Discord with a new Forum module! Is this the end of the forums?

[SeNioR-]

What do you think about this?

https://discord.com/blog/forum-channels-space-for-organized-conversation

[WP V0RT3X]

Better than their old threads feature (which was a joke in my opinion). But still needs A LOT of improvement.

[SeNioR-]

Do you think this is more likely to suppress common forums like the Invision Community? Discord, Teamspeak, Facebook Groups it all makes forums slowly dying out.

[opentype]

The video made me laugh. How they have to explain the advantage of the traditional system (forums) over what they are actually known for. Just like when ride share companies “innovate” by going back to a bus. 

[WP V0RT3X]

5 hours ago, SeNioR- said:

Do you think this is more likely to suppress common forums like the Invision Community? Discord, Teamspeak, Facebook Groups it all makes forums slowly dying out.

Forums are dying because they don't adapt to the new way of consuming content and communicate with other people. 

Whether IPS, XF, vB, wBB, ... it's just not fun to use them on mobile, it's way too cumbersome. Besides, a responsive layout can't compete with something designed specifically for these devices.

I mean just look at this, nothing more to say.

Next point, why should I sign up on a forum when I'm already on Discord or wherever? And all my friends are already there too?

Forums will always have their place in some genres like support or other special interrest niches and for oldschool users who prefer desktop computers, but that are minorities.

[SeNioR-]

22 minutes ago, WP V0RT3X said:

Forums will always have their place in some genres like support or other special interrest niches and for oldschool users who prefer desktop computers, but that are minorities.

dang, this is so true

[opentype]

Quote

Forums will always have their place in some genres like support or other special interrest niches and for oldschool users who prefer desktop computers, but that are minorities.

I would be cautious to judge who is the majority and minority based on personal experience. Services like Discord are ubiquitous in SOME circles, but even with their 150 million active users it’s just a tiny slice of the daily internet use of billions. If I would ask the 20 people closest to me, independent of age or background, I bet most wouldn’t even know Discord, let alone use it. And that reverses the argument of “why join a different forum when everyone is already on Discord”. Why even install that strange, unknown app when no one you know uses it? 

Edited September 16, 2022 by opentype

[WP V0RT3X]

I wasn't talking about Discord specifically, I meant "social networks" and the like in general 😉

Quote

when I'm already on Discord or wherever?

 

Edited September 16, 2022 by WP V0RT3X

[Hisashi]

It's so horrible it's funny haha

At most this is just a complement to enrich your community, which I find super welcome, improving how you organize things.

I even adopted it as a support area, you can organize it by department in one place, which I thought was great.

Other than that, it's all very bad and simple.

[opentype]

3 hours ago, WP V0RT3X said:

I wasn't talking about Discord specifically …

Me, neither. I was using it as an example, just as you. 

3 hours ago, opentype said:

Services like Discord …

 

And just so I don’t just argue against the original post … I absolutely agree with the comment about the rather sad state shown in the screenshot. It currently needs a lot of customizations to enforce a user-friendly UI and to make sure content actually shows above the fold on mobile. 

[nodle]

I see them doing well with this. Their mobile app is already great, same as the desktop app. They have apps everywhere on every device. They have a modernized clean UI, which is a big seller. 

[The Old Man]

Quote

Discord with a new Forum module! Is this the end of the forums?

Probably more so just another nail in the coffin.
Actually I first saw this news on Ars Technica and I'm sure it was titled differently, something along the lines of 'the end of forums?' :

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/discord-mimics-reddit-with-new-forum-feature/

because briefly scanning through it at the time reminded how many times in the last few weeks I've relied upon trusty forums whilst researching some PC related technical issues, in particular in relation to BIOS issues revolving around the late, great 2500k and Q6600 related motherboards and also modern UEFI BIOS issues causing problems.

Some of the forum content is so useful and I recall thinking to myself a few times how useful forums and forum search features was, and how you'd never find this on social media or other modern platforms. The biggest negative with the legacy content was the frustrating broken images hosted on third party sites and broken links in a lot of cases, but that's the web for you.

[SeNioR-]

5 hours ago, The Old Man said:

The biggest negative with the legacy content was the frustrating broken images hosted on third party sites and broken links in a lot of cases, but that's the web for you.

Everyone who has run the forum for over a decade knows this. Unfortunately, but you are right, many image hosting sites that once seemed indestructible do not exist anymore, so a large part of the images in the posts simply expired.

Edited September 17, 2022 by SeNioR-

[Interferon]

This is what I am saying I could create, a chat application that work with your forum system:

 

[WP V0RT3X]

Back to topic, I'm using this as some kind of external comments section for my little private gaming blog now and it's doing the job good so far 👍

[Gary]

On 9/17/2022 at 11:55 AM, The Old Man said:

Some of the forum content is so useful and I recall thinking to myself a few times how useful forums and forum search features was, and how you'd never find this on social media or other modern platforms. The biggest negative with the legacy content was the frustrating broken images hosted on third party sites and broken links in a lot of cases, but that's the web for you.

This is why I think forums will never die.

Any forum software had great advantages in the early days, but in my opinion, should not just change to a social media way of life purely to keep up with the Joneses. And I strongly agree that there is definitely still a place for them now. There are always going to be pros and cons regardless of what medium or platform is used, however forums are still the easiest way to find content. I personally do not like Facebook groups despite being a part of some myself, one of which I am planning to create a community for. If you're not checking up on Facebook groups often for example, things get lost in space and you find yourself manually filtering through dozens of posts or clutter before finally finding what you were looking for. The notifications and saving of posts seem clunky and annoying. I much prefer the notifications that forums possess and just the general usage seems second nature to me. Perhaps that's an age or experience thing having used forum software for so many years.

Obviously there will be so many people for, against or on the fence relating to this subject. And to comment on Discord specifically, I don't think its solution with Forum Channels will be too much competition for forum software, at least not yet. Good idea in hindsight and it's good to see that they are developing ways to further engage their audience though: credit where credit is due.

[Marius]

Without a mobile app, forums will disappear in the future. Simple!

In vain we look for justifications and all kinds of reasons, but unfortunately this is where everything is heading, this is how the internet will be used in the future.