Comment by abruzzi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by abruzzi | Hacker News Reader

I fequently see the comment that forums are dead, and there is no one on them, so i want to ask--what type of forum is your experience with? i.e. what is the topic or field the forum is dedicated to? I ask because the 5 or 6 forums I frequent are very active. I just checked the online stats for one of the bigger ones and it currently has 1288 registered members online with 1491 guests (out of a total registered members of 405,506.) That one is big, so it requires a lot of subforums to keep the information orderly, but there are smaller ones that are still active too. The smallest I frequent (on a very esoteric topic for most) currently has 103 members online with 896 guests. I can keep up with most of the posts on that one, but 2/3rds are on topic that don't interest me, so the forum layout makes it easy to stick to just what interests me.

The reason for my question, is I wonder--topic dictates audience, are some audiences more microblogging friendly and so have jumped ship from forums, where the topics I'm interested in are more old-guy friendly so us luddites stick to the forums we've been on since 1999?

While I am not in the "forums are dead camp" per se, I just yesterday searched for forums on vintage/retro computers and found some that didn't look very active. Granted, they had far to many subfora, so maybe I just missed the active corners, but there was very much a "last post 3 months ago" vibe, including threads about the question if the scene was dying.

Though really, the main problem with good forums is actually finding them in the first place. If no one points you at one, google might just be no help at all. Of course, discourse invitations seem even more obscure these days, so its probably just the way things are now?

> Though really, the main problem with good forums is actually finding them in the first place. If no one points you at one, google might just be no help at all.

Try https://wiby.me.

It is a delicate balance maintaining the right number of sub fora. One of my favorite a decade ago (electro-music.com) is still there but is very very dead, I think because they have something like 100 sub forums, so you would need a 1000 daily posting users to make it seem active. On the other hand, you have forums (gearspace.com) which don't seem to have enough subs so the main forums (I mostly go for the Electronic music forum) which makes it seem a little too busy or chaotic.

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