The death of various forums

[Yew]

If this was a few years ago, I'd agree that forums were dying, however I feel that isn't the case any more. We're starting to see social media usage has been starting to see the first signs of declining, due to its ongoing en****ification, particularly in younger demographics - and I feel that this is liable to work in the favour of forums like these.

 

[DarloRich]

in my view many forum have been killed off/damaged by social media and things like podcasts and vlogging (?) particularly football ones.

 

[bleeder4]

Facebook Groups seems to have replaced a lot of forums in my experience. The RailUK forum is becoming a contender for the "Things in living memory which seem very anachronistic now" thread.

 

[Class73Electro]

Facebook Groups seems to have replaced a lot of forums in my experience. The RailUK forum is becoming a contender for the "Things in living memory which seem very anachronistic now" thread.

Very true, used to be a member of a lot of a few ferry forums, which disappeared, but facebook groups have now appeared, although, as other mentioned, a lot seem to be more pretty pictures and no real discussion.

Then again though, I rarely see the groups now because FB just shows me too much junk (same with my friends! I don't want adverts and weird pages, just friends posts!)

 

[cactustwirly]

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".

Ohh another Pistonheader
Still very much active, especially the news and politics section!

 

[McRhu]

Hidden Glasgow - once a great forum for all things Glasgow and its environs (closed railway lines, tunnels, abandoned buildings, local history, forgotten industries, etc). Still there but has been dead on its feet for many moons; a bit like Sauchiehall Street.

 

[Julia]

Facebook groups get infested with bots, though, which is why I try to resist them, but running your own is time-consuming and expensive so the temptation to let a big tech giant do the donkey work is always there. Used to be a regular on Anglia & Thames Valley Bus Forum but that died when a certificate expired and the owner never got round to renewing it. Moderation also requires plenty of volunteers who are in short supply, or again you delegate it to big tech - who then don't do it, but use their political and financial clout against anyone who complains about their laxity.

 

[scarby]

Facebook Groups seems to have replaced a lot of forums in my experience. The RailUK forum is becoming a contender for the "Things in living memory which seem very anachronistic now" thread.

I have never understood this. You can't have anything like the kind of in-depth discussions you can have on a forum like this, where even one thread may last not only days, but weeks, months or even years.

I am a member of the County Cricket Matters group on FB. It's the only social media group I contribute to and although it has a lot of excellent contributors and topics, it is vastly inferior to a proper web forum in terms of having an in-depth discussion. In short, if you don't join a discussion within a few hours of its inception, your contribution is barely seen and the group has moved on to the next topic posted.

The only reason I joined it was because the cricket web forum I was a member of was actually extinguished. Its discussion quality for really going over topics properly was so incredibly higher than on a FB page, whether a discussion lasted three pages, or as sometimes happened, and happens on here, 300 pages.

If this forum is becoming anachronistic in favour of FB and other social media comments lists, then we are back-pedalling really rapidly.

 

[blueberry11]

The Bell Tree Forums comes to mind. It's a forum discussing the Animal Crossing series. The Animal Crossing: New Leaf section has 3.6 million posts across 274,900 threads. But guess how much Animal Crossing: New Horizons section got? Only 466,400 posts across 21,400 threads. This is despite the fact that ACNH is the second best-selling game on the Nintendo Switch, at almost 50 million copies sold, and ACNL (the second best-selling game of the series) sold 13 million. You'll know why ACNH was so popular when you look at when it was released in March 2020.

 

[Egg Centric]

Ohh another Pistonheader
Still very much active, especially the news and politics section!

They're all swivel eyed loons in that bit

 

[cactustwirly]

They're all swivel eyed loons in that bit

It's quite entertaining to read, the DIY, housing, HiFi threads are good too.

 

[Welly]

RMWeb is still going strong

 

[Bevan Price]

Before I found this forum, I subscribed to numerous "usenet" style discussion groups; many slowly died due to lack of posts, or to being filled with garbage by idiot trolls. I still visit uk.railway quite often, as it still gets interesting content (in addition to some tedious arguments.) RailUK is the one that I most regularly visit. I actively avoid most of the so-called "social media" type of site -- apart from lack of time, I don't trust some of them with my personal data, and nor am I interested in trashy trivia about so-called "celebrities".

 

[generalnerd]

TVforum closed back in 2021 which was replaced by TVLIVEforum which didn’t last 2 years before being replaced by Pres.cafe

Not a case of a dead forum, just a bunch of movement

 

[Sorcerer]

All things considered, even though there are multiple subreddits dedicated to railway talk where I have gotten useful information from in the past, I would still much prefer to come to this site when it comes to railway related subjects simply because I find it more likely to have industry figures from frontline staff to guards and drivers. So it'll always be my first port of call for railway information.

Plus the general atmosphere here is just a lot better than most places. Reddit can be very American-centric and is largely filled with pretentious angry lefties with no clue about the world outside their basements, and the less said about the dumpster fire that is Twitter/X the better. Discord servers largely depend on who runs them. But round here everyone's pretty civil, and those aren't don't usually get the time of day.

 

[WAB]

It helps that there are some really knowledgeable posters on this forum who regularly share their insights.