The Discussion Forum Universe is Dying, I know Why...

[mysiteguy]

Ok, I will say, dumbing down of mankind.

That I can agree with!

 

[Empire]

Your ability to build relationships with people can make or break a forum.

Gold words.

 

[Solidus]

haha very true.. i rarely do extensive SSH command line work from mobile device but do via JuiceSSH client

I used JuiceSSH in the past too, prefer this now -> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.server.auditor.ssh.client&hl=en

 

[eva2000]

I used JuiceSSH in the past too, prefer this now -> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.server.auditor.ssh.client&hl=en

ooh nice, thanks for the heads up

 

[JQP]

I've spend years trying to figure it out. While still not perfect, I've zeroed in on a set of strategies that work. Trouble is, it's all my proprietary work, so the forum software vendors would need recode most of their entire approach.

The first, and most important thing, is what I call TUX, or Total User Experience. Mobile is vital, especially the mobile user experience. So I don't just create a responsive front end, we have a completely different site, optimized for mobile users. It uses about 50% less overall HTML for faster load times... and is nearly ready for Google AMP.

As Drastic has pointed out, you need content on the home page, and more. Our home page is a summary of all the popular and important topics from the prior few days. This is the most critical first step for content discovery. Also, you'll notice the main menu is very non-forumish, and is sticky at the top.

Then we also have Top Topics and Category pages that highlight another easy way to discover interesting content.

The Recent Posts page is available to all, not just logged-in members. I have no idea why this is disabled for non-members by default in many forum systems. The recent posts threads can also be sorted by flags (likes) or replies.

The Forum Home Page is also atypical, and not your standard table-styled list of forums.

Thanks for the excellent thread, SkepticGuy, and thanks for confirming my thoughts on having a dedicated mobile version, content on the Home page and that ridiculous idea of not showing the recent topics to guests. If anything, that should be what guests are shown first.

Personally, I've been hacking and adjusting and tweaking on a responsive style and the best I've been able to come up with is a weak compromise. Trouble is that I use phpBB and the mobile style switcher I'm currently using doesn't work with the new version and the file that needed to be modified no longer exists. And good luck getting any help from the developers. They're convinced that all you need is a responsive style and you're an idiot if you think otherwise.

I'm another one who thinks the forum index is a complete waste of a page. At best, it's a list of categories or a mystery list of (often bad, non-descriptive) titles with no indication of what's behind the link. It's like trying to run a store where all the customer sees is a very short, often bad, description of all of the merchandise and we're wondering why nobody's buying anything. If we can't let the customers pick up and touch our products, we at least need to find a way of showing them to them. The forum index shouldn't be much more than a dropdown or a sidebar list. Tags would be nice but good luck getting people who don't have a stake in the site to use them or to use them correctly. Get a couple jokers on the forum and the mods will be spending all their time correcting tags.

Meanwhile, the developers are busy working on a new paint scheme and ignoring the fact that the functionality is what needs the attention.

 

[Sherrie]

What's appealing about Facebook is not your circle of friends but the fact that you can join various groups and pages which is the equivalent to joining various forums and websites and have their updates all come up in the one feed. A forum is just that 1 forum/site, when nothing interesting is happening for that topic on a given day then that's it, and when it is you might miss it if you don't log in on that given moment. Whereas on Facebook whilst one group is quiet another of many groups is buzzing it's all there in your feed to grab your attention to it.

Instagram, what is good about Instagram is just that, it's instant. You see something you like, quickly take a pic, chuck a few tags on it and it's done. No more effort required.

 

[s.molinari]

have their updates all come up in the one feed.

They only come up in your feed, as long as Facebook deems it necessary. You certainly don't get every update from all the pages or groups you are a member of, because Facebook thinks it is smart enough to know what you want to see most. Or, you might not see all (Facebook filtered) updates, because you don't view your whole feed. It is far from a perfect system.

Scott

 

[Dwuffy]

This is a great discussion, and something I've been thinking about for a while now.

My forum is pretty old (we had our 10 year anniversary last November) but it still has a small, but very active core membership. I'll echo what a few people have already said in this thread...people came for the content, but they stay for the community connections they've made on the site.

I've thought about upgrading from the vB4 base that I've been using, but my feeling is that just making the forums "shiny" (moving to vB5 or XF) doesn't solve the basic UX issues that forums as a whole have. Thus I haven't upgraded because the cost didn't feel in line with the limited improvements to my membership's experience.

One of the developer communities I watch has a forum system that I've been thinking might be a good option, with a few a lot of tweaks to make it more user-friendly. The forum can be found at https://forum.phalconphp.com/. It's not a pretty forum, but I like that the "recent activity" is the first page you find. I think a button block (or maybe even a checkbox block to customize which sections they are interested in) with links to each of the categories (specific forums) at the top would help the users who are only interested in specific sections filter quickly to the topics they are interested in.

I've been thinking about Facebook groups, and analyzing why I like them. I think one of the best parts about the Facebook UX is you can go check a group to see the latest topics, but depending on your notification settings, you can forget about groups until someone posts and then you hear that ding on your phone, you see a small blurb of what the post was about, and then you decide whether it's worth loading it up on your phone to read/see the new post. Beyond that, it's a one-stop-shop. I can go to one page, and see information about all of my various interests, rather than clicking on this forum, then that forum, then that forum, etc.

Most of the forum software I've looked into allow email notifications, but those tend to be more annoying than the instant Facebook App which just keeps track of the most recent notifications, and you can clear all of them with one click, unlike email where you have to manually delete them. I know vB5 has a mobile improvements addon, but their promotion page for the product is so woefully inadequate for explaining what actually comes with the bundle, I have no idea if this is something they've thought of or not.

 

[Wes of StarArmy]

I think it'd be a huge help if XenForo 2 included a full native RESTful API (and a partnership with IFTTT if possible). Integration is huge and to make our forums more connected to other systems and networks would help keep them part of people's online experience. One of the cool things about PHPBB being open source is that it is available to make into a "platform" for other things. An API would let forum softwares be a platform too. Being able to build your forum "outward" and customize it to do more things than just forum threads and conversations would be a big advantage in adding additional value. XenForo already does this with the resource manager but we could do so much more.

Looking further down the road I think we'll see the advent of things like voice or video posting being a normal feature and AI-driven bots running on your forum that can talk to users.

 

[Drastic]

They only come up in your feed, as long as Facebook deems it necessary. You certainly don't get every update from all the pages or groups you are a member of, because Facebook thinks it is smart enough to know what you want to see most. Or, you might not see all (Facebook filtered) updates, because you don't view your whole feed. It is far from a perfect system.

Scott

I really dislike that Facebook changed how/who they show in your feed. They did this thing where if you don't like something within 30 days, that the page will no longer appear in your feed.

The problem with that is because some of the pages I really love are extremely offensive or dirty in nature, so naturally may be cracking up at them, but I am certainly most definitely not going to push a LIKE button on them. Especially with friends and family who are possibly more sensitive to something.

I don't need someone coming up to me at a family party or my day job saying "I saw you LIKED the news story about the girl with TWO VAGINAS!!"

I think Facebook should have left that alone. I know they did it because it DOES seem like a smart thing to do- but they didn't consider the personal reason why some people don't press LIKE.

 

[Sherrie]

They only come up in your feed, as long as Facebook deems it necessary. You certainly don't get every update from all the pages or groups you are a member of, because Facebook thinks it is smart enough to know what you want to see most. Or, you might not see all (Facebook filtered) updates, because you don't view your whole feed. It is far from a perfect system.

Scott

That's true but it still gives a more varied and possibility for more interesting feed then looking at the recent activity on one forum.

 

[GhettoChild]

Both Facebook and Twitter are loosing ground to Instagram, Tumblr and Snapchat. What does that say about social media? You can say social media is very fickle and relies too much on trends.

If social media is killing your forum, you probably picked a niche thar doesn't require a forum or your content is not engaging enough to create conversations.

 

[Zero Numbers]

Forums are not going to die. They are going to need to change with the times.

What that change is, not everyone agrees. Too many people get caught up with what social media does.

Both Facebook and Twitter are loosing ground to Instagram, Tumblr and Snapchat. What does that say about social media? You can say social media is very fickle and relies too much on trends.

Something that is supposedly killing forums is now killing itself? Now that's funny. Social media isn't the forum killer like its made out to be.

This mystery of what's happening to forums is like asking what happened to the dinosaurs. There's a truth that needs to be unveiled.

Now, I am not in position where I can reinvent the wheel everytime something new is found. Nor can I buy into the next latest greatest when it is released. I feel quite likely that is the majority of how forum owners exist. And I feel that is a huge part of the problem.

Forum owners and admins sure can't do everything themselves. They're going to need people who know what to do and know the business well in order to keep going on.

 

[Drastic]

Something that is supposedly killing forums is now killing itself? Now that's funny. Social media isn't the forum killer like its made out to be.

This mystery of what's happening to forums is like asking what happened to the dinosaurs. There's a truth that needs to be unveiled.

Yeah we figured it out. It's called social media being 100000000% more fun and easy to use. Did you read any of this thread?

 

[Adamantium]

I was having a private chat with Sandman, on the subject, and thought it might be productive to bring the core idea out for public scrutiny ...

We are seeing a gradual drop in overall traffic from new users. It's not yet alarming because we still get good spikes from hot issues in the news, and social media. However, I've been seeing lots of formerly decent boards fade away, if not disappear entirely. I'm sure everyone here has noticed the same, and is concerning.

I know why

The primary issue is ....

If there really has been a drop off of message board forums relative to other social community type outlets, my guess would be that the long-time trend of shortening attention spans and more simplicity is simply strengthening. The average person wants to read less, and does. The average person wants more simplicity, and generally gets it. It takes an extra jump of intellectual energy and willingness to read when you participate in message board forums such as this one. You have to give up more of the mobile-friendly simplicity. It's not as easy to digest what you probably should digest. Many message board forums have enough rules and guidelines to seem like a book to many people. I happen to love reading and prefer forums but even I often get turned off by the clutter and amount of text I have to read to "do things right."

The typical social media user is generally free from these types of burdens, and that expectation is becoming the norm more and more. This would be my best guess as to why there may be a general steady decline of message board forum use.

 

[sbjsbj]

I make it quick and easy:

- Forums are not well organized (you can't find information you are looking for)
- Smartphones' screen makes it hard to read long texts -> turnoff
- Lack of features (no need to use a forum (e.g. Calendar, management, etc.))


I described this better on xf.com:

....

As all people already mentioned, if you want to chit-chat or be social, you have the social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Whatsapp etc.)
If you want to get quick information, you have Wikipedia.

So for what do people need forums? This is the question all forum owners and forum software engineers must think of. And I don't think that Xenforo or any other forum software concentrates on this particular question.

The only reason why I visit forums are because they deliver information AND I can exchange the information with people interactively at the same time. For example everybody can read an article about computer virus on Wikipedia, but Wikipedia won't be able to help me when my PC is infected by a virus. So I visit a forum and ask for help and/or seek for information while I talk to other people. But the problem here is, because of lack of the forum software, it is very hard to gather information on forums.
Sorry but the search system is very inaccurate for me most of the time. And because there is no native built-in "information-saver" by the forum software, all information are hidden deep in some threads people hardly can find.

So in my opinion all forum software must make a biiig step by solving this problem cause this is the only valid reason (for me) why forums have a legit reason to exist. Cause this fills a gap which social media or normal websites can't do.
But again, forums are sooo bad-organized (naturely because of the software), that information is not easy accessible. This is a big turn-off for most of the people. Because today you want everything as quick as possible, as good as possible and on your damn smartphone.

...

 

[Adamantium]

It's funny, I was just at another site and was thinking about this thread. Not only was it cluttered with ads and rules all over the place that I will never read or look at, but I received a Warning because a post of mine was perceived as having too little value and/or being done to increase post count. So instead of just being thankful that I contribute a few posts day there, I get threatened with a ban if I continue my evil ways of the occasional short comment. First, there was no post count building effort on my part, I couldn't care less how many posts I make. Second, sure the comment was short but it did express a feeling that had some value in the context of a conversation. I'm sure this was the real crime I was guilty of and the real reason for the warning. That leads to my point - I don't believe I would have to worry about such nonsense in a social media type outlet. So I will add "more conversationally restrictive" as another comparison point to add on to my previous post on this matter. Many forums just feel inherently less friendly and conversational than the typical social media outlet.

 

[Joel R]

I've only been running my forum for a couple of years, much less than many of you and with much less content. But I've come to some "truths" of forum-ing based wholly on my own experiences:

4C's: Come for the Content. Care about the Community.

Most of you have already recognized the intrinsic truth about the above statement. Content is king ... When attracting and retaining the knowledge base. But like social media, what gets people truly addicted and involved in the community are the social connections and relationships they build with others.

Forums are Old.

Forums are Old. The people who use it are Old. Get over it. You're using a platform that was popular a decade ago, and in terms of demographics, technology, and pop culture forums are old school. But you know what? Instead of complaining about the young tweens and their every changing trends, you have a stable userbase who doesn't like change. I've personally embraced the demographics of my forum community ... Even though I'm in my 20's, I push articles and topics about events in the 1970's and 1980's to intentionally appeal to my userbase that are in their 50's or older. They're a loyal, stable, and ... a wealthy ... demographic. At the same time, I have no idea why young new gaming or tech groups would choose forums.

Feeds

I absolutely agree that forum design and homepages are going to need to change to more of a feed-based system. While I'm quite happy with the infinitely-customizable Activity Streams of IPS v4 which trounces anything else that I've seen on other forums, they need to make two big improvements:

• Direct interaction - the ability to immediately reply, comment, like, etc. within the stream.
• Blocks - IPS 4 has a pretty nice drag-and-drop system, but they need to allow Activity Streams to be placed within blocks.

Better Taxonomy of Conversations

This is something that I'm hazy on, but in essence inline tagging. This helps identify key concepts as the conversation unfolds, and makes the conversation richer for indexing and searching. Right now, you can only define tags for the topic at the start of the topic (at least in IPS 4), and unless you're doing a Moderators edit you can't add tags even though the conversation may have veered in new and interesting ways. This something that social media is fantastic about, since it captures the "now" with popular tags that bubble up out of popular conversations.

 

[esquire]

Yes, stop putting up with the arrogance of companies (like Xenforo) when user after user asks for Google AMP, and the response is constantly "no".

Why would they? AMP doesn't make sense for forums and Google has announced no intention to promote AMP pages for forums. It's about making pages that are naturally heavier lighter and loading more quickly. Google has significantly limited the sites that will appear in the carousel. Now granted that the information on it is very sketchy and vague. But the fact is that most people don't really seem to understand the purpose of AMP and it's all just a mass gang mentality of "if Google say carousel we must all rush blindly to get this implemented yesterday."

I have been looking at those interested in the application for a very limited niche and subset of pages, which is what led me to this thread.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

That is exactly what happens when I show my Facebook followers the website. They will share and comment anything I post on Facebook, but if I post a link for them to check out the site, and say something like "here it is, and sign up to join us in conversation at the site" they barely click and they don't ever register.

Too much work involved in registration and not enough instant gratification.

Yeah, you could link to a discussion on your forum but nobody is going to go to your forum to talk about it. They're going to reply right there on Facebook and add value to Facebook instead of your forum. It's not worth sharing forum content on Facebook. A forum without content/value is doomed.