The death of various forums

[m0ffy]

Not this one, obviously, but a lot of the forums I used to love have either closed completely, or become shadows of their former selves.

How has RailForums escaped this fate? Which forums are you mourning?

 

[Peter Mugridge]

It's still going, but the Concorde forum gets very little use these days - not through any lack of interest in the subject but a horrendous advertising system combined with the unfortunate loss of a number of key members.

Another forum, the QE2 forum, is growing and is very busy, like this one is.

What frequently kills a forum off is if they change from a traditional layout like this one ( with very easy to scan category indexes and thread titles within each category and the threads themselves are fully chronological ) and go into an untidy cluttered mess that tries to imitate Facecrook or Reddit, which are almost impenetrable and very illogically laid out - searching for anything on those is impossible. LinkedIn is getting worse by the day for the same reason and it's not helped by a lot of members seemingly forgetting that it's supposed to be a professional and work orientated site...

 

[styles]

LFGSS, a cycling forum, closed because of the Online Safety Act. I think it was a bit over-cautious in their case but I also understand why people might not want the risk.

Bike Radar shut down their forums due to costs. I assume this forum is reasonably well covered by a mixture of donations and sales through the forum ticketing site.

Anecdotally I believe people are moving to short form content. BBC news articles are a single sentence to an entire paragraph. TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Facebook/IG Reels etc are creeping up on long form video content. Tweets were limited in character length, hashtags over post bodies, etc. Forums aren't really designed for this and don't attract those people.

 

[Mogster]

Unfortunately it does seem people prefer or are drawn to Reddit, Discord or even Facebook groups. The traditional forum format seems to be declining fast. Reddit in particular does tend to dominate searches. I do wonder if AI searching may play a role, you can receive an answer to your question without visiting forums, asking a question and waiting for responses.

Several horticulture forums I used to go to are still open but now receive almost zero posts where they used to be quite busy. A space science and astronomy tech forum I used to visit has closed due to declining posts and costs, although costs and will from the organiser was probably the biggest factor.

 

[styles]

Unfortunately it does seem people prefer or are drawn to Reddit, Discord or even Facebook groups. The traditional forum format seems to be declining fast. Reddit in particular does tend to dominate searches. I do wonder if AI searching may play a role, you can receive an answer to your question without visiting forums, asking a question and waiting for responses.

Several horticulture forums I used to go to are still open but now receive almost zero posts where they used to be quite busy. A space science and astronomy tech forum I used to visit has closed due to declining posts and costs, although costs and will from the organiser was probably the biggest factor.

For searches, the larger sites will almost always dominate.

Reddit has a subreddit/forum for practically everything. This results in a very high number of inbound links to Reddit posts, and of course high traffic. In turn Google sees this as a popular and relevant website and it gets higher search result positions.

This forum actually does quite well, I suspect Tim part because it's not just trains. I'm sure Yorkie was saying we have one of the largest, if not the largest, bus forums, despite being called RailForums. All the engagement there will help us in search results.

Google results these days are personalised but even Incognito browsing I find these forums pop up higher than Reddit for a lot of rail questions. There's a lot of high quality content here which just isn't there on /r/uktrains on Reddit, and I don't feel Reddit really encourages detailed discussions in the same ways traditional forums do. Top level comments getting upvotes though, absolutely, and this often means short, snappy, sound bite style comments get made the top comments.

 

[ac6000cw]

I do wonder if AI searching may play a role, you can receive an answer to your question without visiting forums, asking a question and waiting for responses.

That also reduces the visitors to those forums and hence potentially reduces their advertising revenue.

Something else that can kill off a forum is a lack of effective moderation - without it, discussions at best can wander way off topic, or worse, get dominated by a few posters having a personal shouting match which just drives everyone else away.

 

[sor]

Although I'm only a millennial, my main "old man rant" is how Discord has usurped so much of the formerly open internet. Forums and IRC chat rooms replaced by this proprietary system, controlled by a single company who obviously wants to make money from doing so and requires their bloated software to use it. It also means the content isn't indexed by search engines or more crucially by sites like the Internet Archive.

Reddit has its own problems but at least it's available to anyone with a web browser.

LFGSS, a cycling forum, closed because of the Online Safety Act. I think it was a bit over-cautious in their case but I also understand why people might not want the risk.

It was going to close, but then a number of the members acquired it and are running it in a way where they think they can comply with the legislation.

The Hamster Forum (yes) did however close and apparently has since reopened.

 

[66701GBRF]

Anyone remember Railchat?

 

[Jimini]

LFGSS, a cycling forum, closed because of the Online Safety Act. I think it was a bit over-cautious in their case but I also understand why people might not want the risk.

Wow, I'd not picked up on that one. Used to frequent there regularly in the 00's (when I was a 20-something cycling commuter).

 

[Ashley Hill]

The Bristol Railway Archive forum appears to have closed. It was quite good for Bristol related information and discussion. I think it may still have a Facebook presence but I don’t do FB.

 

[JD2168]

Some forums on public transport are not helped by some members thinking they run it & almost bully newer members forcing them off or forcing others off through trolling elsewhere.

 

[Tramfan]

I used to enjoy the Tyne & Wear Transport MSN group for all things Tyne & Wear Metro. Was a great resource, with message boards and all manner of other content. The site migrated over to Multiply when MSN Groups closed down, but it was never the same and also closed down not long after.

 

[m0ffy]

LFGSS, a cycling forum, closed because of the Online Safety Act. I think it was a bit over-cautious in their case but I also understand why people might not want the risk.

Bike Radar shut down their forums due to costs. I assume this forum is reasonably well covered by a mixture of donations and sales through the forum ticketing site.

Bike Radar and LFGSS are the two that sprung to mind for me, too.

There are still some thriving - The DIBB, a Disney World travel forum is well established and still growing; PPRuNE and its stablemate, FlyerTalk seem to be doing well, too.

Moderation is important, and I wonder if user age plays a part, too.

 

[philosopher]

For searches, the larger sites will almost always dominate.

Reddit has a subreddit/forum for practically everything. This results in a very high number of inbound links to Reddit posts, and of course high traffic. In turn Google sees this as a popular and relevant website and it gets higher search result positions.

This forum actually does quite well, I suspect Tim part because it's not just trains. I'm sure Yorkie was saying we have one of the largest, if not the largest, bus forums, despite being called RailForums. All the engagement there will help us in search results.

Google results these days are personalised but even Incognito browsing I find these forums pop up higher than Reddit for a lot of rail questions. There's a lot of high quality content here which just isn't there on /r/uktrains on Reddit, and I don't feel Reddit really encourages detailed discussions in the same ways traditional forums do. Top level comments getting upvotes though, absolutely, and this often means short, snappy, sound bite style comments get made the top comments.

A lot of subreddits are very picture and / or meme heavy. While this can be good in some circumstances, it does mean actual factual content can be limited. The uktrains subreddit is one of the subreddits that tends to be quite picture heavy whereas this forum was much much better for actual factual information about the railways.

 

[brad465]

There's one rather morbid forum I also use called the DeathList forum, where a committee predicts 50 famous people who might die in a given year, with an annual list and attached forum where most of the discussion is about the health and behaviour of famous people, as well as various prediction games/pools. The list publishing dates back to the late 80s, before the WWW existed, and the forum itself dates back to the early 00s. It's definitely still active, and certain events are capable of crashing the site (like the build-up to the Queen's death). The forum does have moderation to prevent anything really inappropriate being posted, however language rules tend to be relaxed, as swearing in posts is not uncommon.

 

[GatwickDepress]

Although I'm only a millennial, my main "old man rant" is how Discord has usurped so much of the formerly open internet. Forums and IRC chat rooms replaced by this proprietary system, controlled by a single company who obviously wants to make money from doing so and requires their bloated software to use it. It also means the content isn't indexed by search engines or more crucially by sites like the Internet Archive.

Reddit has its own problems but at least it's available to anyone with a web browser.

IRC and forums were dying a long time before Discord came along. Mainstream IRC users went to the likes of MSN Messenger and Skype in the 2000s, Xfire and Steam were always more popular for gamers, and forums gradually became replaced by social media groups and subreddits. Even when I still used IRC regularly in the years up to Discord releasing, it was considered that only very well-established or technical communities were still on there.

I don't like the dominance Discord has, but it didn't usurp IRC and forums so much as it continued a trend that had been going on for years at this point.

 

[simonw]

The Bristol Railway Archive forum appears to have closed. It was quite good for Bristol related information and discussion. I think it may still have a Facebook presence but I don’t do FB.

The Bristol railway archive is a great loss, the forum was never that busy.

 

[Egg Centric]

Pistonheads is a shadow of its former self.

Straight Dope Message Board was amazing in the early 00s. The stackexchange founder came over to it and proposed his new idea and was shot down. Bet they regret that.

Advanced Driving UK I enjoyed but it didn't last long.

Political Betting - which has an approx 50% representation here lol - is also on a very slow decline.

RailUKforums has genuinely massively outperformed and the only explanation is a combination of userbase (people into railways tend to be of a similar type to people into forums) and very well thought out moderation.

I'm quite enjoying mumsnet at the moment. It's interesting to get their perspective on things. But I've no idea "how they're doing".