What do forums still have to offer?

[Gelion]

I think the new gen are going to wait for us on Discord. It’s just a superior tool from a gaming perspective and the new gen is concentrated on gaming left, front and center. First of all, technically one can simulate a “forum” there. Instead of creating threads, channels are created, where one can stimulate long form by limiting the number of posts one can make and by attracting the right crew to moderate and set an example. Then there are overlays, live integrations, things an old fashioned forum cannot have almost by design. Discord platform is deeply intertwined with games, so it’s a no brainer for kids I reckon. Streaming, audio, spotify integrations and many other things a programmer can code on his own volition when presented with a large degree of creative freedom. I suggest you check it out one of these days, Gelion, not as a substitute, but to glance at a cool new community-creating tech.

Possibly, but at the same time, as it was said, discord (a closed and private platform as opposed to closed and public platform that is a forum) requires constant commitment and an understanding of what you are getting in to. Therefore it is based on a friendship (or gang) model ("hey, take a look at what we have here buddy") rather than a knowledge/topic based model ("hey, this is a cool place to hang out/nice workshop to work in"). Live interactions could be provided by other media other than a forum (and why not discord?), but a forum is too much of a speciality to be replaced by a simulation to make older folks feel more like at home. Its like with mobile apps and subscription based models, they are worse for the consumer than a computer based one-purchase model, but because the companies want them they are being developed. "For the good of the consumer"as the old saying goes. If anything this convinced me more that forums are still viable and no other format (yet!) is able to replace them. I've been to several discords, for me its been either a place to shout really loud "hey look at this funny pic" or a place of collective creation (which a forum can just as well be). Nothing fundamentally different for someone who keeps their mic always (officially) off.

 

[JPetroski]

I genuinely cherish the opportunity this forum allows me to get a diverse set of perspectives that are often very-well supported by links to evidence or other supporting material. I like how we don't have a karma system, so new voices can be heard and we don't fall into an echo chamber. I find it much easier to navigate a traditional forum than reddit, and frankly just a better place to have a true debate. If you look at reddit much of it is is basically "Lengthy OP with very little debate back and forth below it." Their upvoting/downvoting system is stupid in my mind and prone to manipulation on more important topics.

Honestly, sometimes you folks drive me nuts but I'm a more well-rounded person because of the conversations we've had over the years. I try not to jump into too many but I read far more than I join and I like learning. People I completely disagree with on a multitude of topics have brought my attention to several documents, web pages, studies, etc. that have influenced my thought process time and time again.

There's nothing quite like this place and others like it. Perhaps it isn't as digestible as twitter, but it's the kind of place where you read and then reread the better posts and mull things over as you have a coffee.

Years ago when I was in college I took a few online courses and they were basically forums. We'd have an assignment and you were to post an answer to questions, say, Monday, and then we'd spend the week debating them and just carrying on like we do here. That was 1000x better than any classroom experience, in my mind.

 

[MontyJava]

What a shame we can't ask the people no longer here

Your lucky day. I left this forum years ago (can't even remember old account name). Joined back for a mod recentlyish (C5 VP). Figured I'd waltz back through here a week ago. Can't recall exactly why I left; probably it just wasn't the most interesting place at the time for me.
I did putz around other forums in the interim, until they got closed down, the userbase wandered off, got shaken off by obnoxious cliques/members/mods, and/or evolved into your standard internet bubbles and echochambers.
This forum seems a lot emptier than back in 2008 or so. Guessing Reddit and Discord took 3/4ths of the userbase. Guessing most people remaining are Gen X and old Millennials at the youngest. Join dates certainly tell that story.

I spent a lot of time on Reddit over the past decade as I transitioned out of forums. Eventually grew sick of the direction it was going, just more of the same really, with far more turfing and botting in major subs, and I have stopped posting over the past 2 years. The format isn't as conducive to conversation anyway. Necessarily turns conversations into circle-jerks when likeability = visibility. The best forums turn off the "like" feature (*looks around here and sighs*), imo.
Discord is proprietarily-owned, fully surveillance tech, hard to search from outside, and tends to have very low-effort input and short replies. Even Reddit is better for anything other than collaboration.
There's just a lack of good options these days.

Currently, I just don't have the energy or interest to get dragged down into endless internet debates anymore. I get a couple replies in and lose interest. I just don't care what random people think much anymore, and I can't be bothered to engage with what I know from infinite previous iterations is a mostly pointless process in trying to inform or shift others' understanding. Things get circular extremely fast. It's interesting to see how other people think on topics in more detail than an SMS, and boy do you come across some doozies of opinions, but 99% of the time it devolves into ego point scoring and team sports. I try to avoid that now, if imperfectly. A mindset change would help, certainly.

Large forums and Reddit subs are great for lurking to keep up with what the various echo chambers are in a tizzy about any given day, and terrible for conversations because of how fast things move. Small forums, you just end up having the same conversations with the same 10 or 20 people over and over again (and I recognize half the posters on here still).
Can't win; read a book instead, I guess.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Your lucky day. I left this forum years ago (can't even remember old account name). Joined back for a mod recentlyish (C5 VP). Figured I'd waltz back through here a week ago. Can't recall exactly why I left; probably it just wasn't the most interesting place at the time for me.
I did putz around other forums in the interim, until they got closed down, the userbase wandered off, got shaken off by obnoxious cliques/members/mods, and/or evolved into your standard internet bubbles and echochambers.
This forum seems a lot emptier than back in 2008 or so. Guessing Reddit and Discord took 3/4ths of the userbase. Guessing most people remaining are Gen X and old Millennials at the youngest. Join dates certainly tell that story.

I spent a lot of time on Reddit over the past decade as I transitioned out of forums. Eventually grew sick of the direction it was going, just more of the same really, with far more turfing and botting in major subs, and I have stopped posting over the past 2 years. The format isn't as conducive to conversation anyway. Necessarily turns conversations into circle-jerks when likeability = visibility. The best forums turn off the "like" feature (*looks around here and sighs*), imo.
Discord is proprietarily-owned, fully surveillance tech, hard to search from outside, and tends to have very low-effort input and short replies. Even Reddit is better for anything other than collaboration.
There's just a lack of good options these days.

Currently, I just don't have the energy or interest to get dragged down into endless internet debates anymore. I get a couple replies in and lose interest. I just don't care what random people think much anymore, and I can't be bothered to engage with what I know from infinite previous iterations is a mostly pointless process in trying to inform or shift others' understanding. Things get circular extremely fast. It's interesting to see how other people think on topics in more detail than an SMS, and boy do you come across some doozies of opinions, but 99% of the time it devolves into ego point scoring and team sports. I try to avoid that now, if imperfectly. A mindset change would help, certainly.

Large forums and Reddit subs are great for lurking to keep up with what the various echo chambers are in a tizzy about any given day, and terrible for conversations because of how fast things move. Small forums, you just end up having the same conversations with the same 10 or 20 people over and over again (and I recognize half the posters on here still).
Can't win; read a book instead, I guess.

Okay, should I say "welcome back" or "my condolences"? I'm honestly not sure.

 

[RobAnybody]

The best forums turn off the "like" feature (*looks around here and sighs*), imo.

Can't decide if by Liking your post I am supporting your view or disagreeing with it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Can't decide if by Liking your post I am supporting your view or disagreeing with it.

Sometimes people "like" a post just to say "I noticed your post." What it means has sometimes sparked some bitter arguments.

 

[TheCleanerDragon]

CFC's main appeal to me is that there mods hosted here, it's the best place on the internet to find mods for CIV.
Also being able to find posts that are more than day is nice, sites like Facebook don't seem to want anyone to look back more than a day, and make trying to a pain in the behind.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Don't let the "likes" own how you post.
Only replies matter!


Also, make sure to have a good avatar like a Neko Shogun.


Also, there is a green arrow on our avatars now when we are online.

Kind of like the arrow on a car's fuel gauge that always shows what side of the car the fuel tank cap is located.

 

[Snowygerry]

Sometimes people "like" a post just to say "I noticed your post." What it means has sometimes sparked some bitter arguments.

Yes - a sympathetic nod, often when someone takes the time to reply to a specific comment or question,

not necessarily to confirm the message of the post, or express agreement, but rather to show the effort in making the post was appreciated.


These old fashioned forums are more like a favourite bar, where you converse with the regulars you know a bit, rather than stand out in street to shout your opinion at random passers-by,

like on Twitter

 

[Fippy]

Likes are fundamentally broken cos they are often used to strengthen one side of an argument, while discouraging other opinions.
I know they make sense when posts are helpful or with lots of effort put in..but even then replies give more.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Likes are fundamentally broken cos they are often used to strengthen one side of an argument, while discouraging other opinions.
I know they make sense when posts are helpful or with lots of effort put in..but even then replies give more.

"Likes" can sometimes be weaponized - for instance, if a stalker drops a "like" on a post you made just to let you know which posts are being read, since it isn't one that that particular person would find any reason to actually like.

Sometimes bots have dropped "likes" on a post. At least I was able to ask an admin to delete that. I don't like "likes" from nonexistent people (or stalkers).

I think there's a Site Feedback thread discussing "likes". It makes for some interesting, sometimes-contentious reading about a forum feature that was meant to be good but can sometimes be the opposite.

 

[Gelion]

What a shame we can't ask the people no longer here (if they left of their free choice rather than being permabanned for bad behavior). I know some of them leaving had nothing to do with newer alternatives (which didn't exist at the time they left). Sometimes all it takes is one rude remark or one inconsiderate action to make a brand-new person feel unwelcome, so they don't stay.

I'm sorry that happened and I know you've come back to this several times in your posts. Generally, in my experience, it happens either to new people who don't feel welcome (a plague and an error of a "well-established" community) or to people who are engaged in a debate which is valuable to them and, possibly, during a time of crisis in the larger world. I don't have a solution to that, except that being a part of a community should be hooked onto personal interest, i.e. things one likes to come back to.

This describes the Shout Box on the Pond Friends forum I belong to. I gave up on it. You have to live on that to understand what anyone's talking about, so some people hang out there, and I decided to stick with the small group of older women who have a thread where we talk about everything from recipes to ranting about what's wrong with the latest game to talking about pets, and they encourage me in my writing. That's actually where I posted my Dune/Peanuts fanfic crossover (could dig it up and repost it here if anyone's interested; it isn't very long). That thread is over 700 pages long, but it's been going for years, well before I joined the forum.

One of my favourite writings in fanfic is a thread on a long gone forum of writers/creators about a group of Dwemer coming back to Morrowind right after Dagoth Ur has been defeated. Its so good it deserves to be published So, I don't know what "Peanuts" are, but I'd be interested in reading that, maybe in the Dune thread?

If you want to find stuff on a forum, make sure the title of the thread or subforum makes it clear what it's about. There's an offshoot forum of Pond Friends (a long-term adversarial relationship resulted in a couple of offshoots of PF, one of which I joined and find congenial and the other which I don't). It's not enough to have nice, friendly people who know what they're talking about with games. Calling a subforum "Chatter" and another one "Gaming talk" and other some equally general thing means I have no intuitive way to tell where the hell anything is there. I was asked if I'd like a writing thread, and I said not unless it's a subforum on its own - there's plenty of scope for it, but unless there's a way to immediately and intuitively figure out that it is about writing, then no, thank you.

This generally boils down to the "quality" of what the members bring. I'm suddenly more favourable to the use of proper tags on the forum. Also members should be welcoming to strangers who are brave enough to ask questions.

That's why I like the way the first forum I joined was organized. It had a place for stuff, and if a need was perceived to further subdivide it, that was usually done.

My first forum was also a gaming forum and it was not as big or as good as CFC, but still had its bright moments.

I was very surprised way back when, to find that there was actually not a designated place on CFC, either as part of SF or in the individual subforums, to introduce oneself, say a sentence or two, be welcomed, and so on. It's unusual NOT to have this, and it's considered one of the standard things you do when you create a new forum (next thing you do after creating the rules forum)

Interesting idea to take a look at CFC from the point of view of a newbie once in a while. The CFC OT has it, I wonder if other subforums do the same. "Hey, new member, check this thing out to start your stay here" stuff.

But which kind? Going by the above paragraphs, you've described DS9 without Constable Odo.

As a true Babylon 5 fan, I haven't watched that one

I'd say a deep space port that gets its visitors once every few generations and goes about its business. Human colonies lost hundreds of years away from each other will interact in a much similar way unless some sort of warp technology is discovered. A place to always come back to and to align/stretch out the thread of consciousness over immeasurable space and time.

Sorry if my reply took longer, I am a slow reader most of the time.

Not much. It's a cheap alternative to real friends. Lower cost, lower benefit, lower risk short term, higher risk long term.

Higher risk more or same as any other social media?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Also, there is a green arrow on our avatars now when we are online.

Kind of like the arrow on a car's fuel gauge that always shows what side of the car the fuel tank cap is located.

Unless we're in stealth mode, where the staff knows we're here but nobody else does.

I'm sorry that happened and I know you've come back to this several times in your posts. Generally, in my experience, it happens either to new people who don't feel welcome (a plague and an error of a "well-established" community) or to people who are engaged in a debate which is valuable to them and, possibly, during a time of crisis in the larger world. I don't have a solution to that, except that being a part of a community should be hooked onto personal interest, i.e. things one likes to come back to.


One of my favourite writings in fanfic is a thread on a long gone forum of writers/creators about a group of Dwemer coming back to Morrowind right after Dagoth Ur has been defeated. Its so good it deserves to be published So, I don't know what "Peanuts" are, but I'd be interested in reading that, maybe in the Dune thread?


This generally boils down to the "quality" of what the members bring. I'm suddenly more favourable to the use of proper tags on the forum. Also members should be welcoming to strangers who are brave enough to ask questions.


My first forum was also a gaming forum and it was not as big or as good as CFC, but still had its bright moments.


Interesting idea to take a look at CFC from the point of view of a newbie once in a while. The CFC OT has it, I wonder if other subforums do the same. "Hey, new member, check this thing out to start your stay here" stuff.


As a true Babylon 5 fan, I haven't watched that one

I'd say a deep space port that gets its visitors once every few generations and goes about its business. Human colonies lost hundreds of years away from each other will interact in a much similar way unless some sort of warp technology is discovered. A place to always come back to and to align/stretch out the thread of consciousness over immeasurable space and time.

Sorry if my reply took longer, I am a slow reader most of the time.


Higher risk more or same as any other social media?

Check your PMs.

 

[Samson]

Unless we're in stealth mode, where the staff knows we're here but nobody else does.

Or, conversely, if we have computers visiting this site without our eyeballs doing anything...

 

[Narz]

Higher risk more or same as any other social media?

When I say risk I mean that loneliness is a risk factor for health equal to smoking.

I can't speak for others but I often retreat into the online world where I can discuss & read what I want and ignore aspects of my life/relationships that stress me out/I'm ambivalent about.

FB has some advantages as it does occasionally get me out to real life events. They have intermittent reward down, 95% waste of time, 5% useful.

Forums are more interesting and less 'fake' (I feel like I see people's real opinions rather than a curated 'look at me' projection) but in 20 years on CFC I've only made one RL friend (altho I've met a few like hygro who seems cool).

At the end of my life I don't think internet 'experiences' will count for too much.

 

[Snowygerry]

They're really no substitute for real-life relations, they might be for casual discussions on various subjects with colleagues etc.

Especially since work-from-home became a thing - with the added benefit you can play civ on the side, that was really difficult at the office

 

[Samson]

They're really no substitute for real-life relations, they might be for casual discussions on various subjects with colleagues etc.

Especially since work-from-home became a thing - with the added benefit you can play civ on the side, that was really difficult at the office

They are very much a worse substitute for real-life relations, but when one is forced to forgo said real life relations because of some disease or other they are a whole lot better than nothing. This place has taken some of the role of the pub in my life.

 

[Farm Boy]

Can't put in a positive vote for discord. Functional place for a group video call if you need one. Bad interface though, terrible chat.

 

[Kyriakos]

Likes here don't function much like on Reddit; the post doesn't move up if it has more likes. Also, in cfc you can get an upper limit of counted likes (iirc), and thus eventually every half- regular poster gets there.

 

[Samson]

in cfc you can get an upper limit of counted likes (iirc), and thus eventually every half- regular poster gets there

WHAT???? Also, have I not got enough but "every half- regular poster" has? Or is this a count I am not aware of?

Of course likes are not like elsewhere. In other places "By clicking the like button, the defendant clearly endorsed the unseemly content and made it his own”. You can get done for that sort of like.