Birbla

Discussion summary

Users discuss the decline of traditional forums, comparing them to Reddit and Discord, and note changes in community dynamics and quality.

What the discussion says

  • Reddit and Discord are seen as modern replacements for forums.
  • Community quality has declined due to brigading, politics, and user changes.
  • Nostalgia for older, calmer forums persists, but they have evolved or faded.
“Reddit doesn't work because subreddits crosspolinate and float to the top.”
— AlphaSite
“Forums with only old people die because young people don't know how they work.”
— spiderfarmer

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  • Hacker News
  • One thing about these old school forums is they are something you host yourself (directly or paying a server somewhere), and this requires but knowledge on doing so, and time to do its maintenance (beyond moderation and stuff). Additionally, I don’t think simple machines and phpbb development has kept as strong as the people trying to spam it.
    by a1o
  • I think social media won purely because of the network effect. And once a huge amount of people hangout in one place, naturally, they would prefer to have all sort of discussions in the same place. I don't think world chose social media because it is better or anything. Social media was strongly business driven that adopted all sort of dark patterns to gather critical mass.
    by 30minAdayHN
  • Oh how I miss old school forums. It’s crazy to me how communities are wholesale embracing discord, which just is not the right form factor at all for anything but ephemeral real time chat. I remember engaging in threads on real forums for literally years. It was so great
    by dchuk
  • I have a lot of sympathy with this. I use some topic specific old school web forums and they feel better all round than the discord channels/forums.

    I suspect it's an age/attitude thing. The implicit "My forum my rules" autocracy shows its upsides on a well curated space: trolling and spam dealt with rapidly.

    by ggm
  • There is no need to “bring back” forums, there are plenty that already exist. You just need to participate in them if that’s what you want.
    by possibleworlds
  • The word 'crappy' stood out to me. I feel the same sentiment about bringing back forums, but as a person who maintained few of those for many years, I always wanted explicitly non-crappy forums.

    In fact, I attribute much of the decline of forums to the fact that they were crappy and hard to maintain. Those PHP/Ruby monstrousities, with plugin system that was a security and maintaiability nightmare, made maintaining a forum quite a challenging task. I have some forums died purely because it was impossible to update them anymore without blowing up half of the functionality.

    Bring back non-crappy forums!

    by divan
  • I miss forums. When they were in their heyday I was an active participant in anywhere from a couple to half a dozen, shifting with whatever happened to be my hobby at the time. And local forums based around hobbies like music and photography were a great way to meet people in person because you already had something in common to start things off.

    It was also a place to find really in depth information on a topic. I remember doing research for my multi-day hikes and outdoor travels by browsing the threads in the stormfront survival subforum (note: I do not condone what they represent, but lots of them were paranoid and preparing for "the coming race war" and they just had good prepping and survival info).

    To me Reddit and HN have filled the void left by the decline of forums, but it's not the same. Perhaps the thing I miss the most is the ability to have avatars and custom signatures and titles to give your online persona a little bit of personality and flair.

    by Magi604
  • > We tried the forum thing. We wanted something else. Not necessarily because it was better, though sure, maybe it was. But because it was different.

    I don't think the novelty explains very much, the digg/reddit comment tree format is a clear improvement in the sense that it makes it easier to find and track interesting discussions. I always liked the aspect that you could follow a coherent back and forth where the people carrying the conversation tend to change with each comment. Even with all its problems, I can't think of another format that can match it in terms of sharing the spotlight among a diverse set of voices.

    I could never really get into the twitter format because it seems to be about a particularly spicy take followed by long string of replies to that take, at least without additional clicks that completely change the context. Its single virtue seemed to be its departure from anonymity which allowed it to be a showcase for voices that were already influential within society.

    The oldschool forum format requires a lot more scrolling and superfluous content that is unrelated to the discussion, and it is hard to go back to once the wave of nostalgia passes.

    by doginasuit

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