How do forums die?

[Mersander 55]

I've been on many fanbase forums before. Most of them weren;t brony forums. I've been through many times when a forum has died of drama, lack of posting, etc. But I'm just curious, what is the most memorable story you have about a forum dying?

Edited July 19, 2012 by Mersander

[Titan Rising 2,156]

When Nintendo closed down their Nsider forums literally out of nowhere even when a ton of people were still posting

 

Thought I would never join another forum again... Little did I know exactly how much free time I would end up having

[letterone 1,204]

None really. This is the first full-fledged forum I've ever joined.

[Thyflesh 35]

I used to be prolific on the powerbot forum.

 

However, it became full of leechers and people didn't tend to stay around so long because it was heavily related to runescape.

 

Nowadays it still have a few thousand people logged in at all times but only like 100 post and generally its about things I've moved on from and don't care about.

 

I've also grown up a bit and no longer want to be around 13-15 year old's that swear and post stupid comments and just don't care about anyone.

 

So i moved to a nicer forum with generally older people on it.

 

and as many my age did this this, the forum lost most of its functionality and no one post's anywhere apart from on certain threads which are all about sex, scamming people and games I'm no longer interested in.

Edited July 19, 2012 by Thyflesh

[Unexard 50]

I've been on a Warhammer 40k forum for 4 years and this is how it goes:

 

First, you have the bright begining, when the creator and all the moderators go on other forums, threads and games to make noise and let the forum be known.

 

Then, you have the golden age, two or three years with a lot of newcomers, threads everywhere, lots of ideas, fics, discussions, projects, etc etc and everyone is working hard to make a good forum with interesting things on it.

 

Then, comes the decadence. Lack of ideas, less newcomers, moderators and "here since the first day" members leave because they are tired of always seeing the same stuff, all of that create a slowly but surely death to the forum. The elders don't have any idea and the newcomers are just plain annoying with their bumping of two years old threads and question who makes no sense.

 

And finally, the catatonic state, where the creator and some of the members chat on the forum but don't have anything to say. When there is a new edition of an army or whatever, there is a bit more activity, but after that, it's plain dead.

 

And finally, you remove the forum's adress from your favorites and move on.

 

It's a shame :/

[LowfatEnvelope 335]

The Just Cause 2 forums I wouldn't say it's completely dead, but it's no where near as active as it was around launch. I guess it really started falling off when the devs quit pushing out DLC. It was great seeing people post secrets they had found, stats they had, talking and speculating, etc. I miss that place =/

[Chill Mists (Chilly) 801]

I have only been on two forums, this one and the Bungie.net ones. Both are still going strong .

[Sky 746]

I use to be on a fourm called PoM but the head of the fourm apparently stole money from donations and insulted the members everyone left him and he was forced to shut the site down.

[Gizmo 206]

For me my first forum was Vampire Freaks, yeah I was one of those kids when I was 14 X3

anyways I was always on there posting in it's equivalent of /b/ (forgive me for breaking the rule) and it was a lot of fun actually.

One day my mother heard the name of the website and found out my best friend on there was a 36 year old dude who worked on movie sets and created props for horror films, he was pretty cool, but because of that she took the computer and told me I wasn't allowed to use the computer until after I got out of my "gothic" stage, XD I wasn't goth, but I was a bit dark listened to a lot more heavy metal than I usually did and didn't want to talk to people as much. But yeah that's how that forum "died" for me.

[InfinityWhale 771]

Two major endings I've seen: the Nintendo Forums and another one I used to go on.

One is death by trolls, where the spam and the crappy comments just build and build to exponential levels, until eventually the forum is just so full of it the only way to stop it is to Deep 6 the entire forum.

Then there's the slow poison, where the gradual loss of members eventually speeds into no one posting anymore.

[One 498]

When the main topic the forum is about dies.

The forums Ive been on are: (for "educational" reasons)

1. Hacker forums (dont judge)

2. Runescapes (the forum on their site)

3. Sals realm of Runescape (forums based off of Runescape)

4. Many forums for RSPS (Runescape Private Servers) thoose usualy die once the server dies

5. this one!

and I think thats about it.

 

I'll see if I can think of others...

 

Edit: Aha! Minecraft forums! (yah)

 

I used to be prolific on the powerbot forum.

 

My reaction: YOUR THE DEVIL!!! I COULD KILL YOU!!! Edited July 19, 2012 by Original

[Colon Leftbracket 971]

The only other forums I have really been on are the Bungie.Net forums and the SWTOR forums.

Both are official forums so them dying has slim chance, although I'd bet that the Halo forums I used to frequent on Bungie.Net are either nuked or just downsized seeing that Bungie no longer has Halo.

SWTOR forums are obviously still up, but I left forever ago when everybody was collectively a bunch of whiners (even compared to the Halo: Reach forum! Yeah believe it, the amount of butthurt was a sight to be seen). I guess I have little to no point on going back since the game is out, I own it, and I don't play it.

So I guess no, I don't have any tragic forum death stories, though I have plenty of stories of forums that really should just bite the big one!

[NeverNeverland 1,940]

I've been on three other forums.

-The Evile Forums on ultimatemetal

-The Devin Townsend Forums on phpBB

-A MLP Forum on phpBB as well that I was on for about 3 days, prior to joining this one.

 

The MLP Forum is either rarely active or dead to my knowledge, due to lack of interest and increasing inactivity. The Hevy Devy forums has little activity (and I have to admit I wasn't really checking out the site too much. Not a lot of activity - much more before 2010, probably when SYL was still active), and the Evile Forum is still going. A lot of the posts are in the same few threads, but the guys there are class act, so I like being on those forums.

[Otter 1,942]

I used to frequent the 3DS Forums, but I got bored of it. There was nothing interesting going on.

[mintfreshAD 55]

I've been on a couple of roleplaying forums that died. The posts slowed down, people stopped checking back. Eventually they all trickled away, and the site died; not with a bang, but a whimper.

[Evilshy 5,090]

The two main reasons I've seen for an otherwise active forum dying are 1) shitty staff driving members away with overzealous moderation, insults towards the members, and just general dickery (I don't think we have to worry about this ) and 2) when the thing the forum is based on becomes stagnant and boring, or in the case of a series of movies/games/shows/books/etc, new releases stop (I also don't think we need to worry about this, at least for awhile).

 

Another, lesser reason is the forum not getting new members, either through a lack of interest, advertising, or a selective registration process.

[Thyflesh 35]

When the main topic the forum is about dies.

The forums Ive been on are: (for "educational" reasons)

1. Hacker forums (dont judge)

2. Runescapes (the forum on their site)

3. Sals realm of Runescape (forums based off of Runescape)

4. Many forums for RSPS (Runescape Private Servers) thoose usualy die once the server dies

5. this one!

and I think thats about it.

 

I'll see if I can think of others...

 

Edit: Aha! Minecraft forums! (yah)

 

 

My reaction: YOUR THE DEVIL!!! I COULD KILL YOU!!!

 

Haha, it's ok is stopped going on them long ago ;P

Edited July 19, 2012 by Thyflesh

[Bohtty 1,775]

A forum dies when it loses it's use. Just like any other website.

[FizzyImp 1,838]

I used to be on a Kingdom Hearts forum for about 3 years.

It was good for the first year, but then a huge drama wave hit, and it became the most horrible forum ever.

Staff seemed to get picked from a hat, members who had been friends for ages started falling out for stupid reasons, and new members could be welcomed with flowers and then stabbed in the back...

[My little pwny 1,392]

It hadn't even been a month when I signed up for machinima.com's forums when they shut it down. I was really getting into making machinima and interacting with the community when they totally changed the site and shut down the forums. I didn't bother finding another machinima community

[PonyEcho 1,610]

well i was apart of a gaming comunity/ clan that was over 1000 members strong but though 3 months of admin wars and people coming stealing ideas and taking members it went down to just under 100 members

[Spooky 3]

I've been on many, many forums over the years - ranging from Administrator to just a regular user, and one thing that I've found will consistently harm a community or kill a forum is when its leadership no longer acts as an example for what a user should be.

 

If leadership sets an example of being welcoming, helpful, and inviting - that is the model that people will follow, and it sets the tone for all of the interactions that follow. When leadership is absent, passive, or abusive, then that sets them up an antagonistic entity that people can't respect, and then people won't respect each other. A lot of it comes down to being able to tell that people care about their forums and their community - so I love finding places like this where it's really apparent that people do care and want this to be a great experience.

[Azura 1,107]

All of the forums I join don't die so I don't know how it feels or why it happens.

[Whiteshade 1,426]

Forums die when the mod makes statements like "I got your back" and such. Also random banhammer makes people angry. Also when they scam with immunity from punishment, it gets ugly real fast.

[Thyflesh 35]

I used to be on a Kingdom Hearts forum for about 3 years.

It was good for the first year, but then a huge drama wave hit, and it became the most horrible forum ever.

Staff seemed to get picked from a hat, members who had been friends for ages started falling out for stupid reasons, and new members could be welcomed with flowers and then stabbed in the back...

 

Ive seen the problem with mod's and admins before.

 

I think it's once a forum its a few year's old people feel like they deserve to be an admin/mod because they where there from teh start and jealousy arises.