LOOK MA I HAVE A FORUM!!

[InspectorCaracal]

!!!

I don't have anything to post yet because i'm still doing admin stuff and stuff but I'M HYPE

sure hope this goes better than the last time i tried to run a forum lmfao

[Bee]

So what do you like about forums besides the nostalgia factor?

[katrani]

I am also hype!!!!!!!!!! This brings back... so many memories.

[InspectorCaracal]

So what do you like about forums besides the nostalgia factor?

I like that, compared to most contemporary social media, they're slower and let you write more stuff and are easier to browse by categories and aren't constantly throwing new tiny updates from billions of people at you all in one place all the time, as a brief overview. They're a pleasant sort of fusion between chat communities, writing letters, and reading/writing blogs. (which, yeah, I know, forums predate blogs)

It's actually not so much the nostalgia factor for me at all as the forum structure and functionality in particular fills an experiential niche in internet communications that nothing else has moved in to fill, people just prioritize things like speed of updates and short posts more at the moment.

[LilFluff]

*sneaks in and scampers about looking at stuff*

Hey! It's a forum!

And I agree, it's nice to have something that is more keyed for slower interaction, possibly longer posts, and spots for different topics.

[Bee]

So what do you like about forums besides the nostalgia factor?

I like that, compared to most contemporary social media, they're slower and let you write more stuff and are easier to browse by categories and aren't constantly throwing new tiny updates from billions of people at you all in one place all the time, as a brief overview. They're a pleasant sort of fusion between chat communities, writing letters, and reading/writing blogs. (which, yeah, I know, forums predate blogs)

It's actually not so much the nostalgia factor for me at all as the forum structure and functionality in particular fills an experiential niche in internet communications that nothing else has moved in to fill, people just prioritize things like speed of updates and short posts more at the moment.

Oh, I see

Yeah, I used forums fairly extensively throughout the 00s, but then social media happened and fandoms all moved to tumblr?? I think I tried again at some point in the 10s but then they were mostly dead, basically just spam (hello Dappervolk) or Way Too Serious and intimidating.

Maybe I'll get comfortable enough to actually participate here

[Nuhn]

Yay, look mom I'm part of a forum again!
So excited!
Also, was part of a forum back when I tried to get pregnant and there was so good and supportive forums for that. So forums are definitely not dead

[Bee]

Yay, look mom I'm part of a forum again!
So excited!
Also, was part of a forum back when I tried to get pregnant and there was so good and supportive forums for that. So forums are definitely not dead

I did say mostly dead ;P

But yeah, you're right! I think in large part I fell off forums because I didn't fit in those communities anymore? At some point it became easier to meet people with overlapping interests on social media without the pressure of staying on-topic, if that makes sense?

[InspectorCaracal]

Yay, look mom I'm part of a forum again!
So excited!
Also, was part of a forum back when I tried to get pregnant and there was so good and supportive forums for that. So forums are definitely not dead

I did say mostly dead ;P

But yeah, you're right! I think in large part I fell off forums because I didn't fit in those communities anymore? At some point it became easier to meet people with overlapping interests on social media without the pressure of staying on-topic, if that makes sense?

I think the big problem with forum communities at the current moment been that a lot of them are so old that they have years or even decades of structure and expectation baked in to the forum design itself, not just the community itself, and that people try to carry these structures with them when making a new forum. So the old forums are fossils and the new ones are too complicated for new people to pick up.

Not all of them - I've seen a few thriving forums here and there, like some parenting forums, actually - but at this point, probably something like 90% of them.

... anyway, needless to say, that's why I'm starting this one off like the baby forum it is, with minimal subdivision and organization, lol. I figure those'll grow organically.

[Alex]

I just left the one forum I still frequented -- and by "left" I mean, I stopped posting without explanation because the culture there just got really frustrating, to me specifically. But I definitely appreciated the slower, more focused pace of the conversation, and I'd wondered if I'd ever find another forum to frequent in its place. (Hi.)

Most of the forums I run into -- following obscure links, googling -- are ghost towns, with one or two active threads at most, with the rest of it hyper-specific subforums where the last post is from 2015.