06-20-2022, 01:24 PM
Interesting article by Lemmy and I don't disagree with anything he said. I have been online on forums before the commercially available Internet, and have moderated a few since then. When the WWW came about I remember fearing that the quality of inputs would suffer, as quantity would usurp quality. I had a website on my original country with the largest collection of recipes from it and other places in the Caribbean, before Facebook came and spoiled that.
A successful forum requires work - both from the admins / moderators and also from the members. It takes effort to stay on topic, effort to keep content to a size that is not bit-heavy and time wasting (including over-quoting), and effort to post content that is actually useful to most other people. That is the problem. It takes effort. At the end of the day, it must be a place where someone wanting to find information can come, stay a while, actually efficiently find what they are looking for, and leave feeling that they have not wasted yet another block of their life.
When I formed this forum (and the parent website) I did so because I could not find useful informaton on the RS from people who actually owned the bike (as opposed to motojournalists) and who were interested on more than just farkling the crap out of it. I wanted to know about working on it, problems to look out for, technical information, etc., and farkles were secondary (or maybe tertiary). I am less interested in the frivlous side of ownership ... that's what social media is there for, but it takes all kinds I suppose. For me quality in a forum is way more important than quantity / popularity ... I'm too old to give a crap about that.
Yes, forums (fora) will continue to die off as people get more fickle and less willing to put in the effort into contributing to a resource that would be a knowledge base that is useful to all. And that is sad.
A successful forum requires work - both from the admins / moderators and also from the members. It takes effort to stay on topic, effort to keep content to a size that is not bit-heavy and time wasting (including over-quoting), and effort to post content that is actually useful to most other people. That is the problem. It takes effort. At the end of the day, it must be a place where someone wanting to find information can come, stay a while, actually efficiently find what they are looking for, and leave feeling that they have not wasted yet another block of their life.
When I formed this forum (and the parent website) I did so because I could not find useful informaton on the RS from people who actually owned the bike (as opposed to motojournalists) and who were interested on more than just farkling the crap out of it. I wanted to know about working on it, problems to look out for, technical information, etc., and farkles were secondary (or maybe tertiary). I am less interested in the frivlous side of ownership ... that's what social media is there for, but it takes all kinds I suppose. For me quality in a forum is way more important than quantity / popularity ... I'm too old to give a crap about that.
Yes, forums (fora) will continue to die off as people get more fickle and less willing to put in the effort into contributing to a resource that would be a knowledge base that is useful to all. And that is sad.
Regards,
Grumpy Goat
2016 BMW R1200RS
2023 Triumph Tiger 900 Rally Pro
Grumpy Goat
2016 BMW R1200RS
2023 Triumph Tiger 900 Rally Pro