Forums still one of the best ways to communicate on the Internet?

[MacBH928]

Ahem...I a major forums activist. Forums are not social media. They are focused on topic of discussion and not the members of the forums.

1-Forums gather people interested to talk about a specific topic opposite to social media that lets every passer by drops in with their worthless opinion and drag the discussion elsewhere.

2-Forums keeps a searchable database for reference in the future. Looking how to install RAM in a 2003 Apple iBook? Its there. Even searchable by search engines opposite of Instagram or Twitter.

3-Forums long form of posting keeps people's chatter out of it, so the clutter of "LOL!", "Whatever!", "Yea okay" is kept out. Concentration is on the juicy topic.

4-People knowledgeable on said topic gather in forums so you can always get a good knowledgable answers and discussions on the opposite of random people replying on a whim. Also forum users come experts on the topic after sometime of read and discussing.

5-For reasons unknown to me, Forums seems to be a safe haven from bots, fake posts, and advertisers. Check toxic Twitter to see what I mean.

6-From what I know, usually Forums do not gather your data and action and build a profile on you to target you ads personally. Ads are usually forum specific, not person specific.

7-On forums you can share any media or text without limits and you can link from the outside too.

8-The process of signing up for every forum and navigating from one site to the other and logging in weeds out idiots, trolls, nut-jobs, and worthless inputs. This contrasts with social media where everyone has 1 profile in a big chaotic war zone.

9-Forums gives you a logical organisation of topics and guidance on where to talk about what, to keep things organized and have a code of conduct by using forum rules.

10-Forums are based on community and you can axe menaces out.

11-You can create your own forum or migrate it, you own the information. You can not do this with Snapchat, Twitter, or Instagram. You don't have to abide to any corporate force.

12-Forums gives you the right pace of posting, replying, and coming back to continue the topic. In chats a million people talk at the same time and on social media its very hard to go back to a tweet or instagram post and continue the discussion.
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These are some of the advantages of forums and there are more. Albeit, Reddit has a good system where you have 1 identity but can be active in multiple forums(subreddits) with it, you can also choose another forum(subreddit) on same topic but a different community if you do not like the other one or create your own. Reddit comment system is horrendous though and I am sure no one reads 12,725 comments on a post unlike on forum where a post are usually few pages long and they are about 20-30 posts per page. Also Reddit you have to abide to their software and rules, for example their latest horrifically bad and heavy GUI web design.

 

[eyoungren]

5-For reasons unknown to me, Forums seems to be a safe haven from bots, fake posts, and advertisers. Check toxic Twitter to see what I mean.

MacRumors is pretty good about this, but they are not immune. Periodically, you will see multiple garbage posts because a bot managed to get itself registered and post it's bile. I've reported several of these here myself. We've even had bots in this section of the forum post a nothing topic and people responded.

8-The process of signing up for every forum and navigating from one site to the other and logging in weeds out idiots, trolls, nut-jobs, and worthless inputs. This contrasts with social media where everyone has 1 profile in a big chaotic war zone.

Not so. There are plenty of users here on my ignore list that fit your description. As long as they don't violate the rules, the mods let them stay. Of course, some of them do violate the rules and get banned, but a majority of these offensive people are still here posting.

You are making forums seem like it's a safe place. Forums are 'safer' than most, but they are not safe. You are still going to encounter people you don't like who have abrasive personalities, but follow the rules. If you slip up and put out your own personal information, do you think a mod is going to take it down for you? I'm talking about stuff other than things like your phone number or address. There was one user here in the discussion forum that other users suspect was data mining based on user responses to a series of questions made over multiple posts.

Lastly, I will just say that the mods in forums are there to enforce the rules of the forum, not to protect the users from themselves or look after them. So your security, your privacy, is on yourself.

Forums are better than social media, but they are not safe havens.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Let's be real.

Just because an online community is commonly described as a forum doesn't make it inherently better or worse. It comes down to the users and how the forum in question is operated.

There are plenty of formerly "good" forums that later fell out of favor/popularity.

The classic example is Slashdot. Tribe.net is dead. boingboing's best days are long gone. Kuro5hin. Forums are perfectly capable of being just as toxic as any other online community.

I'm not sure if Yahoo Answers ever had glory days. It has been a perpetual train wreck for well over a decade. In fact, I think most of the general interest Q&A forum communities have all failed miserably.

You can see it here in the MR forums; all you need is one participant to drag down the conversation low.

Like the real world, the best and brightest online community participants are always the first ones to leave for greener pastures.

 

[MacBH928]

Let's be real.

Just because an online community is commonly described as a forum doesn't make it inherently better or worse. It comes down to the users and how the forum in question is operated.

There are plenty of formerly "good" forums that later fell out of favor/popularity.

The classic example is Slashdot. Tribe.net is dead. boingboing's best days are long gone. Kuro5hin. Forums are perfectly capable of being just as toxic as any other online community.

I'm not sure if Yahoo Answers ever had glory days. It has been a perpetual train wreck for well over a decade. In fact, I think most of the general interest Q&A forum communities have all failed miserably.

You can see it here in the MR forums; all you need is one participant to drag down the conversation low.

Like the real world, the best and brightest online community participants are always the first ones to leave for greener pastures.

The idea is that forums has a better chance because you control it. If Twitter or Instagram becomes toxic, you can either buy them for few tens of billions of dollars or quit on it. If a forum site becomes toxic, you can more to another community or start your own forum. Forum owners are usually topic centered so they do whats best for the community unlike for-profit corporations that do what is best to maximize their profits.

 

[MacBH928]

MacRumors is pretty good about this, but they are not immune. Periodically, you will see multiple garbage posts because a bot managed to get itself registered and post it's bile. I've reported several of these here myself. We've even had bots in this section of the forum post a nothing topic and people responded.


Not so. There are plenty of users here on my ignore list that fit your description. As long as they don't violate the rules, the mods let them stay. Of course, some of them do violate the rules and get banned, but a majority of these offensive people are still here posting.

You are making forums seem like it's a safe place. Forums are 'safer' than most, but they are not safe. You are still going to encounter people you don't like who have abrasive personalities, but follow the rules. If you slip up and put out your own personal information, do you think a mod is going to take it down for you? I'm talking about stuff other than things like your phone number or address. There was one user here in the discussion forum that other users suspect was data mining based on user responses to a series of questions made over multiple posts.

Lastly, I will just say that the mods in forums are there to enforce the rules of the forum, not to protect the users from themselves or look after them. So your security, your privacy, is on yourself.

Forums are better than social media, but they are not safe havens.

I said its a safe haven not heaven. Of course you will bump into annoyances and people you do not agree with or ones that just get on your nerves, but that is not different from going out of your home. These minor annoyances is defects of life we have to live with because "nothing is perfect".

Seems to me that you are not involved in the social media world otherwise you would have understand. I kid you not, on Instagram you can have a post with every other comment being an ad, have you ever visited an active forum that had threads where every other post is a an ad? Then you have your promoted posts where you scroll through your feed of accounts you are subscribed to and pops in your face a 25 year old girl that is promoting her new magical skin care cream

Then you have Twitter that has fake tweets. I don't care about your political POV, but Donald Trump puts out 1 tweet out there, and there is a rain of pre-programmed fake anti+pro Trump propaganda not to mention all the ads in between. Trump is just an example, you can pick your favourite "Tweeter" of choice or Hashtag. Just for fun I randomly clicked on a trending hashtag "#LakeShow" and there is a tweet that is basically filled with emojis, covid-19 hashtag, and #BlockBarret #AmyConeyBarett. I don't even know who Amy Barrett is but you can see why forums are so much better at this.

 

[eyoungren]

I said its a safe haven not heaven. Of course you will bump into annoyances and people you do not agree with or ones that just get on your nerves, but that is not different from going out of your home. These minor annoyances is defects of life we have to live with because "nothing is perfect".

Seems to me that you are not involved in the social media world otherwise you would have understand. I kid you not, on Instagram you can have a post with every other comment being an ad, have you ever visited an active forum that had threads where every other post is a an ad? Then you have your promoted posts where you scroll through your feed of accounts you are subscribed to and pops in your face a 25 year old girl that is promoting her new magical skin care cream

Then you have Twitter that has fake tweets. I don't care about your political POV, but Donald Trump puts out 1 tweet out there, and there is a rain of pre-programmed fake anti+pro Trump propaganda not to mention all the ads in between. Trump is just an example, you can pick your favourite "Tweeter" of choice or Hashtag. Just for fun I randomly clicked on a trending hashtag "#LakeShow" and there is a tweet that is basically filled with emojis, covid-19 hashtag, and #BlockBarret #AmyConeyBarett. I don't even know who Amy Barrett is but you can see why forums are so much better at this.

I was on Facebook for 7 years from 2010 to 2017. At some point, around the time of the 2016 election, Facebook became an echo chamber. The only safe place was your own wall. With all the vitriol and the hate espoused in posts I decided to leave. Did you know I was told at one point that unless I agreed with someone I couldn't post on their wall? Apparently, my poking holes in their reality with the truth was not anything they wanted to hear..

So I deleted my FB account in 2017. I also had a Twitter account, which I deleted - because I never really use it. I did make a new one, but that's solely to contact T-Force, T-Mobile's customer support. I don't log into it unless I am contacting them.

As far as ads…I've used some sort of ad blocker since those became a thing. I use uMatrix extensively to block all the stuff I don't want to see. So, yeah, ads are out there - but I don't see them because I've blocked the third party sites serving them.

I did that on Facebook too when I was active there.

 

[chinchillas]

Absolutely. Everything is focused on a major theme, on the opinion of the poster with little to no knowledge of who they are (thus preventing unnecessary sharing of personal stuff) and it's not in the open like Twitter. I also like the design of this type of forum as opposed to other software that looks too compact, such as boinboing's forum.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

I also like the design of this type of forum as opposed to other software that looks too compact, such as boinboing's forum.

The MR forum design is completely unremarkable. It looks pretty much the same as many similar Q&A forums from twenty years ago that ran turnkey bboard packages like vBulletin. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if this site ran vBulletin at one time.

There are some graphical assets that tie the forum to the main news site but ultimately there's very little in the MR forum software functionality that differentiates it from thousands of similar forums.

Exhibit A: visit a nearly derelict 20+ year old bboard like TiVoCommunity.com.

"It's so nice that the MR forum threads discussions." Hell, there were threaded Usenet clients in the Nineties.

There is zero innovation in this forum's design. It's functional to the limits of this type of bboard software. However the limiting factor like pretty much any online forum is the quality of the moderation team.

Like I said before, software scalability isn't the problem. It's the humans.

Boingboing's forum's biggest detriment wasn't its design. It was one moderator: Teresa Nielsen-Hayden who single-handedly turned the comment forum into one of the Internet's worst ghettos ever.

 

[MacBH928]

As far as ads…I've used some sort of ad blocker since those became a thing. I use uMatrix extensively to block all the stuff I don't want to see. So, yeah, ads are out there - but I don't see them because I've blocked the third party sites serving them.

I did that on Facebook too when I was active there.

I am not talking about official ads, I am talking about people posting ads. Every other post is someone promoting his account or asking you to contact him because he has something awesome to sell you not to mention the artists who spam the feed with asci+emoji Graffitis.

 

[chinchillas]

The MR forum design is completely unremarkable. It looks pretty much the same as many similar Q&A forums from twenty years ago running standard bboard software like vBulletin.

There are some graphical assets that tie the forum to the main news site but ultimately there's very little in the MR forum software functionality that differentiates it from thousands of similar forums.

Exhibit A: visit a nearly derelict 20-year-old bboard like TiVoCommunity.com.

Thanks for mansplaining me the design of this forum. Even if it's dated, it looks good, clean, spacious. A functional design for this reader.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Good for you.

As for the "mansplaining" accusation, you are totally out of line.

I can't tell whether a MR commenter is male or female when they have a gender-neutral handle like chinchillas, MacBH928 or eyoungren and an ambiguous avatar photo.

Hell, even if jwip, NT1440, or Tech198 did explicitly mention his/her sex a week ago in some thread, I doubt I'd remember. I don't keep track of such things. I have more important things of concern.

Nor do I really care. This is an anonymous Q&A forum. Just spell my handle backwards and you'll get an inkling about how much I care about my identity here.

My alternate user name was Eman Resu if Erehy Dobon had been taken.

 

[jeyf]

it seems these days everyone has an opinion

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Isn't that what the Internet is for?

 

[MacBH928]

Thanks for mansplaining me the design of this forum. Even if it's dated, it looks good, clean, spacious. A functional design for this reader.

Good for you.

As for the "mansplaining" accusation, you are totally out of line.

I can't tell whether a MR commenter is male or female when they have a gender-neutral handle like chinchillas, MacBH928 or eyoungren and an ambiguous avatar photo.

Hell, even if jwip, NT1440, or Tech198 did explicitly mention his/her sex a week ago in some thread, I doubt I'd remember. I don't keep track of such things. I have more important things of concern.

Nor do I really care. This is an anonymous Q&A forum. Just spell my handle backwards and you'll get an inkling about how much I care about my identity here.

My alternate user name was Eman Resu if Erehy Dobon had been taken.

Forum design is like the wheel+4 tires for cars or the box shape for tv...true and tested. No one has designed a better communication system for this type of purpose of discussion and if they did I would like to see it.

 

[jwip]

it seems these days everyone has an opinion

That is a point of a forum.

 

[yaxomoxay]

it seems these days everyone has an opinion

I would hope so.

 

[jwip]

I would hope so.

It would be very dull world with no one else having an opinion

 

[Apple_Robert]

it seems these days everyone has an opinion

And that is why I have trouble sleeping. There is always someone on the internet who is wrong.

 

[BigMcGuire]

And that is why I have trouble sleeping. There is always someone on the internet who is wrong.

You're WRONG! How DARE you even hint at the idea that I'd be wrong. It is now my only purpose in life, for the next few hours, to attack every post you've ever made.

Edit: 16k? Well crap, that might take a little longer then.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I've been thinking about this recently, thought I'd post it to see other's opinions (biased due to this being a forum, but still interested). Forums to me were always my favorite way to communicate with people online, other than personal emails. I joined a number of forums in the late 90s/early 2000s, (blade forums, dslreports, civfanatics, etc) and enjoyed my time on most of them. I found the communities in most cases to be welcoming and helpful. I think the reason for this is that these forums are centered on a single topic or "genre" of content, so there's common ground and both sides are expected to have at least some knowledge. If not, a lot of users are interested enough in the subject to be willing to help someone else figure it out.

Comparing this to social media in particular, I see a huge difference. Twitter is the best example IMO, it has no focus whatsoever and it's a mess. I've seen people talking about computer hardware getting trashed on in the same thread of tweets for a political or scientific discussion they had at some earlier point. Things like these seem commonplace because the platform has no focus. I believe Jack Dorsey himself said he wants Twitter to be like a town hall, but what focus is that? It's very loose. This also applies to most other social media platforms. Not to say these things don't occur on forums, but it seems like it's very prevalent in more modern applications.

I think the above has a part in why forums are not as prominent as they once were. For me, I come here mostly for Mac discussion, I go to blade forums to talk knives, DSLR to talk hardware, and so on. Twitter or other platforms are more convenient in this way, as all of this discussion can go on under one site/app. While I understand the appeal of that, I believe the drawbacks negate enough that this is not worth it. I'd rather have 50 forums with good, meaningful discussion than 1 site with a mess of discussions and flaming.

I hope I got my point across here, and I'd be interested in seeing what others think about this.

I grew up on the internet... started out as a wee child downloading World War II airplane pictures on AOL via an external 14.4k (seriously... lol). I joined ICS chess servers as a kid to about high school. I did do some forums after high school - DroidForums, XDA, etc (embarrassing to re-read those).

Most people I know are on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. My in real life "buddies" communicate via email to talk politics, recommend articles, etc. I had to delete my social media. I couldn't stand it.

I came here because I found a lot of likeminded techies who liked Apple. I enjoyed my Apple devices and enjoyed reading about others who enjoyed their Apple devices.

I can't stand Twitter and most of Reddit is too social media like for me. Here, I can read people's opinions, thoughts, and experiences. That said, this site has become a haven of anti-apple outrage posts over the last few years - I think in general people are becoming less civil, respectful. I'm only 35!!!

Forums attract a different type of person.

 

[MacBH928]

My in real life "buddies" communicate via email to talk politics, recommend articles, etc. I had to delete my social media. I couldn't stand it.

I didn't know this was still a thing. Back in the day of desktop computers and Nokia phones yes. Since everyone has a smartphone as an extension to his hand 24/7 connected to the internet, why e-mail if you can simply "text" via imessage or Whatsapp?

That said, this site has become a haven of anti-apple outrage posts over the last few years - I think in general people are becoming less civil, respectful. I'm only 35!!!

Forums attract a different type of person.

I thought we agreed to accept different opinions.

 

[kazmac]

I despise social media.
I love forums.
I miss IRC.
I am ok-ish with Reddit; it's great to ask/find for info even on the most esoteric of things but it could easily end up being a time-waster.

Especially the first two for me.

I avoid Facebook, Instagram, etc., reluctantly go on Twitter to keep up with a friend’s band and Shaw Brothers studio. YouTube, I’ll watch some tech reviewers, artists and birders, but forums are where I spend the bulk of my internet time. I’ll be limiting my time on Twitter as it’s just not my thing.

I’ve met so many nice, knowledgeable, funny people here. There are some terrific threads which brighten my day and I learn a lot about tech too (I’m an Apple user, who still thinks about Asus laptops). Forums feel more like a community. Thank you to the great folks who make me feel welcome. I’ll keep doing that myself too.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I didn't know this was still a thing. Back in the day of desktop computers and Nokia phones yes. Since everyone has a smartphone as an extension to his hand 24/7 connected to the internet, why e-mail if you can simply "text" via imessage or Whatsapp?



I thought we agreed to accept different opinions.

I think the people I talk to - my close friends - they don't use their cellphones that much and they're at computers for a good portion of their day so it is just easier for them to email. That's my guess? I don't have a lot of close friends lol.

Oh yes, a good majority of people respect different opinions, yourself included - and many others here. But over the last few years I've seen a prevalence of anti-apple troll like (just to get reactions) posts that love to exasperate, get reaction, be ridiculous. There is a growing opinion that to like Apple products means you are stupid, technologically inferior, and that no one in their right mind would use Apple products - more than ever.

That's why I bring out that I'm seeing in the general population (spilling over onto forums) that there seems to be an overall loss of respect for other opinions and ability to tolerate such opinions.

Don't get me wrong, the majority of Macrumors is great - that's why I spend my time here and contribute willingly.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I think I went off too far on a tangent.

Yes, forums are great places to spend to read, enjoy company of like minded people, hear opinions of others that may see life differently, and have a complexity that surpasses social media - making it far more rewarding imo.

I do like Macrumors and have spent a lot of time here. The moderators do a great job keeping this place enjoyable - keeping it from turning into an unpleasant place. I've seen their work - they deserve a lot more credit than they get.

 

[compwiz1202]

Especially the first two for me.

I avoid Facebook, Instagram, etc., reluctantly go on Twitter to keep up with a friend’s band and Shaw Brothers studio. YouTube, I’ll watch some tech reviewers, artists and birders, but forums are where I spend the bulk of my internet time. I’ll be limiting my time on Twitter as it’s just not my thing.

I’ve met so many nice, knowledgeable, funny people here. There are some terrific threads which brighten my day and I learn a lot about tech too (I’m an Apple user, who still thinks about Asus laptops). Forums feel more like a community. Thank you to the great folks who make me feel welcome. I’ll keep doing that myself too.

Yea only FB Reddit here and some YT. And on FB I stick to friends or groups with good mods about stuff I like. YT is usually just music videos or if I want to watch how to do something