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But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? Were feeds of kittens more interesting and addictive than sequential debate? In particular, Reddit etc. are many-to-one (

But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? Were feeds of kittens more interesting and addictive than sequential debate? In particular, Reddit etc. are many-to-one (one post, many comments), where a forum thread are sequential pages of comments. And in that sense, perhaps there is no obligation to understand the entire conversation to participate, you just react to the OP. If single-topic Facebook Groups / sub-reddits exist, then why is the internet "crowded"? Is the problem not solved? Again, is the UX broken, and what's the alternative? I'm very interested in this problem. Any recommended literature? In particular on the topic of social dynamics, herd behavior, and what we've learned not to do from the last 20 years of forums and social networks.

Dalewyn 3y ago
>But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? Most people want to centralize around something popular, because there's an instinctive desire to be part of the "in" crowd and that is most often defined by what is popular. The convenience that comes with a centralized service is also strongly desired by most people who have bigger fish to fry than keeping track of so many forums and services. Also, it's not just forums that became centralized; so have other communication mediums. One particularly impressive example is Discord: Remember Internet Relay Chat? AOL Instant Messenger? MSN Messenger? Skype? Yahoo Instant Messenger? ICQ? Teamspeak? Ventrillo? They all became Discord, both in private and professional contexts. Outliers like LINE and Microsoft Teams only survive out of specific cultural or fiscal clout. >And in that sense, perhaps there is no obligation to understand the entire conversation to participate, you just react to the OP. HN is also laid out like that, you are also just "reacting to the OP" rather than going down an impractical chain of chronology. >If single-topic Facebook Groups / sub-reddits exist, then why is the internet "crowded"? Because it's still <centralized service> rather than <a service>. Some people hate <centralized service> but have no alternatives, unlike 20 years ago when twelve dozen individual services on any given subject matter were just internet'ing away with naught a care if you patronized them or not. You had options, today you don't.
WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
No, fucking spammers ruined much of them. Bastards. They are the top reason we can’t have nice things.
raytopia 3y ago
I'd forums died for several reasons. One the consolidation of the world wide web means people only visit a few websites. Two many forums can't be used very well on mobile. And finally what I'd argue is the most important part of their decline is that search engines are terrible at surfacing forums (or really anything that's not already established) meaning it's hard to get traffic.
maigret 3y ago
> Was it bad UX? One of the reasons I saw on the forums I am on is that they took too much time to move to image previews. Many PHPBB do text very well, but with social media I got used like almost everyone else to see an image preview for the text or topic discussed. Everything material will benefit for a good preview picture. Alas, most forums are stuck with outdated thumbnail size previews, while the rest of the internet has move to cards as a proven format.
maguay 3y ago
A few thoughts, without any specific evidence: - UX surely played a part in it, especially for the oldest of forums that collapsed the thread by default. Then again, Dpreview still has that layout, and while it clearly wasn't successful enough for Amazon to want to keep it on, it still has a loyal following. - Hiding content—or rather, only showing low-quality image previews to logged-out users—makes the "drive-by" experience less nice. HN—and Reddit, to a lesser extent—avoided that enough by not allowing images in comments, leading to users creating their own workarounds. - Profit, or the lack thereof, likely was a larger problem. Banner ads just don't make enough profit, especially compared to Facebook et al's in-feed ads. - Maybe the collective internet just isn't content with the smaller crowds that would have seemed great in the forum heyday that, today, pale in contrast to the traffic from one viral post on social media.
jasode 3y ago
>But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? [...] , and what we've learned not to do from the last 20 years of forums and social networks. I'm old enough to have experienced various UI paradigms of computer communications over the decades. I ran dial-up BBS forum, paid a subscription to dial-up CompuServe forums, used USENET forums (both in dial-up eventually broadband), participated in a bunch of old web forums such as vBulletin/phpBB, and now Reddit/HN. Some observations... One issue is that using different URLs as the "discrete unit of navigation" for each topic is very high-friction -- especially on mobile phones and tablets using thumbs to type in URL or the more cumbersome touchscreen copy&paste. Yes, browser bookmarks can help but that doesn't remove friction of navigating to new websites. It's easier to instantly go from "reddit.com/r/worldnews" to "reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive" and to any other "reddit.com/r/<ANYTOPIC>" ... rather than a hypothetical different urls "www.worldnews.com" to "www.explainlikeimfive.com". Going to a different website would involve a different web UI and possibly require a new login signup. So sites like reddit or Facebook groups aggregate a bunch of topics for super easy navigation. Especially ergonomic for easy one-handed thumb swiping on smartphones. Arguably, a RSS reader software would also "aggregate" content to somewhat mimic Reddit to lessen the high-friction of navigating to different URLs. However, RSS is one-way "read-only" and not a standard way to participate and write comments on each website URL. And no, each website discussion forum setting up OpenID to re-use login credentials still doesn't lower friction enough compared to Reddit. E.g. Back in 1980s, I learned a lot of C Language programming tips from USENET "comp.lang.c". But these days when I want to see some recent discussions on C++, I just visit "reddit.com/r/cpp". As another example, I was researching air conditioning units and I found some discussions were in a phpBB web forum dedicated to HVAC. I really really didn't want to signup with a new login just to ask a question. The UI friction was too high. Yeah, I lived with slow 300 baud dial-up but I'm lazy now. I want instant gratification.
ffsm8 3y ago
I see that everyone has their own pet theory, so I'll throw mine into the mix as well Forums discouraged low effort postings and branching shitposting. On all successful platforms such as reddit such content is quiet literally encouraged. It takes very little effort to just throw in a one-liner that's kinda funny and press comment, and lots of people are gonna read it, chuckle a little and maybe think of something even better. Now they don't have to worry about detracting from the discussion, as their comment thread can always be hidden by closing the tree. As such, a lot of people get sucked into it as a form of entertainment. What previously was a discussion with people loosing their opportunity to throw out their funny one liner because someone else was quicker then them has now become an instant gratification machine you could endlessly use, and thus the userbase grew My argument would be that forums never really had a chance at mass appeal as their format only works with few participants. But the eternal September kept going, so they were always going to become obsolete. I'd use 4chan as proof for my pet theory, as that's an ancient forum at this point that literally encouraged unhinged shitposting and made it super easy to branch out into new threads, enabling everyone to just respond to whoever they want to (even themselves)
- chgs 3y ago
  The first forums did branch, like usenet. Some software I Used in the late 90s would even sync with a usenet group in some fashion (I never used it) The single thread ones one because they were more popular
  - ffsm8 3y ago
    > The first forums did branch, like usenet. Some software I Used in the late 90s would even sync with a usenet group in some fashion (I never used it) True, but they didn't have the concept of up/down voting, so readers were never actively involved. Engagement doesn't happen unless the users have a very low effort way of participating.
123yawaworht456 3y ago
>But why did forums die? register, make a thread, 50% of the time it will get shut down for violating rules #7, #15 and #52. and if you did stick around, there were cliques and resident dweebs with >9000 posts with join date in the 90's. get into an argument with one of those fucks, and you might very well get banned. modern forums are completely impersonal. I've been on HN for 10+ years, and I don't recognize anyone by name. I don't miss the old forums at all.
- Washuu 3y ago
  I am a very old forum user and enjoyer. I recently joined a new forum and deleted my account a few days later. The first reply to my post was basically paraphrase, "You're doing everything wrong and you don't know anything.", and then the next few replies were entirely off topic derailing what I set out to talk about. Forums can be great, but they generically are full of cliques.
Dachande663 3y ago
My dad frequents a very niche forum. A couple thousand users, many posts made daily, I'd guess a 80/20 split between long-timers/newcomers asking a question about that niche. Biggest reason they seem to be struggling? The person who set up the PHPBB forum 15+ years ago has long since moved on and there's very few left within that community who know what do if things don't work. One day it'll die/get hacked/server disappears and that'll be it for them.
mikub 3y ago
I never liked the structure of most forums, what I always prefered were 3frame forums it's just so much better to read and keep track of postings.
pers0n 3y ago
Spam, moderation time, updates, hosting costs
pier25 3y ago
Forums didn't die they just didn't grow with billions of users like social media did. In the world of audio and music production forums like KVR, GS,ASR, and DOA are as popular as they've ever been. I'm active on VI-Control and the forum has been steadily growing for the past years.
jefurii 3y ago
> But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? Reddit and HN are what killed forums for me. These two sites allow for branching discussions. You can comment on follow-ups to the main post, and other people can do the same. It's like being in a crowd of people discussing a topic and you can move around and talk to different people. Forums force you into a serial, sequential form that I feel stifles conversation. It can work if there are only a few people, but it feels like a guided discussion where only one person can talk at a time.
BeFlatXIII 3y ago
> were feeds of kittens more interesting or addictive than sequential debate? Absolutely yes. > no obligation to understand the entire convo Definitely part of Reddit's appeal. Thread derailment is no longer as big of a threat when off-topic trees can be collapsed. Likewise, there's no one to get pissy if you force the topic to return to the OP instead of engaging in the latest sub-topic. > FB groups & subreddits Both act as subsections of an everything forum. No need to make new accounts for each community.

Dalewyn 3y ago

>But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? Most people want to centralize around something popular, because there's an instinctive desire to be part of the "in" crowd and that is most often defined by what is popular. The convenience that comes with a centralized service is also strongly desired by most people who have bigger fish to fry than keeping track of so many forums and services. Also, it's not just forums that became centralized; so have other communication mediums. One particularly impressive example is Discord: Remember Internet Relay Chat? AOL Instant Messenger? MSN Messenger? Skype? Yahoo Instant Messenger? ICQ? Teamspeak? Ventrillo? They all became Discord, both in private and professional contexts. Outliers like LINE and Microsoft Teams only survive out of specific cultural or fiscal clout. >And in that sense, perhaps there is no obligation to understand the entire conversation to participate, you just react to the OP. HN is also laid out like that, you are also just "reacting to the OP" rather than going down an impractical chain of chronology. >If single-topic Facebook Groups / sub-reddits exist, then why is the internet "crowded"? Because it's still <centralized service> rather than <a service>. Some people hate <centralized service> but have no alternatives, unlike 20 years ago when twelve dozen individual services on any given subject matter were just internet'ing away with naught a care if you patronized them or not. You had options, today you don't.

WesolyKubeczek 3y ago

No, fucking spammers ruined much of them. Bastards. They are the top reason we can’t have nice things.

raytopia 3y ago

I'd forums died for several reasons. One the consolidation of the world wide web means people only visit a few websites. Two many forums can't be used very well on mobile. And finally what I'd argue is the most important part of their decline is that search engines are terrible at surfacing forums (or really anything that's not already established) meaning it's hard to get traffic.

maigret 3y ago

> Was it bad UX? One of the reasons I saw on the forums I am on is that they took too much time to move to image previews. Many PHPBB do text very well, but with social media I got used like almost everyone else to see an image preview for the text or topic discussed. Everything material will benefit for a good preview picture. Alas, most forums are stuck with outdated thumbnail size previews, while the rest of the internet has move to cards as a proven format.

maguay 3y ago

A few thoughts, without any specific evidence: - UX surely played a part in it, especially for the oldest of forums that collapsed the thread by default. Then again, Dpreview still has that layout, and while it clearly wasn't successful enough for Amazon to want to keep it on, it still has a loyal following. - Hiding content—or rather, only showing low-quality image previews to logged-out users—makes the "drive-by" experience less nice. HN—and Reddit, to a lesser extent—avoided that enough by not allowing images in comments, leading to users creating their own workarounds. - Profit, or the lack thereof, likely was a larger problem. Banner ads just don't make enough profit, especially compared to Facebook et al's in-feed ads. - Maybe the collective internet just isn't content with the smaller crowds that would have seemed great in the forum heyday that, today, pale in contrast to the traffic from one viral post on social media.

jasode 3y ago

>But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? [...] , and what we've learned not to do from the last 20 years of forums and social networks. I'm old enough to have experienced various UI paradigms of computer communications over the decades. I ran dial-up BBS forum, paid a subscription to dial-up CompuServe forums, used USENET forums (both in dial-up eventually broadband), participated in a bunch of old web forums such as vBulletin/phpBB, and now Reddit/HN. Some observations... One issue is that using different URLs as the "discrete unit of navigation" for each topic is very high-friction -- especially on mobile phones and tablets using thumbs to type in URL or the more cumbersome touchscreen copy&paste. Yes, browser bookmarks can help but that doesn't remove friction of navigating to new websites. It's easier to instantly go from "reddit.com/r/worldnews" to "reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive" and to any other "reddit.com/r/<ANYTOPIC>" ... rather than a hypothetical different urls "www.worldnews.com" to "www.explainlikeimfive.com". Going to a different website would involve a different web UI and possibly require a new login signup. So sites like reddit or Facebook groups aggregate a bunch of topics for super easy navigation. Especially ergonomic for easy one-handed thumb swiping on smartphones. Arguably, a RSS reader software would also "aggregate" content to somewhat mimic Reddit to lessen the high-friction of navigating to different URLs. However, RSS is one-way "read-only" and not a standard way to participate and write comments on each website URL. And no, each website discussion forum setting up OpenID to re-use login credentials still doesn't lower friction enough compared to Reddit. E.g. Back in 1980s, I learned a lot of C Language programming tips from USENET "comp.lang.c". But these days when I want to see some recent discussions on C++, I just visit "reddit.com/r/cpp". As another example, I was researching air conditioning units and I found some discussions were in a phpBB web forum dedicated to HVAC. I really really didn't want to signup with a new login just to ask a question. The UI friction was too high. Yeah, I lived with slow 300 baud dial-up but I'm lazy now. I want instant gratification.

ffsm8 3y ago

I see that everyone has their own pet theory, so I'll throw mine into the mix as well Forums discouraged low effort postings and branching shitposting. On all successful platforms such as reddit such content is quiet literally encouraged. It takes very little effort to just throw in a one-liner that's kinda funny and press comment, and lots of people are gonna read it, chuckle a little and maybe think of something even better. Now they don't have to worry about detracting from the discussion, as their comment thread can always be hidden by closing the tree. As such, a lot of people get sucked into it as a form of entertainment. What previously was a discussion with people loosing their opportunity to throw out their funny one liner because someone else was quicker then them has now become an instant gratification machine you could endlessly use, and thus the userbase grew My argument would be that forums never really had a chance at mass appeal as their format only works with few participants. But the eternal September kept going, so they were always going to become obsolete. I'd use 4chan as proof for my pet theory, as that's an ancient forum at this point that literally encouraged unhinged shitposting and made it super easy to branch out into new threads, enabling everyone to just respond to whoever they want to (even themselves)

chgs 3y ago
The first forums did branch, like usenet. Some software I Used in the late 90s would even sync with a usenet group in some fashion (I never used it) The single thread ones one because they were more popular
- ffsm8 3y ago
  > The first forums did branch, like usenet. Some software I Used in the late 90s would even sync with a usenet group in some fashion (I never used it) True, but they didn't have the concept of up/down voting, so readers were never actively involved. Engagement doesn't happen unless the users have a very low effort way of participating.

123yawaworht456 3y ago

>But why did forums die? register, make a thread, 50% of the time it will get shut down for violating rules #7, #15 and #52. and if you did stick around, there were cliques and resident dweebs with >9000 posts with join date in the 90's. get into an argument with one of those fucks, and you might very well get banned. modern forums are completely impersonal. I've been on HN for 10+ years, and I don't recognize anyone by name. I don't miss the old forums at all.

Washuu 3y ago
I am a very old forum user and enjoyer. I recently joined a new forum and deleted my account a few days later. The first reply to my post was basically paraphrase, "You're doing everything wrong and you don't know anything.", and then the next few replies were entirely off topic derailing what I set out to talk about. Forums can be great, but they generically are full of cliques.

Dachande663 3y ago

My dad frequents a very niche forum. A couple thousand users, many posts made daily, I'd guess a 80/20 split between long-timers/newcomers asking a question about that niche. Biggest reason they seem to be struggling? The person who set up the PHPBB forum 15+ years ago has long since moved on and there's very few left within that community who know what do if things don't work. One day it'll die/get hacked/server disappears and that'll be it for them.

mikub 3y ago

I never liked the structure of most forums, what I always prefered were 3frame forums it's just so much better to read and keep track of postings.

pers0n 3y ago

Spam, moderation time, updates, hosting costs

pier25 3y ago

Forums didn't die they just didn't grow with billions of users like social media did. In the world of audio and music production forums like KVR, GS,ASR, and DOA are as popular as they've ever been. I'm active on VI-Control and the forum has been steadily growing for the past years.

jefurii 3y ago

> But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? Reddit and HN are what killed forums for me. These two sites allow for branching discussions. You can comment on follow-ups to the main post, and other people can do the same. It's like being in a crowd of people discussing a topic and you can move around and talk to different people. Forums force you into a serial, sequential form that I feel stifles conversation. It can work if there are only a few people, but it feels like a guided discussion where only one person can talk at a time.

BeFlatXIII 3y ago

> were feeds of kittens more interesting or addictive than sequential debate? Absolutely yes. > no obligation to understand the entire convo Definitely part of Reddit's appeal. Thread derailment is no longer as big of a threat when off-topic trees can be collapsed. Likewise, there's no one to get pissy if you force the topic to return to the OP instead of engaging in the latest sub-topic. > FB groups & subreddits Both act as subsections of an everything forum. No need to make new accounts for each community.