Are forums dying?

[Senko 459]

The other advantage of forums is that for RPG's, information and the like you can have post A and just go back to reference it later if you want but on social media miss it and its gone in an hour or less depending on activity.

[Jon the VGNerd 842]

If it was dying, then the whole forums will be entirely defunct and we'd be unable to express ourselves here. Sure I use Discord, but I no longer use Twitter and Skype. Twitter has become increasingly toxic and bots and trolls are almost never dealt with due to lack of adequate moderation and customer support is abysmal. Skype is becoming an afterthought because of its lack of daily updates and bugs were never fixed, and it looks horrendously outdated as well, which is why Discord pretty much reigns supreme, though while there are main channels that are still quite active, there are other channels that are basically abandoned due to no activity, despite having some, or no, users online but are not entirely active on different servers.

[Rainbow Dash 1,471]

Forums will never die. The problem with reddit, twittr, and tumblr are the problems forums cure...sometimes. Also, im pretty sure; but not 100 percent sure, that half these sites started out as forums.

[CypherHoof 26,479]

Just now, Harper said:

I think forums will never die totally, but I remember being on the internet at about 12 (over 10 years ago) and forums were booming, it has decreased alot by this point. 

Formats change, but the principles stay the same.

Before the Web was even a thing, we had "usenet" - NNTP servers, which you could download a full set of updates to a subject, compose replies to while offline (because internet was charged by the minute back then) and then reconnect to batch-upload the replies.  Nobody much uses that now (although it's still about) but the basic principles haven't changed much since.

[Appley Hooves 136]

Discord's sucking a ton of these places dry, it's like Usenet for yuppies or something. I mean sure they data mine the heck out of you, but hey it's all good lol

Poniverse has a looong way to go before it becomes the ghost town Ponyville turned into between my leaving and returning two-ish years later, so I think it'll be fine.

[Ziltoid the Omniscient 286]

I think they are. Ive tried to join a few forums based on my interests and theyre all dead, or full of regulars who dont want no newbies there.

[Lirodon 100]

The current trend in digital media, in general, is silos. Closed platforms. Facebook, Reddit, Discord, etc. Why be independent when the platform provides everything you need?

But then the platform has the right to arbitrarily decide they don't want you there, and are not obliged to tell you why.

[CypherHoof 26,479]

28 minutes ago, Lirodon said:

The current trend in digital media, in general, is silos. Closed platforms. Facebook, Reddit, Discord, etc. Why be independent when the platform provides everything you need?

But then the platform has the right to arbitrarily decide they don't want you there, and are not obliged to tell you why.

Going to go with "fad" - with the iPhonification of the web, everything needs to be an "app" - if your site doesn't have an "app" (even if it's just a wrap around the webserver output) then it's not keeping up.

I do think that sucks though; I don't have enough room on my devices for one app per site, nor do I like the wide swathes of permissions they often request (read and send sms? really? NopeNopeNopeFSCKno...)

With any luck, something new will come along and this fad, like all before it, will become "what USED to be cool"

[Midnight Blaze 98 1,138]

They’re still alive, but yeah, Twitter, Facebook etc are taking over a bit. This forum seems a lot more active than others I’ve come across though.

Personally I prefer forums over Twitter, for reasons that have already been said- you can come back to old topics, rather than forgetting anything that was posted over a week ago and there’s much more of a community.

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 40,264]

As long as passion exists, forums will too. That is how I see it. Forums are a great way to heavily discuss something you may have a passion for and find others with the same passion. In a world that constantly has so many negatives, having places to go to that is entirely dedicated to something you love, that is quite useful.

[CheeryFox 23,811]

For the time being. But note there is a lot of activity with certain subjects--fandoms/common interest //raison d'être. ~

[ccb20yes 81]

Boardgamegeek . com gets thousands, upon thousands of chatter.

[Nsxile 25,654]

Nope. This forum is still going strong and so are a few others.

[Northern Star 1,023]

Considering I'm on a forum that's been running since the 1980s, albeit on its 2nd generation(runaway mods on the first), its reaching 100k users. Granted it's a specialized forum.

And like one said before: there's a reason why they were and/or are called the bulletin board system, as long as no one removes it from the board, you can revive things years later.

[Sir Hugsalot 8,619]

Forums, while becoming less popular due to social websites and discords are not going to just die off, I think. 

This one is good example. Yes, it is less active these days. Many people moved on too. But it's still alive and we make it a place that's still welcoming and fun by being here and interacting. Forums provide different kind of interraction than sites like Reddit do. It's easier to socialize and due to smaller size You don't feel like You're constantly talking to new people alone - which allows You to really get to know others and maybe form lasting bonds with them!

The worst that may happen to forums is significant drop in amount of active users, but I don't believe they will just die. Even mlpforums, I believe soon may experience more activity thanks to new MLP being in the making ^^ 

[Clawdeen 12,109]

Yeah tbh, most of the ones I used back in the day have died out. Anything I’m interested in has dead forums.

[Sonic Shimmer 4,116]

I wouldn't say dying but they're not as a big a thing as they once were. A lot of fandom groups have moved to things like Reddit, Discord and Facebook/Instagram groups.

[Fluttershyfan94 5,738]

Well they are actually, I mean this place is a perfect example of it. This place used to be so active I couldn't write this post without at least twenty others have replied just in those few minutes. Or the fact I couldn't post a status updates without hundred replies very shortly haha or the fact there were like endless status updates often having you be with many hundreds of notifications. Now I can write this reply and there hasn't been one on days and likely won't be for more days. 

Reality is simple, other forms of media have simply taken over and a forum is more about discussion which a lot of people dont do as they're very much focused on only writing out their reply. Not reading what others wrote. Therefore yeah the forums that are still active are similar to this one and you know that is perfectly fine honestly so long as people continue to talk that is.