On one of the forums I ran I made the mistake of bribing people to join by offering to post ten posts on their forum in return for three posts on mine. It got extremely hectic with the requests etc.
Bribery to Get Members
- Thread starter Jason76
- Start date
Forums aren't dead. It's just that certain subjects can no longer carry forums anymore. Topics like film, fashion, etc can still be used to build a web community from. But random chatter or casual banter? Nope. People can do that on Facebook and other platforms now.
I have read a lot of discussions in other forums that the forum is giving way to social media particularly to the Facebook Group which is practically a forum but in a different design. A forum has boards where you can post the specified topics so it is organized while in a Facebook group there is just the timeline where it is a merry mix up of everything including sundry and miscellaneous. I am still for the forum because it is neat and I can easily retrieve old discussions for reference. I couldn't easily do that in Facebook groups.
Since couple of years I have been active on a lot of forums and I admit these are paid to post forums. I am staying on a forum as long as they are paying and once they stop paying, I just abandon these forums. having said that I am also active on forums that have stopped paying. When the forum stops paying, I need some reasons to stay on these site. The site must be interesting or the site should be offering me something, for instance information, free promotion etc.
Politics might be one good place for forums - as some people's politics are too extreme for Facebook. I mean, it would be nice to have the peace of mind it won't be banned.
With discord now it's even harder to get forums alive now unless you offer something in return imo. Politics would be easier to get headed arguments, share your opinions, etc. on discord. Unless it's things you need a site to physically share it's hard to get a forum up these days. Even my forum with 40k+ people is extremely dead compared to when it only had like 10k member back 2-3 years ago.
Well, honestly, XenForo and I guess Invision Power Services, Burning Boards etc. are still making money - so forums can't be that dead. I mean, they're not making as much as in the past - but they haven't quit their day jobs!
Forums being dead and forum companies being dead are two different things though. You can still make a product for something that has no demand. People like us who still buy xenforo, etc. licenses and make websites/forums are still going to be there, but the matter of people joining is completely different sadly.
I guess then they would be like clubs that a few buddies in the neighborhood join? 🙂 Well, nothing wrong with that.
You could still get banned on a forum though. It's just that such a decision would be up to the forum owner or admins. As opposed to Facebook's system which is really left in the hands of a shadowy council.
A lot of these massive platforms (Facebook, WordPress.com (the free/paid hosting), Blogspot) though are pretty lenient. I'm surprised at the stuff that is allowed. It would seem like the owners would want free speech hosting - because the topics and opinions are pretty much hate speech I think.
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fantanoice
Madly Diligent
A lot of social media platforms are garbage when it comes to moderation. Depictions of violence are fine but show the nipple of someone breastfeeding and they flip out.
My plan is to launch social media profiles for my forum and work on building that as well as keeping the forum available for topics of discussion and potentially service. I may pay someone to help get a little bit of momentum but I am not going to rely on it for actual activity.
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