still useful info.  There's a private one with better info.  There are others I haven't joined.

I continue to keep 'build threads' on forums, even if they're generally inactive.  Hopefully, they will stay available.  It's not a guarantee tho - the very valuable (thought lightly used) bimotaforum.co.uk was dead for nearly a year.  I've made a point of posting a thread about my db4 to hopefully provide some value to ... someone.

mfennell said:

I found one of the more irritating aspects of zuckerbook groups is that they are so easy to construct that everything becomes diluted.  Aprilia RS250?  Where there was a very active forum (apriliaforum.com), there are now 5 or 6 fbook groups.  There's a public one with a lot of bot members and an indifferent admin but still useful info.  There's a private one with better info.  There are others I haven't joined.

So much this! There are SO many S197 groups, and most of them are pretty useless. Trying to join, then keep track of which ones are worthwhile and which ones are filling your timeline with spam about "which catback is best" is a huge PITA. And the worst thing is that FB will keep showing me posts I've already scrolled past a dozen times. At least with a forum, if I want to ignore a topic, it stays ignored.

I just started digging into 914 Porsches recently.  I was very pleased to find 914world.com to be quite active!

mfennell said:

I found one of the more irritating aspects of zuckerbook groups is that they are so easy to construct that everything becomes diluted.  Aprilia RS250?  Where there was a very active forum (apriliaforum.com), there are now 5 or 6 fbook groups.  There's a public one with a lot of bot members and an indifferent admin but still useful info.  There's a private one with better info.  There are others I haven't joined.

I continue to keep 'build threads' on forums, even if they're generally inactive.  Hopefully, they will stay available.  It's not a guarantee tho - the very valuable (thought lightly used) bimotaforum.co.uk was dead for nearly a year.  I've made a point of posting a thread about my db4 to hopefully provide some value to ... someone.

Yep. Everyone wants to create "their own group" for the exact same thing. I think for a lot of people it gives them some warped sense of power that they "run a Facebook group" or something. 

The softies in the Facebook groups would have cried if they ever used corner carvers or the old R3V. They don't like being told "search the information is here." They desire to be spoonfed vs research and learn something.

brandonsmash said:

z31maniac said:

It's like all that information is on the forums and easy to find. But it seems the younger guys refuse to use Google or the forums to find information. 

You have no idea!

I moderated Reddit's r/cars for many years (though I quit Reddit in 2023 when the CEO showed his character to be the human equivalent of  a broccoli fart). The sheer number of questions posted that were shockingly basic was astonishing. It would've been faster and more reliable for the people to just type their query into Google or, in the case of a business, just call them directly! It was all manner of stupid crap. After removing the posts I'd often call people out and ask why they didn't just Google it, and if they replied at all they virtually always said something along the lines of "I never thought about that."

Eh, that happens a lot here too.  The same "what sim rig do you have?" question is posed every few months, but nobody decides to look at previous threads.  Part of this can been helped with good moderation though (sticky the important stuff).

I think its worse on FB and Reddit of course, but much of that is by design.  I was a member of a Group for home DIY CNC Routers and I was amazed that there wasn't a way to subscribe to my own post.  So I couldn't even go back (on a PC) and update my thread when I resolved an issue.  I can only imagine it being 3x as difficult on a mobile device.

Out of curiosity - who gets more spam bots?  Reddit/FB/etc. or GRM?

ProDarwin said:

I can only imagine it being 3x as difficult on a mobile device.

I think this is key, today most people use the internet through their phones and don't want to type in a search query and scroll through results.

ProDarwin said:

brandonsmash said:

z31maniac said:

It's like all that information is on the forums and easy to find. But it seems the younger guys refuse to use Google or the forums to find information. 

You have no idea!

I moderated Reddit's r/cars for many years (though I quit Reddit in 2023 when the CEO showed his character to be the human equivalent of  a broccoli fart). The sheer number of questions posted that were shockingly basic was astonishing. It would've been faster and more reliable for the people to just type their query into Google or, in the case of a business, just call them directly! It was all manner of stupid crap. After removing the posts I'd often call people out and ask why they didn't just Google it, and if they replied at all they virtually always said something along the lines of "I never thought about that."

 

Eh, that happens a lot here too.  The same "what sim rig do you have?" question is posed every few months, but nobody decides to look at previous threads.  Part of this can been helped with good moderation though (sticky the important stuff).

I think its worse on FB and Reddit of course, but much of that is by design.  I was a member of a Group for home DIY CNC Routers and I was amazed that there wasn't a way to subscribe to my own post.  So I couldn't even go back (on a PC) and update my thread when I resolved an issue.  I can only imagine it being 3x as difficult on a mobile device.

 

Out of curiosity - who gets more spam bots?  Reddit/FB/etc. or GRM?

I was talking about the traditional vBulletin forums for a specific marque. Where everything is very granular, have a question about exhausts? Go to the exhaust section and do a search of that section.

We all know you have to google.com site:____ to get even halfway decent search results on this forum.

z31maniac said:

The softies in the Facebook groups would have cried if they ever used corner carvers or the old R3V. They don't like being told "search the information is here." They desire to be spoonfed vs research and learn something.

No kidding. I was on Corner-Carvers for almost 20 years. "Use the search" is imprinted on my online DNA at this point.

On the flipside, searching your ass off, not getting the answer, asking a question, and STILL getting lit up by some know-it-all jag, who's only job on the forum is to answer every question with, "SeRcH nEwbZ!!!" is enough to make anyone not want to come back.

3 pages in and surprised we haven't talked about it yet. The biggest reason social media has replaced forums is the dopamine hit when people "like" or "upvote" your post. You don't get that on forums, and our socitey has become addicted to it. Well, you do now on GRM with the voting feature...and what do you know, it's one of the last remaining car forums. 

I think part of it can be attributed to the push for new members. Numerous times I was working on a project at the shop and I would need to learn some mundane detail (like torque specs or a wiring diagram pin-out) and I would be searching and end up on a forum that had the information *but* require a verified account to view pictures, or any pertinent information was locked behind a paywall.

I was just thinking this morning about how bad it is trying to filter the poor information, the spam sites that are just regurgitating poor information (and quoting each other), and now generative AI cropping up and making that easier and faster...

 It had me pondering things like "what would a webring look like in 2024?" How can you keep a body of information down to actual humans while not adding so much barrier that it never generates a critical mass of useful info?

 We long since passed from trying to find info to trying to filter the info we find. How do we avoid falling prey to the perverse incentives that putting more bad info on the web is profitable?

I think in general those who are willing to be active contributors to a community are willing to go through the minimal "barriers" to join it.

I will say a huge benefit of Reddit and FB is you dont need another account to join another community, you can just join another subreddit with the same credentials.  That's a double edged sword though - because of the above.

One forum I'm on has things handled very well. It tracks your reading. Not just time on site, but actual reading time. You can't post until you hit 30 or 60 minutes.  If you want to start new topics, you need X reading time and Y replies. Really cuts down on the spam. The mods are a bit aggressive, and there is some favoritism, but that exists everywhere, even here. Vendors and sellers need to be verified by the site owners, which really helps cut down on the spam ads as well. 

There's probably half as many daily active users as here though, which by my last estimate was somewhere around 100, with almost 400 people posting weekly.