Originally posted by ThorSanchez But I don't think my teenage kids use forums at all, they're on things like [...] Reddit.
I would argue that reddit is a lot more like traditional forums and a lot less like other social media than you think. At least that's what it was and what I still view it as under the domain old.reddit.com . The owners of reddit are out to make money and so they did overhaul the optics and some features to make it more social media like, but that's not why I use it and why I like to use it: it does remind me a lot of traditional forums. In fact reddit is a collection of infinite subreddits, each dedicated to a certain "thing" or idea; a collection of forums. The threads aren't linear like they are here but, how do you call it, nested? It allows for several different discussions sparked by the same conversation starter (picture, video, link, text,... ) to happen simultaneously without the clutter that can make it confusing when happening in a traditional, linear thread view. The voting makes it a community effort to separate good content from bad content, though the system is not without flaws...
But I do like traditional forums and am a member in a handful of them because of the content and the people first, and because they are presented in a simple no-frills design. Content and ergonomics first, looks second. But they're also often highly specialized and they do need four kinds of people:
- one or more people to handle the technical side including legal responsibility
- some moderators that keep the discussions civilized to maintain the attraction for folks to continue to like using the site and to protect the admin(s) legally
- some people that bring in their knowledge and contribute to the subject matter
- some people that need help / want to obtain knowledge about the subject matter
That's a whole lot of mostly unpaid work to be done, so people should enjoy what they're doing. I'd say with manners becoming more and more poisoned online in the last years that might contribute to the death of such circles.
I guess most of the forums do not make their "owners" any money, if they are even able to get it financed without having to put in a whole lot of their own money and of course countless hours spent maintaining the thing. That might kill some forums as well.
The subject matter might become irrelevant, people could spend less and less time doing the things they once did.
There are so many ways I can imagine those projects to fail, and almost everything has to come together to 1. get it going 2. keep it going, it's a wonder there are and have been so many communities centered around certain things and I'm eternally grateful that places like PF were created in the first place and manage to keep existing through the changing times and fashions coming and going.