Are (RPG) Message Boards starting to reach an inflection point of decline?

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imo Discord's connection to video gaming and just being in the right place at the right time explains its success more so than its clumsy UI. G+ but at a larger scale. Although like a lot of platforms I wonder/doubt if it makes any actual money.

Once a platform decides to monetize the quality of the service tends to go into the toilet but people stick with it out of inertia. Amusingly I see Reddit has promised its hungry investors that it has it has a lot of room to grow and finally really monetize, a platform that has been around for 15 years and not innovated a single thing.
 
Voros said:
imo Discord's connection to video gaming and just being in the right place at the right time explains its success more so than its clumsy UI. G+ but at a larger scale. Although like a lot of platforms I wonder/doubt if it makes any actual money.

Once a platform decides to monetize the quality of the service tends to go into the toilet but people stick with it out of inertia. Amusingly I see Reddit has promised its hungry investors that it has it has a lot of room to grow and finally really monetize, a platform that has been around for 15 years and not innovated a single thing.
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I couldn't believe that Reddit got rid of their awards because they had to be raking in the cash on those. I later found out why they did it but I wasn't totally convinced.
 
chuckdee said:
Yeah, you had me with IRC, but this is sort of stretching it into hyperbole.
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I'll admit to possible slight hyperbole on the Discord bit as I've only used that when required for a game group or one wiki I help with. The images and videos suck bandwith, it requires updates practically every time I open it, and I don't want to listen to random strangers yammering all the time. If I want that sort of yammering there's drunks, geese, and possibly even drunk geese that can get me that.

But other than adding vid & image to bbs/newsgroup I've nothing positive to say about Reddit. Its clunky, has ads that annoy me, does javascript stuff I dislike, and is generally just a nuisance every time I try to use the site. It just dosen't do anything a forum doesn't do as far as I can see and when I find something on it I get annoyed trying to navigate.
 
Voros said:
Reddit's constant push to use their shitty app is also super annoying and pretty much killed any of the little interest I had in using it.
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I use a combination of Adguard and Brave Browser on Android which kills the constant "Please use our app" crap on Reddit so I can just use their mobile website in peace.
 
I do kinda miss using finger to find out if my buddies were online or logging into my favoured MUSH for some light, impromptu roleplay. That latter part has mostly vanished I think.
I never felt much love for IRC because of the same issue as Twitter really - just an endless stream and the history was just ....the past. Discord is better for that but only just. I use it for a design chat and the asynchronous nature of it and the ease of running my own community server pleases me. (And I find it weird that my little server has more traffic than the Pub discord. You lot hate discord that much???)

I'm kinda focused on that MUSH comment now.
I really would just hang out on the server in character, explore a bit, sometimes while doing assignments IRL and just bump into people (strangers) and RP a scene. I miss that.
 
lategamer said:
I do kinda miss using finger to find out if my buddies were online or logging into my favoured MUSH for some light, impromptu roleplay. That latter part has mostly vanished I think.
I never felt much love for IRC because of the same issue as Twitter really - just an endless stream and the history was just ....the past. Discord is better for that but only just. I use it for a design chat and the asynchronous nature of it and the ease of running my own community server pleases me. (And I find it weird that my little server has more traffic than the Pub discord. You lot hate discord that much???)
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I load up the pub forums, check to see if there's anything interesting going on, then go about my business. Thread have titles, they don't require much scrolling back and forth to follow, etc. Discord... it's a pain, so I don't check it.
 
Sharrow said:
I load up the pub forums, check to see if there's anything interesting going on, then go about my business. Thread have titles, they don't require much scrolling back and forth to follow, etc. Discord... it's a pain, so I don't check it.
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Everything on facebook or discord just feels so disposable when compared to forums. You see a post once and its gone forever. I drop in on a games official discord chat and its just a wall of text that scrolls back to infinity. No order. No structure.

I have the same problem with the Teams chats at work. When was that information cut-n-pasted in? Why isnt the search box finding it? Was I supposed to do something 17 screens worth of chat messages ago? And thats before you get the people talking about everything other then work. I've had to mute whole group chats because they just wanted to talk about football or paste in a never-ending series of stupid meme pictures.

With forums I get to see everything and I can choose what to read and engage with. With Facebook I am at the mercy of timing and the programmed logic of the system deciding what posts it wants to show me.
 
lategamer said:
I do kinda miss using finger to find out if my buddies were online or logging into my favoured MUSH for some light, impromptu roleplay. That latter part has mostly vanished I think.
I never felt much love for IRC because of the same issue as Twitter really - just an endless stream and the history was just ....the past. Discord is better for that but only just. I use it for a design chat and the asynchronous nature of it and the ease of running my own community server pleases me. (And I find it weird that my little server has more traffic than the Pub discord. You lot hate discord that much???)

I'm kinda focused on that MUSH comment now.
I really would just hang out on the server in character, explore a bit, sometimes while doing assignments IRL and just bump into people (strangers) and RP a scene. I miss that.
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I was more a MUD person but yeah I miss just hanging out in a server doing whatever waiting if a friend came on. Maybe chat, maybe do quests.

It was good times and a good way to stay connected.
 
I think traditional forums like this have peaked and some have not survived, but I think it is seeing something of a revival as the new hotness social media platform demonstrate their weaknesses. While many like to bash them FB, Discord etc do have their own set of advantages, #1 being easy access. It takes almost no effort to set up a new group.

Likewise the format of forums is very good for certain types of communications. Anything where archiving is useful, this is a superior format.

I've noticed the antiquated Yahoo email groups format has also had a resurgence, with IO groups picking up. Personally I don't find it a great format, but it does have some unique advantages being based around email.


To say one is better than another really misses the point, it is all situational.

Which is better a telephone, smart phone, tablet or computer? There is no right answer, as it is highly dependent on use. Writing a screen play on a smart phone would be madness, and a computer makes a terrible mobile telephone. If you literally just need a phone, a "dumb" phone is by far the most cost effective.

FB is great for groups to share basic info, like a local sports club using it to post practice times, games etc. Very easy to set up, no cost, wide availability and pretty much anybody who has basic internet skills can use it. It is pretty terrible as a long term repository for information.


Acmegamer said:
Yep, I look back fondly on logging into Compuserve or GEnie to read and reply to things that I was interested in. GEnie had this software (called Aladdin) that logged in, snagged all the new stuff that you were following from the various bbs and downloaded it and logged you off. Back then if you logged into GEnie during prime time 08:00 to 17:00 the per charges were much, much higher, so software like that was a boon. Anyhow the software was organized and you could save email, replies, saved bb pages etc in various folders. If you were writing emails or replying to bb topics, it wouldn't upload and post them until you were ready. Was really nice software.

The pricing back then for GEnie was 12.95 an hour during prime time, 6.00 an hour off prime time. Then there were some of us like myself who had a extra surcharge due to not having a local access node. I had to use a SprintNet node to log into GEnie which cost me an additional 2.00 and hour, this was to save what was known as "extended local service" charges which could be higher than if I called my folks out west in California from Virginia. Basically calling someplace ten to fifteen miles down the road could be more costly per minute than calling fucking California. I learned this the hard way when I returned from Europe in 1992 to log into GEnie and the first months phone bill hit. lol. Jaw dropping bill at the time. So the 2.00 an hour extra fee to use the Sprintnet node was a money saver.

This meandering post brought to you by chuckdee chuckdee by mentioning asynchronous communication and my mind wandering off into the past. Don't ask me how much it was per minute to call from West Germany to California during the 1980s. I used to stand in the phone booth with a literal stack of 5 deutsche mark coins (or was it 10 deutsche mark, its been a long fucking time) feeding the phone as fast as I could while talking to family.
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Pre-paid calling cards were the big thing in the late 90s. With all my travelling for work I spent a lot of time standing at a phone booth checking in with my girlfriend (wife) until I got a cell phone in 2002 (the classic Nokia "Type 1 phaser").

chuckdee said:
This has always been my problem. People forcing people to label themselves as Cis- with no regards for the fact that perhaps these people don't identify with Cis- and are not comfortable coming out. Or maybe just don't want the label.

If people want to label themselves and it helps them, that's great. But don't assume for others.
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I give people the respect of using their preferred term, and I don't take kindly to people telling me what to call myself. "That other place" was terrible about that, I even saw them ban a guy because they considered his preferred term for himself as a homophobic slur (the Q in LGTBQ). I love the irony of promoting tolerance through aggressive intolerance.
 
lategamer said:
(And I find it weird that my little server has more traffic than the Pub discord. You lot hate discord that much???)
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I don't hate Discord. I just don't see much point to the Pub's Discord when we've already got an active forum here. Edit: except as a place to actually game.

Pretty much the only time I go on the Pub Discord is if I'm out and about, need to kill some time while I wait for my food or whatever, and feel like bullshitting about RPGs. Then I'll go on the Discord, because on my phone I find the Discord app easier to use than web-based forums.
 
Toadmaster said:
I think traditional forums like this have peaked and some have not survived, but I think it is seeing something of a revival as the new hotness social media platform demonstrate their weaknesses. While many like to bash them FB, Discord etc do have their own set of advantages, #1 being easy access. It takes almost no effort to set up a new group.

Likewise the format of forums is very good for certain types of communications. Anything where archiving is useful, this is a superior format.

I've noticed the antiquated Yahoo email groups format has also had a resurgence, with IO groups picking up. Personally I don't find it a great format, but it does have some unique advantages being based around email.


To say one is better than another really misses the point, it is all situational.

Which is better a telephone, smart phone, tablet or computer? There is no right answer, as it is highly dependent on use. Writing a screen play on a smart phone would be madness, and a computer makes a terrible mobile telephone. If you literally just need a phone, a "dumb" phone is by far the most cost effective.

FB is great for groups to share basic info, like a local sports club using it to post practice times, games etc. Very easy to set up, no cost, wide availability and pretty much anybody who has basic internet skills can use it. It is pretty terrible as a long term repository for information.




Pre-paid calling cards were the big thing in the late 90s. With all my travelling for work I spent a lot of time standing at a phone booth checking in with my girlfriend (wife) until I got a cell phone in 2002 (the classic Nokia "Type 1 phaser").



I give people the respect of using their preferred term, and I don't take kindly to people telling me what to call myself. "That other place" was terrible about that, I even saw them ban a guy because they considered his preferred term for himself as a homophobic slur (the Q in LGTBQ). I love the irony of promoting tolerance through aggressive intolerance.
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Seconded.

Why would anyone return to that forum where they display hypocrisy through tolerance by being anything but.

Over on another FB forum dedicated to Pathfinder, one of the posters got in trouble simply by responding to another with a direct quote of RAW from the PF 1E core book.

The other poster considered quoting RAW as an “ attack” and the post removed. They kind of gave a backhanded apology for doing so. Yet before taking action take an objective view of what was written. Not ban or punish someone because their feelings were hurt.

Not to mention the other poster was absolutely wrong in their assessment of a rule so posting RAW as the way to go.
 
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Lunar Ronin said:
Agreed. I hate it. Video game companies have largely shuttered their forums, wikis, and even support and use Discord for everything. I absolutely loathe it. It's bitten quite a few people already, with Discord accounts hacked, and Discord servers hacked or even outright deleted. But it is what it is. I don't think that there's any going back.
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Which sucks, because as a method of information transfer, Discord is an objectively terrible option. It's categorized twitter.
 
chuckdee said:
What's the difference between a MUD and a MUSH?
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MUDs tended to be quest based. Dungeons. Good combat systems. That’s my impression as I kinda bounced off of them.

MUSH tended to be roleplay based. They did have skill systems entertainingly coded character sheets and roll systems but really you could get away without rolling a single one. I messed around on City of Darkness (one based around Manchester in the WOD), Two Moons (Elfquest) and the original Masquerade (Albuquerque in the WOD) and had a great time.

Weirdly now that I have a ubiquitous internet connection and tech, MUSHes and MUDs are no more.
 
chuckdee said:
What's the difference between a MUD and a MUSH?
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Honestly for the user, not much. It's your typical "needing" to label every damn thing sort of deal as someone who is an old MUD person. Also some of it was to be fair just being punny. It's basically splitting hairs to split hairs. Role-play is just as common in a MUD as it is in a MUSH btw.

MU* - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org


Edit: I've been playing text based multiplayer rpgs since returning from Europe in 1992, just as an aside, or MUDs/MUSHs.
 
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T. Foster said:
On the mobile interface (which is how I access the site like 99% of the time) you have to pull down a sidebar menu to see that stuff, which I almost never do.
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Sidebar menu?... oh that expanding menu thing... and the discord thing is on the bottom half thats off the screen. Huh. Knew there was a discord but never noticed that link. Still don't want discord on my phone and I'm actually busy when I'm on my comp.
 
StonesThree said:
Everything on facebook or discord just feels so disposable when compared to forums. You see a post once and its gone forever. I drop in on a games official discord chat and its just a wall of text that scrolls back to infinity. No order. No structure.

I have the same problem with the Teams chats at work. When was that information cut-n-pasted in? Why isnt the search box finding it? Was I supposed to do something 17 screens worth of chat messages ago? And thats before you get the people talking about everything other then work. I've had to mute whole group chats because they just wanted to talk about football or paste in a never-ending series of stupid meme pictures.

With forums I get to see everything and I can choose what to read and engage with. With Facebook I am at the mercy of timing and the programmed logic of the system deciding what posts it wants to show me.
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This sums me up exactly.

I had a similar experience back in 2005 with Tunnels & Trolls. Ken St.Andre ran this place called the "Trollhalla" which was a running stream of discussion where you could type a message, read other messages, and so on. Problem was that if you remember seeing something you might have to scroll back pages and pages to find it. Or if you were off-line for a few days you might have to scroll and scroll to catch up. Horrible idea, and I feel like we're looping around to that kind of thing all over again, only with the ability to post pictures and memes.

Ugh. I love message boards. I have a few I enjoy the most and can check them quickly to see if anything grabs my attention at the moment.
 
I have four traditional forums I frequent which I would describe as thriving. This place, a machinist / metal working forum, a model builders forum and a general tools and stuff forum. Two of the four are relatively new or revitalized.

Now there are several others I participate with that I would call active, but all are only a fraction of what they were 10-15 years ago. I single out the four because to me they show the format is viable, it just requires good management and recruitment.

I think a forum's community is very much chicken and egg. If a forum has a solid, active community it will grow, but management of the forum plays a huge part as well. Good forum management with active recruitment can build up a forum.
Poor forum management will destroy a forum. I think we have all seen vibrant forums decline at the hands of weak / inconsistent moderation, lack of spam control, poor software support / updates, in addition to the more obvious of being actively horrible.

I think that is something many overlook as a benefit of places like Facebook, Discord etc. By default management is handled by "big tech", even to the point of umbrella moderation (gross violations of their AI enforced standards). The strong points (primarily access / ease of use) of these kinds of discussion sites also result in it being very difficult for them to rise above mediocrity.

StonesThree said:
Everything on facebook or discord just feels so disposable when compared to forums. You see a post once and its gone forever. I drop in on a games official discord chat and its just a wall of text that scrolls back to infinity. No order. No structure.

I have the same problem with the Teams chats at work. When was that information cut-n-pasted in? Why isnt the search box finding it? Was I supposed to do something 17 screens worth of chat messages ago? And thats before you get the people talking about everything other then work. I've had to mute whole group chats because they just wanted to talk about football or paste in a never-ending series of stupid meme pictures.

With forums I get to see everything and I can choose what to read and engage with. With Facebook I am at the mercy of timing and the programmed logic of the system deciding what posts it wants to show me.
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Well put, I feel the same way. I also dislike Teams for anything beyond immediate Zoom support. I am an Email guy for anything of lasting importance.

sureshot said:
Seconded.

Why would anyone return to that forum where they display hypocrisy through tolerance by being anything but.

Over on another FB forum dedicated to Pathfinder, one of the posters got in trouble simply by responding to another with a direct quote of RAW from the PF 1E core book.

The other poster considered quoting RAW as an “ attack” and the post removed. They kind of gave a backhanded apology for doing so. Yet before taking action take an objective view of what was written. Not ban or punish someone because their feelings were hurt.

Not to mention the other poster was absolutely wrong in their assessment of a rule so posting RAW as the way to go.
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WTF, how can you have a rules discussion without referring to the rules. Is Pathfinder Fight Club? The first rule of Pathfinder is we don't talk about the rules. :tongue:

T. Foster said:
On the mobile interface (which is how I access the site like 99% of the time) you have to pull down a sidebar menu to see that stuff, which I almost never do.
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I believe that "side bar" is referred to as The Hamburger. :wink:
 
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Honestly Toadmaster I can’t answer your question.

You think if another poster was quoting the core book incorrectly then quoting RAW is what any of us would do.

But not at that particular forum. Someone feelings were hurt, let’s not see what for and prematurely ban the post. I absolutely understand and respect not wanting to hurt other posters feelings. Yet one has to draw a line somewhere. What is next saying that Precise Shot requires Pont Blank Shot as a feat requirement a personal attack.

It’s why there is an Parhfinder Uncensored FB group. Due to too many uneven subjective calls by the mods of the official one.
 
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As a Traveller fan, and an old guy to boot, I hang out in these places for my rpg fix: COTI boards (not as busy as they used to be, and sometimes cantankerous), here (not so much for Traveller, but because I like the discourse), one FB group (not too bad for conversations), one Reddit and one Discord (both not favored for the reasons discussed in this thread). TBP used to have interesting convos (to me) from time to time, same with TheSite, but I just don’t go to either much anymore.
Facebook compared to the Pub is like the difference between a for profit convention and a fan run one like DragonCon. The former is about making money, the latter is about having fun.
 
My formative Traveller online experience was the Traveller Mailing List (which still exists, but is very quiet, as is the case with most mailing lists that survive).
 
Sharrow said:
My formative Traveller online experience was the Traveller Mailing List (which still exists, but is very quiet, as is the case with most mailing lists that survive).
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I remember when the TML had to split into two separate lists (TML and Xboat) because the CT grognards couldn’t play nice about TNE.
 
T. Foster said:
I remember when the TML had to split into two separate lists (TML and Xboat) because the CT grognards couldn’t play nice about TNE.
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And then the TNE crowd made their own list because they couldn't play nice with the T4 crowd (and vice versa).
 
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