Are specialist forums dying?

Caporegime
Joined
29 Jan 2008
Posts
58,912
For those that don't know, on mobile at least it's bottom left of the page. Scroll down. Select it. Enjoy.

This is BS... if you do this on desktop it changes into a naff dark colour only loved by people with really bad taste like Apex then doesn't allow you to change it back... you have to go onto mobile to do so.
 
Caporegime
Joined
29 Jan 2008
Posts
58,912
That was horrific... (actually it seems to be an issue with chrome, works fine on Safari on the MacBook too). Anyway back to the nice blue classic theme for me :)
 
Associate
Joined
24 Jan 2012
Posts
896
For those that don't know, on mobile at least it's bottom left of the page. Scroll down. Select it. Enjoy.

Well if nothing else this thread has told me I can do this without the extension. Looking at it now though I'm coming back to the blue, on mobile it's almost too flat if that makes sense? I'm sure the desktop extension used to be a bit more vibrant somehow when I last used it.

I'd describe myself as a serial lurker here, only post sparingly as I rarely have anything to say. Used to browse every day then work / other stuff got in the way. I've had a resurgence in the last year or so and I'm back to full time tab on my phone which I check daily. Thinking about it, it was probably that my attention went over to Reddit for that interim period but I'm barely on there any more. Never posted there and now only visit if I'm looking for very specific answer as chances are there's a subreddit with what I want.

Maybe it's time I post here a bit more for the good of the forum? Now to think of something worth posting...
 
Joined
10 May 2004
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12,831
Location
Sunny Stafford
Out of all of the social media sites, Reddit is the closest that you get to being a forum. So forums and Reddit are the go-to sites for me. The postings have structure, making it easy to find your old posts/threads and you can re-find them again and again if you want. On Facebook, it's initially easy to find your recent posts and replies because they'll show up on a feed, but after that initial period, the posts are harder to find. Also, it's hard to tell where your posts will end up down the rabbit hole. E.g. my mum has asked me to delete a post on her page about my sister, even though my sister isn't on FB. It was just something about her job prospects in 20 years time (so light-hearted!) but apparently my post ended up on someone else's page and I don't know how that has happened.

Back to Reddit, I constantly get emails about r/ topics that I have viewed or posted on. Is there any way of turning that off? I prefer to have an alerts system similar to here on OcUK where it shows up on the top right corner of the page.
 
Soldato
Joined
24 Apr 2006
Posts
6,363
Location
SE England
They are definitely in decline.

What I cannot stand about FB groups is that some of them are public, therefore all the rubbish that I comment on or post pops up on my friends timeline. Stops me from participating in any public groups, no one on my friends list wants to see me comment on some guitar, amp, camera lens, *insert* any other thing I'm interested in. It would be infuriating.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Jan 2013
Posts
21,849
Location
Rollergirl
You're the second person to mention/claim this, very weird, unless I'm just not seeing the account(s) of post(s) in question, care to share?

Sure, it was actually a reference that you made recently that had me thinking this was the case.

Stumblebum said:
So many new accounts keep popping up on Ocuk and posting silly new troll/bot threads.

You said:
You don't say ;)

It's all a bit of made up fun, we will lock it shortly, just like all the previous threads.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/posts/34451163/
 

v0n

v0n

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
8,130
Location
The Great Lines Of Defence
I'll pose a different question. Recently one of the specialist forums I subscribed to since the nineties was retired abruptly. Hosting deal for whatever reason collapsed one day, database was impossible to re-use with newer software, the guy running it tried to re-open, but eventually just given up.

It was, just as this forum, any forum really, full of irrelevant banter, bad jokes and silly arguments, but it also contained vast library of real knowledge, tips, pamphlet long posts with pictures, expanded on and added to for years by thousands of common folk, but specialists in their field. For quarter of a century.

And once it was gone it made me wonder. Would we allow this to happen to any other library of knowledge?

Are we at the stage where we need to decree some sort of law, program, some sort of international storage method, some sort of blockchain, decentralised backup and protection method for all this information?

We are no longer talking millions of simple geocities sites gone in a snap of Tanos fingers. Set the bar higher. Set it to 19 millions of discussions on this forum (and yes, I was here during 2001 "Big Purge") or try to imagine what would happen if YouTube was shut down. Or github or any other source code sites. Every day we may be losing a small piece of internet that's no longer transcribed to paper or stored in film archives and it is akin to all of us watching slow fire in modern times library of Alexandria?..
 
Man of Honour
Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
29,524
Location
Surrey
I'll pose a different question. Recently one of the specialist forums I subscribed to since the nineties was retired abruptly. Hosting deal for whatever reason collapsed one day, database was impossible to re-use with newer software, the guy running it tried to re-open, but eventually just given up.

It was, just as this forum, any forum really, full of irrelevant banter, bad jokes and silly arguments, but it also contained vast library of real knowledge, tips, pamphlet long posts with pictures, expanded on and added to for years by thousands of common folk, but specialists in their field. For quarter of a century.

And once it was gone it made me wonder. Would we allow this to happen to any other library of knowledge?

Are we at the stage where we need to decree some sort of law, program, some sort of international storage method, some sort of blockchain, decentralised backup and protection method for all this information?

We are no longer talking millions of simple geocities sites gone in a snap of Tanos fingers. Set the bar higher. Set it to 19 millions of discussions on this forum (and yes, I was here during 2001 "Big Purge") or try to imagine what would happen if YouTube was shut down. Or github or any other source code sites. Every day we may be losing a small piece of internet that's no longer transcribed to paper or stored in film archives and it is akin to all of us watching slow fire in modern times library of Alexandria?..
It really is a problem. Sites cost money and time to run. They need upgrading and patching. Eventually they fall by the wayside and that's in just a few years or a couple of decades at most. Imagine what will be left in a few hundred years; nothing but a small number of central sites that happen to be running then. Facebook will die eventually. Instagram. Youtube. Eventually they will all be replaced by the Shiny New Thing. To this day no great technology site has managed to survive the long term.

Unlike written records there will be very little to remember our current civilisation by, apart from official records showing what governments want to show. There will be little left of what the average person thought and discussed. So much will be lost despite this apparently being the information age.
 
Soldato
Joined
22 Oct 2002
Posts
8,271
Location
Near Cheltenham
I think there are a few dynamics at play.
1. As mentioned, YouTube and other online resources have grown and now include more commentary channels, so if you want objective information about specialist subjects you can find that at lot more easily.
2. Social media platforms are now a battleground or prominent mouthpiece for orgs and outlets that peddle sensationalistic click bait, just look at any newspaper, e.g, The Mirror and see what kind of overwhelming traffic they generate from Facebook to see it in action. This means people don’t need to discuss and visit a forum so much, it’s all being spoon fed in a massively distorted way to them without having to lift a finger. Sadly, this has killed discourse which has now been taken over by the people who just regurgitate links to every click bait piece they’ve been spoon fed.
3. With the above two, people just don’t have as much time to visit a forum.
4. A lot of forums have become quite toxic in so far as discussion to get to the bottom of things and have some discourse over the topic has long gone, the new skill is just regurgitating your spoon fed twitter soundbites/clickbait and getting way too emotionally invested in it..
 
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