It's not a bike problem or a reddit problem but a people problem. Forums were the same way if not worse because people had so much rep tied to their username. It's the same thing with all my different interests, it's like you can take out all the topic-specific language from the flamewars to the constant posts suggesting you buy x brand that the community has ordained as the best product there is for y use, and the forums would be perfectly interchangeable whether people are arguing/showing off about bicycles or skis or ham radios. The hobbiest internet self validates a lot of gear acquisition syndrome too. It's uncanny how similar they all feel no matter the topic at hand.
Plus, I subscribe to about 30 subreddits, most of which pretty niche. Could I replace them with forums? Sure, and I do have fond memories from phpbb forums around the turn of the millenium, even moderating a few as a teen.
But then I'd have to check about 5-10 different forum sites daily, each with subforums for different specific topics. It adds friction.
It's much more convenient just opening reddit whenever I have a few minutes to scroll my feed and see what's up in my niche communities.
Reddit also gives the power to users to create niche communities. R/xbiking comes to mind, which is about a very specific bicycling subculture consisting of using vintage mountain bike frames from the 80s and 90s with a mix of modern and vintage parts to create cool all around bikes... Sort of. Anyways, to my knowledge this subculture did not exist anywhere before Reddit, and I can hardly see how it could have sprung up on bikeforums.net, for example. Petitioning the forums admins for a new subforum for a community that hardly existed would have been difficult, and the sort of posts R/xbiking sees would probably have been closed as offtopic in other subforums. Much easier to create and organically grow a new community on Reddit.
Personally, after being a bit reticent, I am now hopeful for fediverse based solutions (kbin and Lemmy notably) to replace this.
> I'm trying to sort out how we went from a giant, flexible network to a bunch of shittier smaller, isolated networks.
A bunch of shittier smaller isolated networks sounds exactly like what we transitioned away from, you yourself bringing up phpbb. Are you asking why people don't want to register for yet another silo'd community every time they want to talk about a different subject? Or why people may want to talk about their cycling hobby here and there but aren't so fanatical about it that they want to register for bikeforums.com nor mingle with the zealots that post there?
Just sounds like you're romanticizing something that wasn't all that great for most people. A lot of those types of forums still exist, btw. Probably even more than ever. I run one. My forum fills a niche that doesn't translate well to a place like reddit (longform collaborative writing). These communities are still here for the people looking for them, but it's no mystery to me why they have limited appeal.
Frankly, the modern web has enabled more people to participate that aren't as nerdy or fanatic about a niche nor willing to jump through hoops like joining a new forum with its own rules and nobody they know irl. Not everything is going to shit, there are simply always trade-offs.
Some forums exemplify the long tail of hobby fanaticism. What used to be a couple people in the back of the convention that were hardcore is now a large group of those disparate people in a forum.
Sometimes you have to find a different forum. That's also why you'll see multiple subreddits for the same thing. They embody different aspects of the topic and draw people that associate with that aspect. Sometimes some of the same people in both, but the purport themselves differently depending on where they are.
Forums still rule for discourse content for some subjects. Some of them are basically grand-fathered in because Google will surface them and their communities started before Reddit. Guitar gear is one of those. There are still half a dozen forums that provide way better discourse than Reddit. I imagine a big part of that is because the users are an older age group.
It's such a shame that most hobby-related content has moved to Reddit. Because of the way the algorithms work there are no long-running threads and recent content is heavily favoured.
This is terrible for hobby boards because it means that content from long-timers gets drowned out by newbies asking the same questions over and over. In my experience hobby subreddits are completely dominated by inexperienced newbies giving one another the same cargo-cult advice. That, and straight up image posts with literally 0 value (for example the front page of /r/simracing at any given moment is usually about 30-50% pictures of just a steering wheel / rig from someone saying "got my new wheel/rig today").
The old days of forums were great for hobbyists because the long-running threads would stretch into the dozens or hundreds of pages of comments. Newbies could be directed to the longer threads or deep-linked directly to older comments. The format surfaced all posts, but did not favour recency - old threads could be revived (necro'd) or kept up top indefinitely. It wasn't perfect but it was a system that favoured long-timers over newbies.
There are maybe 10, 20 reddit accounts that I recognize. Most of them come from fitness subs. Everyone else might as well not have usernames.
The problem with forums isn't that they are dead. It's that you are trying to have them do what reddit does right now, which is endless content and interaction 24/7. But that just doesn't work with a smaller number of people. Forums make sense as the thing that you visit once or twice a day and browse for a bit in a relaxed environment. I guarantee you that doing so from your phone during your commute or your 10 minute break isn't the same. It won't create comments of the same quality.
I've experienced the same things with the same communities. The forums for the outdoor/backpacking community seem to have seen a dramatic slow down in the last few years (I run a used backpacking gear 'for sale' post aggregator and have seen a decline in # of posts over the years - with reddit/subreddits being the only venue that's growing) and the subreddits seem to be 'growing' but their post quality (obviously, this is my opinion and it's not necessarily shared with everyone involved) is suffering greatly.
It's organized well for finding information but it lacks the "human" element in a social community. You're just anonymous person #4214 who's interested in cars or football.
In the good old days with forums, people were recognizable with avatars and signatures. People chatted about everything, not just the topic at hand, so the personality of each person had a large spectrum. The communities were small enough where people formed an identity and reputation. Many times they even connected their real life identity in "post your picture" threads.
Reddit has effectively killed many forums without replacing that human community aspect and it's kind of sad.
I think the fact that the primary topics here are niche and therefore self selecting plays a big role - vs. open platforms (Reddit) that are not only much larger but low effort discovery wise. For me car forums still have that sense of community that is here as well, albeit a completely different topic and a vestige of the 00s design-wise.
Online amnesia seems to be a problem with the design of karma-based forums. I used frequent a London bike forum where folks were notorious for answering common questions with "UTFS" (use the fucking search). It was refreshing to be among more "responsible" forum folks.
I would agree with the sentiment about Forums. I owe a lot of my younger development years to groups of people on niche forums. They can harbor a lot of negativity sometime, but I found that the real toxic ones tended to destroy themselves and because they’re all mutually exclusive to their focuses, it was a pretty natural evolution of “community” if the forum survived for long periods of time.
I think that reddit has a foothold with subreddits, but they’re just not the same. As of now, I’m searching for decent aviation forum communities to explore as it’s my new learning focus.
Never heard of lobster, looks neat. If it doesn’t bother you, I’d love an invite to that so I can check it out.
Overall, I think a singular place where all of humanity “socializes” isn’t realistic. We need our corners and groups that belong to us individually.
I experienced exactly this a couple of years ago in /r/espresso. Fortunately the low-quality memespam pushed me to look for alternatives, and I found Home Barista forums, one of the best quality web forums I've ever participated in.
Something similar happened to me in the bicycle space, which turns out to have a lot of forum activity as well. Seems some of the oldguard never switched to Reddit in the first place in both communities.
Hard disagree. Most niche hobbies, the discoverability for discord is impossible. That means amassing enough people in the server is hard, it’s usually 1 really dedicated person responding.
Reddit was also the best place for product (gadgets, gear, clothes etc) reviews. Some retailers have gotten clever about astroturfing but you just need to look at multiple posters. My usual routine of aggregating 4-5 Reddit threads worth of opinions has consistently rewarded me.
Now your only option is go to Wirecutter or hope you have friends who have the product you’re interested in.
Yep. I ran a great little community cycling forum from 2005 - met so many friends (real and virtual) over those years - then about 2011 or 2012 Google just dropped it. Our traffic fell off a cliff - now - the regulars stayed on for quite a while, but without an influx of new members and questions and discussions, things just died out - regular members need the stimulus of new members, even if it can be taxing moderating etc... Was actually a really disappointing decline in many ways. It really opened my eyes up to how much control we gave away, and how much content is now in these big walled garden silos. I can't help but get nostalgic.
There are still plenty of forums out there from what I've seen. I'm a participant in forums related to mountain biking, fishing, guns, electronics, etc., etc. Now to be fair, some of them aren't as active as they used to be (the fishing one stands out in this regard), but there are still people who post and participate for sure.
Don't assume forums are somehow freer of group-think because they are less accessible. Once they get established, the existing user base tends to push out anyone that doesn't agree with their views.
Some subreddits are awesome, and some are way less awesome. And much of the best, most informative and technical information out there lives on subreddits.
Many people pine for the days when only the most savvy users knew about the forums, but I don't think there is any way to bring that era back.
I wish everyone would go to platform-specific or interest-based forums. I think the Internet was a better place when you just banned the occasional crazy from your forums, whereas mass social media seems to promote their craziness and create an echo chamber of negative reinforcement for them.
I gotta say I found forums really hard to browse, the UX was terrible.
People has huge signatures, they'd often quote another page long post, there was no upvotes or downvotes so you had to go through 87 pages of junk, the search functionality was terrible...
It's why I like Reddit, even though it's not perfect.
Reddit's like the forum of forums
Edit: although. One thing I do miss with forums is people knew eachother by name. Reddit's too big for that.
But your overall point is valid, I think. My pointing to a single active forum doesn't change the fact that many of other enthusiast groups have moved to facebook groups and the like.
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