I’m sure this question has been discussed quite a number of times and I’ve done a lot of research and still haven’t been able to come to a conclusion. So I’m asking again here: Do you think that forums as a means of exchanging information, experience and ideas are in decline because of social media or will they continue to exist? Many thanks, Torsten
Hi there Openmind,
I cannot speak for forums in general, but coding forums
in particular are most definitely in decline. 
coothead
Why is that? Is it because coders are less active exchanging information or are they shifting to social media? I mean, the number of internet users is still growing and so must be the number of ‘coders’ and developers. And I do think that exchanging knowledge and information has becoming more and more important.
I cannot answer that. 
There are probably many reasons for coding forums’
steady decline.
All I can say is that I was once regularly active on quite a
number of coding forums.
Today I have only two left, and postings are rather infrequent
in comparison to yesteryear.
coothead
So maybe it’s just you posting less? Or you do see it as trend being true for other coders too?
For me, Social sites and Forums are significantly different experiences.
There is considerable overlap, but I find Social sites to be similar to being at a large party with many conversations going on. I can have relatively short interactions with others, but I miss a lot and there are frequent distractions. They tend to be a bit too chaotic for my liking.
I find Forums on the other hand, to be more similar to a convention. I can “mingle” somewhat if I want to, but I can also “attend a presentation” or participate in a “round table” when I want more substance than “how are my grandchildren doing”, “what has Pete been up to lately” etc.
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No, the forums that I no longer visit have ceased to be,
in a similar way to Monty Python’s Parrot" …
coothead
Thank you very much for sharing your view on the difference between social media and forums, it pretty much correlates with how I see the situation. You are right, a forum is a much better place for meaningful discussions and than social media platforms. Forums can be even used as a workshop where projects are developed and skills improved while Facebook is more a place to chill out and exchange superficial gossip.
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It is not easy to answer the two questions because there was no time frame specified.
Do you think that forums as a means of exchanging information, experience and ideas are in decline because of social media
These points may be of interest:
- The Internet is constantly evolving
- … especially for mobile users which I believe now exceed 60% of all traffic
- The increased traffic comprises mostly of Young Noobies who may be ignorant of forums
- Perhaps knowledgable forum members still “Lurk” but no longer participate
- …and no longer contribute because of the improved search engines solutions
- SEO information is in abundance, has greatly improved and freely available
- Many platform compatability problems exist
- …because users have difficulty interfacing languages, protocols, etc
- Internet users are more aware and expect perfection
will they continue to exist?
- Yes because they still provide answers that lack Search Engine solutions
- …especially for the increased prolification of “Cut & Paste” Noobies
- It is now easier to post solutions
- Often solutions are complicated or maybe outdated
- Also numerous solutions have no means of contacting the author
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Forums are still exits for exchange information, idea for now and in future as well.
Yes, Forum is still popular, because it is the best platform for discussion a specific topic…
Yes sir, forums are still very popular in these days. The are also used as a source of sending huge amount of traffic to the site.
Forum is best way of knowledge exchange,share,and discussion.
where we know about this topic or anything else.
I am wondering about the same thing. Where’s everyone?
I used to visit and contribute to several large discussion boards in the past - but not anymore! They are becoming deserted places and I don’t feel like talking to myself there - so I don’t post.
Where do people discuss web development and stuff these days? Some Facebook groups are slowly dying, too.
Are people using mobile apps to exchange ideas?
I’ve downloaded a few, like a video chat with strangers and an app to talk about medical issues. Those are more like social sites with short bits of info here and there and no consistent conversations about specifics.
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I think a lot of people like the immediate nature of social media; forum discussions tend to be much slower, by their very nature. However, social media and chat is ephemeral; it’s harder to go back and find an earlier conversation compared with a forum.
I think there’s a place for both, and their function is different.
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I think the idea of forums are still popular, but I think individual site forums are in a sharp decline.
Reddit, for all intents and purposes, is a forum. It’s just a different format. It has taken over a massive portion of traffic from traditional per-site forums. Lots of sites have just moved their forums and support there. It’s the same idea, but with many more topics at your fingertips. I spend a lot of time browsing and replying to people from my personalized r/new feed, rather than the general feed. It’s a very different and more personal experience.
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I was wondered when I’ve seen that forums are really still popular. As for me I use social networks more, but sometimes it’s more interesting to discuss something at a specialized forum.
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Hi openmind,
I think that’s a good question, for me forums are still popular to those people who wants to discuss specific topics and also to be part of the community they want to belong with, and I think sharing of ideas and information is quite less right now due to the paid courses, because instead of giving or sharing information they want to earn some value to their information by selling it as a course. well that my point of view right now but in conclusion i think forums are still popular.
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Forums to me as aimed at asking (or answering) specific questions. In general i do a quick search if i want a tutorial on how to do something as there is probably a website that has that. When i get stuck though i head to a forum and ask the specific questions. Even then quite often google etc will point you at a previously created thread which will answer the question.
My personal feeling is that there are a lot of websites out there giving good tutorials so there are less questions that need to be asked or they have already been asked.
Coupled with a lot of wisiwig services that build websites for you without having to have such an indepth knowledge perhaps there are less people learning the hard way. A small company 10 years ago trying to make a website might have had a lot of questions manually coding the pages etc. Now you log onto wix etc and have a website up and running in 10minutes and can choose from 5 thousand templates*
When it comes to PHP tutorials, i wonder how many of them are out of date, i wouldn’t be surprised if a good few use the mysql_* extension which got removed from OHP 7 to be replaced with the mysqli_* extension or PDO
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