Are Forums Outdated, Or..?

I remember when I first joined RS cheating forums 10 years ago; fagex, sythe, etc... They were the (only) place to be if you wanted the goodies, or maybe to chill and hang out.

But with the popularity of facebook, it seems that most of these forums have died. The younger pre-forum generation of internet users join facebook groups for gaming conversation if they want any, and the main forum users are those who've been around long enough to know their popularity?

Have the popularity of forums actually died down, or is it just me who has lost interest and "moved on"?

 

Reddit is a large factor you're over looking too

 

You have to consider the fact that the popularity of the game has gone down drastically as well. 10 years ago, runescape was thriving with over 150k players online at any given point. Now were hitting like 40-50k on both games combined.

 

He's talking about all forums not just Sythe

 

There is no correlation to the creation of Facebook and the decline of Runescape or any other forum for that matter. No game will stay at it's peak forever. Players grow up, other games draw more attention, the game gets redundant, and so forth. This goes for forums as well.

 

I don't know where you're getting those numbers, but between rs3 and 07 there are 100k players. Aren't nearly as many bots these days, so you can't factor them into your numbers like you used to.

 

I actually agree wholeheartedly. I've been on so many big forums that were around for many, many years and it seems that most have either died out or activity has really dropped on them in the past few years.

I agree that Reddit is likely a big killer. It's basically a forum that shows which threads are the best to view, and then it consolidates all of your interests by subscribing to multiple subreddits that you can easily switch to. Much easier than having to individually browse each forum that caters to your interests.

 

It's a shame, because I love forums. Connecting with people with the same interests and like minds, and not just people you went to school with, is the greatness that comes with the Internet in general.

I've tried to get into reddit, but it's just not enjoyable to me despite popular interest. I guess it's all really just personal preference. All things get old and boring eventually, especially when companies are trying to create new things that are shaped towards what they know we all already like.

 

As time goes on, easier browsing experiences are sought. Unfortubately for boards like this one, Reddit is way too popular and more convenient to contend with.

 

It has a giant forum of sorts for pretty much every topic you can want and gives you a distilled view of the best threads each day, is that not an easier browsing experience?

I will say however that that many users are able to connect easier with several subjects on reddit despite them potentially not caring about a sub reddit so much that they would have pursued that topic by participating in a real forum. I imagine due to that the average participation rate would be spotty and from this (lazy or uninformed people being exposed to new info) along with the reddit algorithm and a lack of moderation, it's annoying how quickly things get OT as people compete for karma. For serious conversation, reddit is not really the place to go but it has decent memes. That and a sense of community that is often lacking from reddit due to the sheer amount of time necessary to feel part of a sub-reddit's community unless it's not a large sub are two things forums still have as an advantage which could be leveraged.

 

I prefer it to forum boards, yeah. A lot of manual looking involved here, Reddit summarises and brings you the best of what you're subscribed to without having to look for it

 

I dislike have actual conversations on Reddit and it does not work well for long running threads at all. I like browsing it for new content but once I've gone through it for the day I basically am done since very little new stuff ends up on the frontpage that fast. Individual forums foster a greater sense of community for me and you get to know people a lot more than you do on Reddit. A forum also has a consistent userbase and mods and rules where Reddit is basically made up of thousands of individual forums that are very different from each other. I think both models of discussion have their place.

 

It depends which forum really (I know we're on all about all forums in general), I would say the quality of content on forums in general has gone down. There's more younger people online compared to when the Internet had just started up, most younger people are interested in watching people play games rather than talk about them these days (Twitch hasn't directly killed forums, but places like reddit have probably had an impact).

 

So what is your definition of a forum, then?

 

traditional message board type sites are forums. reddit might be a forum for discussion but it isn't a traditional forum

 

Message boards are forums for discussion, they just have different layouts.

 

it's just semantics. when OP said forums, he named off message boards exclusively. this is how the term forum is used colloquially. the fact that reddit and sythe/fagex/etc. have the "forum for discussion" aspect in common doesn't mean anything. forum = message board.

 

That's what the PR group is for - they're supposed to bring that generation onto the forums.