This is why I haven’t tried running my own forum, let alone my own Discord chatroom (I will not, even on pain of death, call it a server) or start my own Free Company in Final Fantasy XIV. I don’t know jack about community management and I can’t be arsed to learn.
Yeah, I try to be careful with what I do. I have a community with over 380,000 users and while not all of them are super active, I try to make sure I think carefully about balancing new features vs. performance and stability.
We have no user generated content for a reason, but that’s ultimately why we have Mastodon now.
ive been thinking of creating a forum for a specific niche community because while discord is nice its organisation and blocking features are kind of lacking. the forum would have to be private because itd be for a kind of “cringe” topic that people are often harassed for but if my “target audience” (read: a couple of friends who i know want thuis kind of community space) is interested in using a forum then ill do it i think
3 Likes
Yeah, why not? If you need any help, let me know. I know how to keep spammers/bots away from most forum softwares. On the other hand, you mentioned this will probably be a private community so this will be much less of a problem.
I definitely miss the old style of forums. I can’t bring myself to enjoy Discord, which basically seems like glorified IMing/IRC/etc. and doesn’t really encourage longer or more thoughtful answers.
I’ve also gotten the impression that a lot of Discord users seem to be under 30, which is nice for them but not something I would want out of a community.
Regarding Reddit, I feel like everyone nowadays overlooks how much horrifying stuff that site has allowed. I refuse to touch it at all.
2 Likes
heh, I did irc enough in the old days that discord doesn’t bother me as a chat platform - but it’s definitely not a replacement for a forum!
Discourse is trying to be a modern forum and I’m … not a fan of some of the choices they’ve made. It’s definitely not something I’d choose if I were hosting a forum.
I’ve been on IRC, and I’ve been on Discord. The latter does not improve upon the former, IMO. With IRC, for example, you didn’t have to use the same alias every time you connected to a particular server. So, if you were new to IRC and didn’t have a firm grasp of netiquette, embarrassment was more temporary.
sad to say that literally none of them voted forum so we’re sticking to discord
1 Like
What are you talking about, revival? I’ve spent (far) more time on forums the past decade than on any social platform!
I’m definitely on board with the sentiment. But, honestly, I think the best thing anyone of us can do is join and participate to keep awesome forums alive. And if none to your liking exists, make one!
Of course, encouraging other people to partake in forums probably won’t hurt. (Random interjection: But dang, it must be difficult being a forum moderator in the age of gen AI.)
3 Likes
This is generally how I feel about “web revival”, for similar reasons, but I figure if people who don’t have my background want to call it a “revival” there’s no point in begrudging them their viewpoint. It’s valid for them even if it doesn’t make sense to me.
1 Like
So true! Just showing others what great forums exist, pointing them in the right direction, sharing a link to a niche forum about a topic they are interested in is a good start to help revitalize the the forum culture.
Forums in general had a big decline in user activity. Just because you have been active in forums (which I think is a good thing) doesn’t make it less of a revival in general, if we can manage to get more people back to using forums instead of discord and centralized hubs like reddit.
Well, everybody has a different background. One might say the same about your viewpoint either.
To me, since there has been a shift from the personal to the corporate web and a big incline on social media usage in the past - introducing or bringing back more people to a more personal, decentralized web feels like a revival.
And I’m totally in favor of it and willing to do something for it.
1 Like
Yes, I was joking. Should’ve added a ;)to make it obvious. My bad!
1 Like
There’s a directory of forums on ForumDirectory(https://www.forumdirectory.com)
There’s also another list of forums on Administrata(https://administrata.net/links/)
, which is an online community for community owners/webmasters.
I agree with everyone’s statements here, we definitely need to bring forums back to the forefront of the internet. We can do it, and we will make it happen!
I’ve seen forums rise and fall over the years; however, their impact will continue to soar like a bird in the sky, as long as the knowledge bases within them maintain a community-like atmosphere everywhere.
Social media is fun and dandy, but it’s nothing like forums.
This thread is everything, and I truly believe that within the next few years, forums will become successful once again.
1 Like
I’m very much on board with this. Forums, for all their own quirks and flaws, are generally a MUCH better experience than social media or centerilized chat spaces (Discord. I’m talking about Discord lol)
I’d love to see an active forum for my main fandom/special interest! I tried to make one, but it hasn’t seen much activity and no one has posted in a long while. Was never sure how to go about spreading the word without seeming annoying/like an advert, but that may be residual anxiety from Discord chats’ general dislike of you “advertising” other Discord chats :P
1 Like
Way back in the day, there were post-for-hosting forums. The best one was Lifeless People. You could also get a free domain if you posted often enough, I seem to remember that they were Russian ones. LP was a lively place with lots of categories to post in. A mix of ages too, so one never felt too old for the forum.
Glad you’re not dumb 
You even made me laugh, thanks 
That’s the spirit! Thank you for posting the links to the lists. I will look through those and add more forums to the website / and the forum community wiki.
What fandom are you talking about? The biggest task as the admin of a new forum is getting new members to join. You need constant activity because people look at the dates of the last entries and when they think the forum is dead, they don’t sign-up. To mitigate this you can hide the post date but be sure to always, at least daily, have a look at your forum and reply if someone has written something. People are not willing to wait for answers longer than a day or two before they move on.
The best way to get a fresh forum going is to have some friends that you can talk to on the forum. Ask questions, answer questions. This way people from search engines will eventually find your forum and sign-up.
That actually sounds nice. It’s a pity that I missed out on that one. Do you know why they did shut down the forum?
1 Like
I suspect it closed for the reason that personal websites went the way of the dodo. Lots of people going to social media, like Facebook, and not wanting to build websites any more.
I’m so dumb. I started replying to posts that I had already read and replied to 
LOL
Spoiler
It actually is a mixture of people who just support the idea, forum owners, forum users and some folks that want to do more than that. For example helping to curate the list or helping to setup the structure for archiving forums.
That really made me think (again) because I already felt “the pressure” to finish the tasks (that I have set myself). Writing articles, working on the code, switching from html to css to human readable language again really is kind of exhausting.
That might or might not be true. We will see. I hope they continue and if they don’t, for whatever reason, offer their users to download their dumps without (time) restrictions. I’ve seen many big websites fail over the years.
That is great.
I second this!
Thank you for sharing your experience.
Yes, good point. I was already thinking about how to do this. On one hand I don’t want to automate this process, on the other hand contacting a vast amount of forum owners is something I couldn’t handle myself (manually)
Is anybody with experience in server management & linux interested in getting involved in our archival project?
Okay, so no mod drama or forum war has happened over there. Communities sometimes can be quite difficult to handle ^^
The fandom is Pikmin! Which is currently in a weird state size-wise. Can make it hard to find people on less mainstream services like forums, fediverse, etc.
As for your advice, I’ll absolutely utilize it :] I’ll make some new posts today, and poke some friends to see if they’d be willing to help keep it alive.
1 Like
That’s great to hear. Why don’t you share the url with us and give your forum some more online visibility?
I just updated the community wiki, added some new forums and descriptions there and updated the project site of the Movement on my homepage as well. Now I’m gonna 
myself for getting something meaningful done today! g
1 Like