It's been over 15 years now that I actively participated in a classic forum, so from my PoV the "die off" phase is long behind us, though there are long-standin

It's been over 15 years now that I actively participated in a classic forum, so from my PoV the "die off" phase is long behind us, though there are long-standing dev forums still alive and kicking, such as Apache's (and there were others, such as css-tricks.com's forum I got a lot of value out, and that I'm missing). As anachronistic as it sounds, mailing lists might be the past, present, and future of community building. No "platforms" needed. Edit: Ok, HN is a forum I obviously participate in, though for some reason I was thinking about forums with a narrow tech, hobby, or product focus Edit2: the end of classic phpBB-based forums was that pages were plastered with ads at the top, bottom, left, right, and in-between; this was the result of (untargetted) ad prices going down, which, in turn, is the result of "platforms" and the attention economy we're enduring