How do forums die?

[moneyshredderofdeath 414]

Most forum deaths I've experienced have been due to people losing interest as a whole.

[GoneForeverBye 184]

None died. I was not around long enough to actually see any difference.

 

But I do get bored of a specific forums pretty easily if nothing interesting occurs and in the process never come back to it. Ever. Again. This Forums too may face the same fate eventually, but I'll, eh... "try".

[Hazardus_Havard. 479]

Forums die when they become stagnant with ideas and topics most of the time. Yeah, I may not have joined many forums but I have more or less been apart of other forum communities through my friends back in school. I've seen so many moderators playing favorites or just slamming on guests or even members; quite shameful to see. And many of the posts that kill topics and ideas people put up are either just bumps or flame wars being instigated from one thing or another. There's really many different reasons for forum communities to die off, and it's usually a sad thing to see a collected group of like minded individuals see their camaraderie go down the drain as such into nothingness.

 

Luckily this group should stay around for a fairly extended period of time. If, and only IF this show were to ever be canned, it would probably be nearing the 5th season or so, and that would be due to the HUB not getting other quality television programs put on their channel. And even THEN there would more than likely be movie deals or even a web show to continue it.

 

I'm not sure about this idea I have here, but if this group were to slowly over time meld other things from Hasbro , it could stay around much, much longer. We could still keep MLP as the pinnacle of the site, but come on; Transformers and G.I. Joe alone would be a good strength booster to the site, like a tab to this place. Plus Hasbro has board games. I don't see why we can't build some specially made board games for use on this site to play, sorta like that site POGO. I'd definitely come back many times to play with members on user site games.

[Fghik 360]

I used to lurk around in a kids game (but hey, I lurk around in kid-show communities too .) When I joined (I think a year or two after they started) everything was perfect. It was a "build your own world" sort of thing, and I learned the ropes fairly quick. I got their code system pretty much down, and could use their built-in 'parts' fairly well. They had a forum system too, and of course I used it...a lot... Heck, it was the first forum people actually knew me in (not as well as people know me here, but people would still occasionally recognize me.) But then the game just got down and died. The creators of the game got lazy, and money-hungry. Pointless updates, crappy updates, 'safe-chat', and then "guests" (the traditional flow of dying games.)

 

As the game died the forums filled with people similar to me, just lurking to lurk because they hate the game, but still had hope the creators would see the feedback and change things. But instead, they got even more money-hungry, and deleted posts with good ideas (even simply implemented ones) for no reason--or as they called it "spam." Those from the early days were all gone by now. Those for a single year after were long gone. And now those from my year were vanishing as well. Nobody uses the forums anymore, and only 8 year-olds and pedophiles play the game.

 

After that I've only been involved with two other forums. Here, and the 3DS forums. I'm almost completely unknown--and those that do know me, hate me for reasons I don't know--on the 3DS forums. I still log on every now and again (usually during Nintendo livestreams,) but once these forums opened, I've pretty much cut myself out of that community. They hated me, so I hate them back. I don't think I've even seen David or Rollo log on. Here on the other hand, I can chat it up with Feld0 all I want, and was accepted right off. Even those that don't like me as much would still love to share a muffin platter with me and talk anything-but-politics. And look at me now, I'm not as well known as "Finest" "Shank" or "LRP;" but I'm working on it

 

I'm sure the only reasons forums die is the connection between the creators and the community. Once the creators stop caring, the community stops caring, and I stop caring.

[NostalgicPony 310]

Speaking from a perspective as a moderator on a few forums I work at, I have seen many forums in the community I work with fall and crumble. Much of it comes from the fact that there was a lot of drama and conflict, but it was mostly conflict between staff and members and relations with other forums.

 

But one big thing that has caused the forums to die out is when an important figure to so many members decides to leave and go to another forum, the members follow that person causing the forums activity to shrink. It's unfortunate.

[Cupcake Ice Cream 436]

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 :/

 

my wife and I ran an anime forum and it went just like that...almost down to the year. We had times when there was several hundred posts a day...then it fizzled. I am man enough to admit it's mostly my fault. Stagnation...I didn't give the members enough reason to come back every day

 

lesson learned

[Starshine 16,334]

My first forum was a fansite for a local mmorpg.

 

It was full of joy and laughter, as far as I can remember. There was only about fifty of us, but everyone were very active. I can still remember about those threads where we screaming at each other, debating game mechanics and gubbins and stuff. From outside we looks like a bunch of rascals (most of us are 12 y.o. lol), but we care about each others.

 

Then after a few months, the mmorpg publisher made its own fansite. Thanks for that we don't have any new member for almost a year.

 

Slowly our number diminished. Some moved to the bigger forum, some moved on in their life, some just gone missing without saying anything. From hundreds of posts per day we plummeted to only dozens per weeks.

 

Then the forum was gone. Poof.

 

Well, at least I still have seven of those crazy clowns around

Yes I'm looking at you suckers. I know you're here

[NavelColt 22,881]

When things become stale and redundant. When there's no events, little changes at all, etc from inactive staff or what have you people become bored, and ultimately people leave one by one. The bottom line is a forum can only last so long on regulars. You need, NEED a good, consistent or semi-consistent influx of new members, otherwise the stable gets old as they say, and as people leave, the overall activity shrinks, instead of remaining fairly constant.

[Veiled Enigma 389]

Mods get banhappy, and everyone decides to leave the slaughter behind. This has happened more times to forums I've frequented than I would like.

[I_wesley125 393]

I owned a Halo forum (It was Bungie7.net, it is not up anymore though) and we had 200-300 active members.

I think it was just a lack of new members that caused us to die off.

[Croaks 251]

I used to own a forum that was affiliated with another forum that I was on. Some of the members joined from that forum, but eventually they died down, and we all went back to te original forum.

 

Solution: don't make a forum.

[Doctor XFizzle 8,669]

The one I saw die was because it was a social board for a video game (on GameFAQs) so when the newest version of the game came out, some people didn't cross over to the new game's social board and so on.

[Twilight Sky 449]

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

 

Not older just more mature :3