Thoughts on the demise of forums

[TriangleRider]

Interesting post today on the CommonTread blog:

Why are online motorcycle forums drying up and dying? - RevZilla

I agree with most of his points, but also believe a lot is lost with the "now you see it now you don't" aspect of FB and IG posts.   Sites like ADVrider aren't going anywhere soon, but I wonder how many bike forums will be around in five years.

[Grumpy Goat]

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.

[SoCalR1200RS]

I used to LIVE on forums. My bookmarks were basically a few sites and I'd hop back and forth all day long amassing thousands of comments...

Then Facebook came in with their Groups. And Reddit popped up with their threads that favor new content over quality conversation. Forums used to be THE place to go for knowledge online. Have an obscure question? Chances are - someone's already asked it on a forum, and there may be pages of discussions that follow. It feels like the internet is much more PRESENT now. It's all about the new, the hot, what's the latest buzz. It's hard to find places outside of the dwindling forums, where you can find solid crowd sourced advice and solutions to unique or rare challenges.

When I was growing up, it was - everything lives forever online - now, as forum after forum disappears into the void, I'm realizing how important it is to backup helpful information and find alternative sources because I feel like we're trending in a direction where information is controlled by the few and the free and open sharing of information on the web will all but cease.

[Pyrrho]

I've been online since I was first introduced to a 110-baud dial-up modem and DECWriter paper terminal in the late 70s. Dial-up BBSes hosted on Apple IIs, Commodore 64s and Trash 80s, to helping run my state's first public-access Internet service, to newsgroups, to burgenoing website forums, to...

...the crap we have today where most rely on ephemeral services like FB, Google, WordPress, etc to host and maintain their site's content. It's "easiest", with "good" being replaced with an ever-declining "good enough" standard to the point that newcomers to this all think that's the only way there is or was. People don't want to invest the time, money, and continued resources to self-host and maintain it -- so they don't own it, and it will be taken away from them in the future.

Recognize and support those like the Goat (even though he mostly rides a Tracer now) because are YOU going to do what he's done and continues to do when so many others have failed? Thanks Grumpy. I appreciate you, this site, and anyone who has contributed or will do so in the future. This dies when we stop caring.

[Grumpy Goat]

...
Recognize and support those like the Goat (even though he mostly rides a Tracer now) because are YOU going to do what he's done and continues to do when so many others have failed? Thanks Grumpy. I appreciate you, this site, and anyone who has contributed or will do so in the future. This dies when we stop caring.

Thanks for that (and the Tracer dig)  but rest assured that unless some unforeseen circumstance occurs wiping me out before I get a chance to hand over to someone else, if ever I switch over to some other bike and cannot continue to maintain / administer this Forum and the parent website, it will be handed over to someone else. I will not let this forum suddenly disappear, and that is my promise.

As said before I am all for quality useful content in support of the model. There are other fora simply for chattering, although that is not to say that is not welcome here ... just not the primary focus.

BTW - I found a potential buyer for the Tracer today, whose timeline fits mine ... 

[gc141x]

I've been online since I was first introduced to a 110-baud dial-up modem and DECWriter paper terminal in the late 70s. Dial-up BBSes hosted on Apple IIs, Commodore 64s and Trash 80s, to helping run my state's first public-access Internet service, to newsgroups, to burgenoing website forums, to...

...the crap we have today where most rely on ephemeral services like FB, Google, WordPress, etc to host and maintain their site's content. It's "easiest", with "good" being replaced with an ever-declining "good enough" standard to the point that newcomers to this all think that's the only way there is or was. People don't want to invest the time, money, and continued resources to self-host and maintain it -- so they don't own it, and it will be taken away from them in the future.

Recognize and support those like the Goat (even though he mostly rides a Tracer now) because are YOU going to do what he's done and continues to do when so many others have failed? Thanks Grumpy. I appreciate you, this site, and anyone who has contributed or will do so in the future. This dies when we stop caring.

I'm a dinosaur- my introduction to the Bitnet and then the Internet was on a DEC-20 many years ago. I had a 110-baud dial-up modem too although I needed help to make it work. I detest Facebook- I don't have an FB account and I consciously try and limit my screen time. It's made me far more productive although others might disagree.  I'm also at the age when I can get away with staring frostily at someone who starts pawing their mobile phone during a discussion with me and inform her/him that the discussion is over. Of course, there is a price to pay for such behavior and I have paid it.  

Anyway, I'm all for forums. Some age better than others.