i started using the internet in the late 2000’s and still remember when you search for something most of the times it would return with a forum post … now its just random websites … if you ever need real and concise answer you have to add site:reddit.com at every search and since discord or twitter are not crawlable by these search crawlers they are not mentioned . Where did all those forums went…are there still active forums ?
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Aren’t we like, on a forum right now?
Also, yes, the more traditional style of forums are still around too.
I would even argue that Lemmy is more of a return to traditional forums from reddit due to the independent nature of each instance.
I wouldn’t say its a return of traditional forums. Far from it really design wise. I think its more of a return to independence and decentralization. I think we’re done with the whole “Web 2.0. Everything in one convenient place” and want to back to an era where things were much harder to find and communities were a lot more separated and dedicated to their own spaces. The fediverse isn’t the end all be all and we’re gonna suddenly go back to the 90s but to me, it’s an honest step in the right direction that could really change the internet for the better.
Not done with it. We want both decentralization and everything in a convenient place. Best of both worlds. So we end up with a discussion board that is also an rss reader, aka the activitypub protocol.
I’m hoping your right, that it changes the web for the better. But most people follow advertisements right back into the clutches of corpo-controlled products.
most people follow advertisements right back into the clutches of corpo-controlled products.
The thing is I expect places like Lemmy and even Mastodon to eventually fall to this behavior. The reason I’m even viewing them as services that should be must for the common user is the mere ability to even move out without having to leave everything behind (if you catch what i’m saying) thats the real core difference and hope that I have. The problem is again like anlumo said, defederation is definitely going to be a major hurdle and one where major companies will especially take advantage of.
Unfortunately federation doesn’t work with Lemmy. I have to create a new account on nearly every instance, because they defederate all the time due to spam and CP issues.
So, it’s a regular forum again.
Defederation is honestly both toxic and history repeating itself i guess. There’s reasons for it but it’ll pass.
It’s an inherent problem with the way federation is designed in the Fediverse. Since all content is replicated, this includes stuff like CP. If the admins wouldn’t defederate after learning about it, they’d willingly host it, making them legally liable.
Yeah. Lemmy and Reddit are basically mega-forums. The voting and threading systems went a huge way toward solving the problems that made traditional forums unworkable at large scale. e.g. there were always 8 pages of replies to trudge through to find one relevant answer. (XDA is a great modern example of this problem. Woe to those who find an XDA thread while troubleshooting.)
It was also so, so much easier for someone to make a subreddit than host and maintain their own phpBB server. I am speaking from experience on both ends, there.
Reddit killed the traditional forum, and you know what? Good. It was time.
The same problem makes large Discord painful to use.
the more traditional style of forums are still around too.
They’re very rare these days though. It’s a whole lot easier to keep all your interests in one place rather than heading off to one forum for gaming chat and another for programming chat and another for gardening chat.
Keeping it all in a single feed means your interest can be piqued at random times and you’ll be more likely to interact.
Isn’t lemmy basically that, but with modern technology? PHPBB was a nightmare for a sysadmin.
not organised well tho
These forums never were well organized.
What was/is wrong with PhpBB?
It’s right there in the name: PHP
Seriously though maintaining a PHP server is a security nightmare and you have to be constantly updating if you don’t want to be hacked. Just not worth it when there’s better options out there
The software was so bad that if you didn’t keep up with emergency security fixes for even a week, the forum would instantly be taken over by someone. Being hacked was the natural state of that software.
Vehicle related forums are very much alive. It’s the best place you can go to get help with your car. I hang around on a couple different ones and it’s far better than anything I’ve seen on Reddit.
Yep. Whenever I get a new vehicle or motorcycle, I always search for a forum for it and get way more info on common problems (and usually great ways to deal with them), hacks for the software, cool mods and accessories (usually ending up costing me thousands of dollars in parts I wouldn’t have known I “needed” if I stayed away, but…) tips and tricks for maintenance, and lots of useful info in general
just want to fully second this based on experience… information i got from forums really helped me with my most recent purchase… both with making the decision in the first place, and with finding aftermarket parts that my specific run of that model really needed… helped a ton…
Have you got any links to some?
They are vehicle specific. I own a Toyota tundra and a Mazda Miata so I hang out on tundras.com and miata.net
if you look for Honda Accord forums for example, you would eventually be able to find nearly all the info you need to build one from scrap…
There are still plenty of active forums. Some of the old forum platforms didn’t make the shift to mobile very gracefully, and most of them have failed to put out good apps. So there are casualties by the road of change to be sure.
Reddit is huge and became a platform for forums. A lot of groups are also stuck on Facebook. Sigh.
But there are probably more active forums than ever, because there’s just so much more of everything on the internet now. Posting online used to be such a niche nerd thing to do. Most wouldn’t think of it. Social media cracked that egg open. Your grandma posts to a Facebook group.
Of course, if your definition of forums is super specific to the early days, it’s a different picture. There may be fewer vBulletin 2.0 powered web forums than 10 years ago… but there also may not.
That’s a good point. A really good app that can parse a standard framework that a thousand independent forums can stand up for their own purposes (Say, MyBB for instance), would go a long way towards reviving the forum scene as a whole with a very Lemmy-like or reddit-like experience.
Yeah Tapatalk tried to do that for VBulletin but the problem is that little vBulletin sites don’t have very deep pockets to delve. Little forum sites are supported by small time revenue like network ads, and limited brand sponsorships and the occasional member donation. There isn’t a lot of money in this scene as a whole, so there is relatively little innovation. In a way that’s fine. The last thing forums want is mass participation.
Make it a FOSS project then. No profit motive, no problem, right?
Granted, I understand that’s hinging on someone actually wanting to work on this project for free. But I feel like FOSS decentralized forum software is something we might be able to get the grognards on board with.
Are there other good examples of successful open source mobile apps? Where the app client itself is open source?
That app already exists and is called Tapatalk. I think almost every forum I’ve visited in the last decade has a banner on mobile that suggests using Tapatalk.
It’s not very good though it seems.
You’re either incredibly centralised on a platform you don’t control, or incredibly fragmented between different smaller groups.
When I started, you’d go to the relevant usenet group and typically found worldwide experts in whatever.
Alas, times change.
Dead Internet Theory for all the bots out there reading this.
Not sure I believe this has already happened, but I certainly believe we’re headed in that direction
Never heard of this before but it’s fascinating. I think I found my next religion.
All of those things do happen but to say they’re the only thing happening…
People hosted their own forums as there was no viable alternative, and you didn’t care about legal liabilities, data governance, right to be forgotten, DDoS protection etc.
Most people (not all) will choose the easy option of an existing service. Of which the value for that service is to lock you in and spend all your time there.
Saying that I’m still active on multiple forums, but they’ve been around for years, and it’s definitely an older nerdier demographic.
Yes, they are less prevalent due to Reddit and other social media sucking up a lot of the users.
They are still around though. One Australian forum that I’ve been on for years which is still very active is Whirlpool. Started as a tech forum and expanded. It’s very useful as source of info as it’s been around over 20 years and a lot of questions have been asked and answered there.
Holy cow late 2000s…man it’s too bad you missed the 90’s. There were TONS of forums and real communities built around hobbies, interests, fandoms, etc. I really really miss them. I had real actual friends online. I blame facebook reddit et al for their demise. These huge websites are like the wal marts of the internet destroying small communities.
Yep and reddit is slowly closing themselves off, I wouldn’t doubt you eventually have to be logged in to even view anything.
Forums are still around but it’s usually just the older established ones (I’m on stangnet.com and corral.net regularly but they’re car related so lots of technical info). Everything new either went Reddit or Discord it feels like and I’ll never install Discord.
I think Jellyfin started a forum post reddit but I haven’t gone looking yet for that one.
Information is absolutely getting harder to find online and if archive.org goes down we’re really screwed
I main 4chan. It is alive and kicking, as far a garbage bin full of maggots is alive and kicking.
There are the alternatives too!
Forums still exist. They’re just buried in search results behind SEO garbage sites and video clips because ad revenue. I really despise the direction revenue has pushed the internet…I mean, I get it, sites cost money and people want to make money, I’m getting this stuff for “free”, but the monetization has absolutely destroyed the quality and availability of many things. The brief and concise informative text post has been buried in favor of lengthy videos filled with pointless blather and 5 minutes of actual content because length = ad space, and ad space gets pushed to the top.
That said, some bash places like reddit…but honestly reddit is a forum despite the social media moniker. It’s forums condensed under one roof. No, it’s not as easily searched…but forum searches have generally sucked since the beginning.
They’re out there. Searching [thing im looking for information about]+[forum] will often get you what you want, if it exists.
Reddit killed forums and Discord took over some of their other functions even though is fucking terrible at it.
Facebook also played a large role in retiring the independent old style of phpbb/vbulletin type forums.
I was just thinking about this the other day. It’s weird how Google has become so unusable due to its own practices that it seems to be giving up on being a search engine. I’ve been getting spam pop-ups lately on mobile search asking me to use AI. Of course people will wanna use it, they can’t find their answers normally anymore. You search for something and it’ll show you something completely unrelated because it’s trying to be “helpful” and corral you towards buying shit, and it doesn’t even do a good job at that. Heaven forbid you start to look past the first 3 pages… I don’t have a clue how these websites in the search results are maintained when they’re filled solely with spam and nonsensical gibberish. I’m totally with you. We used to actually see communities around and now it seems like they’ve fallen into the dark web, unfindable except by means of knowing someone who knows someone or, frustratingly, reddit. Paradoxically, it’s like the random AI-generated hash from the dark web is now here clogging up the tubes. I feel like everyone else came along and started dumping trash everywhere because we didn’t put up any signs or make any rules not to litter.
BTW, search term is ‘site:reddit.com’ not ‘site.reddit.com’
yes typing error
