It was about 1997 and I whored forums like many people entering the Internet Age. From MMOs to knitting, forums grew creating communities within even smaller communities. It was only a matter of time before hundreds of Wargaming forums began to sprout. Depending on their appeal, but mostly the dedication of posters keyed their survival. Names like Dakkadakka, Heresy Online, Astronomican, and Warseer dominated the Internet discussion. Even more focused sites grew like Tau Online catered to smaller and smaller portions of our games.
When the forum starts everyone has an equal voice, as time goes on that changes. Today the oldest and largest of forums are filled with people who judge a comments worth by those that simply just respond to any and all threads. Today forums grow more dominated by large personalities and crippled by ego driven moderators. Often newbies find it hard to get responses to even the most basic of questions. As well those that don’t conform quickly to particular eccentricities can end up on the wrong side of the road with the established members. Add “premium features” suddenly you are well on your way to creating the Internet equivalent of a fuel system.
Regardless of the social hurdles, forum interfaces can become dated and cumbersome. From bad lay outs to slow loading times, even forums with the best intentions become eye sores and time sinks. Take a look at Bell of Lost Souls, you can go everyday and look for the latest rumors. With forums you often have to follow a trail of rumor poop leading to more waste management work in order to find anything of value. On top of all this is content. As a forum gets older content becomes harder and harder to manage: often even the labors of Hercules seem mundane when tasked to find something as simple as a painting tutorial. Even with search features the sheer volume is daunting. All these components make forums only useful for those that are already invested.
While many forums are still going strong, you might have noticed these little things called blogs showing up all over the place. This new media has changed the game the same way MySpace originally changed the way we connect with people. Everyone can have a voice and if you work hard enough and have a compelling narrative people will read. Blogs cut through the noise that surrounds many forum posts you see today. A single person is more flexible and not beholden to any policy, but his or her own principles. Blogs have the potential of being more dynamic than most forums.
As a direct reaction to blogs you may have noticed your favorite forums introducing a front page dedicated to news and hot topics they think are important. A forum is only strong if it has a strong purpose and most forums lack this– they simply just throw whatever anyone wants up on the wall and hope it sticks. If there is a hope for forums it is in a focus approached. A site like Bolter & Chainsword does a great job in presentation and promotes a particular MEQ mission. The same can be said about a site like Warseer has it’s webzine hub and other promotions keeping it relevant.
If forums are going to survive they need stay relevant and engaging– something more than a place where egos go to battle or where rumors are posted just before they’re snatched by Bell of Lost Souls.
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I think forums in their former iteration are dying out. I think forums are great for a game club or a local area or for a very specific focus … but these big catch all forums are obsolete for all the reasons you cite and probably dozens more. I love our local area game club forum and various game store forums in my area … but I haven't used any of the big 40K (or other game related) forums for years … for all the reasons you cite and more.
Well there are some who seem to surpass those issues with amazing moderation. Warpshadow being the best example I know of. It has had very few incidents and the only people every kicked are bots, as people who just try to start fire stop getting replies and if its really bad just an edit or two.
I blame the success on amazing people who run warpshadow, and as a testament to there willingness to keep the forum going, where the forum owner, Accommodater (Ross Nickle) recently died and the forum was shut down due to legal issues the other admins worked for almost two weeks, as well the forum recently got an overhaul.
I believe most forums die for 3 reasons, Poor management and moderation, Lack of interest (in which case there's really nothing you can do), and the inability or unwillingness to change and update. All of which you stated as well.
For those forums slowing (or quickly) going down hill, you just need to tighten your belts an clean up your forums. It takes quite a lot of work, but like any chore the more you stay on top of it the easier it becomes. In the end some people will probably hate you for it, but they're not the people who matter.
…But remember all things in moderation. (no pun intended)
To be honest:
I'm watching the Forum that I started with die.
It's sad, I've known the 'elite' for … more than 6 years.
But even the moderation is more offline than posting..
It's not that we didn't try to keep it alive! From fun-threads to fluff-related 'who's your favorite character in 40k'-stuff.
There's one sub-section that's commonly used – the local gaming store.
Not about tactics, painting, discussing, but when to play the next game.
We've the disadvantage that we're 'only' german, so.. members aren't all that rare, but most lack of quality..
It's sad, but the once hot-discussed wargaming forums will eventually die..
Are we seeing the true death of forums, or just an end to their ubiquity and utter dominance? Blogs may simply be a market correction of sorts – where once a particular poster may have been noted for their long-running tactics threads that got insta-stickied in the subforum, or another poster might have two dozen subscribers the moment they start a thread for their latest army project, we instead have blogs that focus on these areas and they are growing in momentum. We are seeing such community members ask 'why play second fiddle to the forum when I can have my very own soapbox'?
I think that forums will always have a place. There will never be a shortage of people asking 'is marneeus tuffer dan lyzander?!' But the idea that the forum is the gateway to the hobby is quickly coming to an end.
To be honest, I think BoLS really is becoming the waiting room of the games workshop community. For better or worse, BoLS is the palce you go to wait for your appointment to see a specialist. You sit around for a while, read some old magazines/reposted warseer rumors, listen to elevator muzak, and try not to roll your eyes at whatever soap opera they left on.
Awesome Bols analogy. And not to far from the truth
There's a reason I'm a blogger… speaking for myself, I can't do forums. I simply don't have the patience to separate the wheat from the bullshit.
Isn't that how the expression goes?
Bloggers have a unique voice that folks begin to understand, and they'll either like it or they won't but they know what they're getting. The comments are usually more appropriate and focused.
The downside is that blog posts have all the staying power of an 18-year old boy… and to all of you reading this, you're not the exception. You'll understand later.
(Or not… paying for its okay in Vegas…)
A blog is very much, “What have you done for me lately?” People simply won't look around your archive – they'll just hit another blog. That's a problem in my opinion.
My solution is to have a companion website, but I've not really put much work into mine. That may change this summer though, and I'll see what happens.
I'm a forum whore but I whore a lot less than I used to. I found forums to be pretty invaluable when I got into 40K. I was able to ask those newbie questions and get good responses. I learned a lot by hitting up forums in my early days. Fortunately the forum I hang out at, Tau Online (which despite the name covers all things 40K), is full of great members and it's rare that something goes unanswered no matter how newbie the questions may be or how many times it's been asked. As a moderator there I try and make a point to help out the newer players even if I've answered that particular question 100 times previous.
Over time I've found I don't hang around the forums as much as I used to, or at least not for the same reasons. Where once I was looking to absorb as much information as I could about everything, I now mostly hit up rumors, check battle reports, help newer players with army lists, things like that. Blogs for me have taken over for most of what I used forums for previously. I hit up blogs to get the opinion of experienced gamers regarding strategy and tactics. This is where, for me, blogs excel. As said in the article, forums it becomes hard to find those great nuggets of wisdom you once read but with a blog it's far more accessible. Not only that, with blogs it's less about a bunch of people tossing back and forth in a discussion for 10 pages about the merit of some piece of wargear or a particular unit, saying the same things over and over that you've read so many times your eyes bleed. Blogs tend to bring a new perspective to something, at least the good ones, and tend to not drudge up the same old thing.
Well put Jive! Let me know when you get tired of YTTH you always welcome to write for me hehe.
By chance are you going to be at QCR Fantasy GT next week?
Thanks for the moderator perspective
It is funny how the really niche forums often do better than the catch all ones.
Haha, if I'm ever a free agent I'll take you up on that offer. Hell I'd write stuff now if you'd want me to. It's 2010 baby, free love, let's all blog tonight and worry about the consequences tomorrow.
Also, alas I shall not. As a married working schmuck, my ability to travel for toy soldiers is pretty limited. If you're ever in FL though hit me up.
Tastytaste, would you please stop to quote such classics like Hercules' labors and use such difficult words like “mundane”? If you continue to so, I'd have to reshape my picture of you being the king of Warhammer trash culture. =) =) =)
When I first started forums were the place to be. You could and wanted to search the various treads and find out what what you wanted. Ironically the success of a forum to attract comments becomes it's very downfall as noted by the point of managing data. These days you hit a forum thread that might be relevant then you have to navigate through pages of comments that may or may not be helpful. These days a blogroll tells me what's happening at the blogs I like that fit my interests. The authors I want to hear from write their comments. I don't have to sift through comment upon comment to find the content I want. Forums are the buffet but these days I prefer the specific cuisine offered by blogs.
>A blog is very much, “What have you done for me lately?” People simply won't look around your archive – they'll just hit another blog
I… I read blog archives. ;_;
In my experience, a strong focus (whatever that focus may be) helps to build a sense of community. Moreover, as a group's size increases, it becomes harder and harder to maintain the community and system of introducing and socializing new users to fit with the existing ones. (The shifts in the early internet and Usenet in many ways foretend these same trends, which are rather universal.) By limiting their audience, niche forums naturally avoid these issues to a degree, although places like B&C and Dakka have grown large enough that they must still grapple with these issues.
There's too many white noise posters on places like warseer to get any real discussion going.
Just looking at the most heavily moderated section, the rumors, and you'll have to way through dozens of worthless wishlisting and fluff nutters before you can find any real information. No tauman5000, no one cares that you think crisis suits should be T 10 in a thread about the Tyranid codex. No sisterlover10, no one cares about the minute functions of the sisters of babble in a thread about the new warhammer rulebook.
It really is how you promote your archive and how much content you have. Sadly I am still working out the kinks of getting my archive properly promoted. I do keep track of it and people still do look at some old stuff from time to time.
Until recently, almost my entire online Warhammer chatter was kept within the confines of Ordo Fanaticus, a forum for Pacific NW gamers set up by a gaming club in Portland. I've been an active member there since 2005; and despite tons of e-drama and practically yearly hacking; the site is strong and a great source of info and discussion.
I think what keeps it going is that so many of us know each other from either local gaming stores or else from local tournies that we have common ground enough to keep posting there. It also keeps things more civil when the majority of people know each other or know someone who knows the person being spoken to.
What is the deal with that hacking of that forum does anyone know who it is?
AFAIK its just they just tend to pick hosts that are vulnerable or something. Its entirely just random that we know of.
Only benefit for me is that it resets the post count so I can keep jumping out to the lead!
“Today forums grow more dominated by large personalities and crippled by ego driven moderators.”
I disagree, and whats more I think that you'd be hard pressed to claim that the blogs are any improvement, if anything they combine these two entities into one person who uses his blog to preach his opinon at the world, more than a few blog owners I know are more than willing to start deleting comments that disagree with them.
Secondly it doesn't escape notice that many blogs are run by people with little to no social skills, Stelek as a prime example perhaps, who simply get banned from forums because they lack the ability to be part of a community.
On top of this many blogs then get caught up in nipping at each other and attention whoring for readers, while 40KOnline might look down on Dakka as being full of pricks, Dakka looks down on Warseer for being full of mindles spam and Warseer looks down on 40KOnline for having lots of newbies these don't turn into huge article of hate and bile. They co-exist fairly happily.
The appearance of blogs doesn't mean they're automatically better, simply that they're new, some are better at some tasks (eg, http://space-wolves-grey.blogspot.com/ is THE space wolf resource) and others are worthless collections of whiny morons (YTTH being again an ideal example)
Very well said.
I think the biggest point is that blogs offer information in easier bites as well easy to fine. Forums are crowded monstrosities that can be very daunting for anyone looking for one a specific nugget of information. As a blogger I naturally want to defend blogs that doesn't mean their are not stinkers around. I also think their are very few blogs in the sceme of things that go the attention whore route, they just happen to be very vocal.
Thanks for the Space-Wolves link that blog seems pretty sweet!
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This is good
Want an example of a successful forum? Go check out the WAAAAGH forums some time. The main page may not seem to have been updated since the Ice Age, but the forums are where it’s all happening. The main pages are just there as a foyer, frankly.
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