Straight up, I’d definitely say ‘yes, forums are dead’. But, this post is a love letter to forums, so you can safely bet that I think they still have some life left in them.
This point about forums came up at a recent community management workshop I went to. The room was filled with Community Managers and Social Media Managers from all over Melbourne, and when asked whether they use forums in their social media approaches, pretty much everyone said ‘no’. Everyone used social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc, but not forums.
I don’t use forums to post in myself, and never really have. The times that I’ve been involved in posting in forums over the past ten or so years were not that engaging. The only times I can remember actually writing in a forum was once on the In The Mix forum, the Vogue forum and a few times on some random tech forums. All of these times I was trying to find out the answer to something, however I don’t know if anyone actually replied due to losing interest, or me forgetting my login details, finding the answer somewhere else etc.
That’s not to say that I haven’t wanted to be involved. I remember reading about certain bands in the Faster Louder forums and wanting to be part of the conversation, but the whole rating system put me off. If someone that has 9999 cred points is talking about the topic already, why bother joining with my ‘Newbie’ status? Everyone would just overlook me. It felt like a club that was too much effort to try and be a proper part of.
However (this is where the love letter starts), I actually do use forums a hell of a lot – not to post in, but to learn from. Most of the tech questions I have had in the past, whether it’s about how to remove a certain part of your Wordpress theme, why Facebook is fucking up in a certain way or how to change a setting in your phone, have all been answered via forums. This is because the questions I was looking for answers to are not big enough to dedicate a whole article or blog post to. They are just little snippets of information, that are super niche or kind of random. They are questions that can’t be answered with broad information, you just need a tid bit of help to let you know you’re on the right way. Personal help, from real people.
Often when I’ve ended up on forums, I’ve been looking for an answer that I didn’t think I’d find. Usually this happens when I copy and paste an error message I’m getting from Facebook or another website. I copy and paste the message to find out if anyone else is sharing the same problem as me or if I’m just doing something wrong. It’s so validating to read that someone on the other side of the world has had the same problem as you and is as equally frustrated about it as you. This happened the other day when I was trying to share a YouTube video on one of the Facebook pages I manage and the thumbnail image kept appearing as a captcha code. There were no articles written about this, but after trying a few different searches I found a forum where someone had suggested placing a semi-colon at the end of the URL. I tried it and it worked. EFFING LOVE YOU M8.
If forums die off, are these kinds of moments going to live on? When people talk about forums being dead, I guess they’re talking about Facebook, Twitter and the like replacing them – but I don’t think that’s their role. The information you post on Twitter is unsearchable after ten days and it’d be impossible to search for info like this on Facebook with all the privacy restrictions. We still need forum-like sites.
Maybe the days of forums where you login using a username and password, and have your own avatar and cred rating are dead… but I think the essence of them will live on through websites like Quora. Quora is the most forum-like (in the best possible way) website out at the moment. It’s basically a site based on question and answer, but powered by users. People ask questions how they want to ask questions (not how you have to ask search engines) and real people (who are usually experts in their field) answer. LinkedIn also have a forum-like aspect built in with their Group Discussions.
I guess I’m not too attached to forums (sorry, this was supposed to be a love letter). I’m attached to finding answers from real people who are experiencing the same things I am at that moment in time. Whether this is through an search that uncovers a thread on an old school forum or via sites like Quora, I don’t really mind. I guess I’m more in love with instant access to information and instant gratification. But ah fuck it, I’ve written too much to go back now. It’s still a sort-of love letter to you dear forum. A love letter to your essence, anyway.
