New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
Just today morning I was thinking of phpBB! Nostalgia...
And people still pay for a licence to use vBulletin?
People left forums and IRC, to use social media. In the past a person had to talk to someone for a couple of hours and gain some trust before sharing their pictures; nowadays people share their lives for free on a plate, for the whole world to see (including complete strangers).
The world has simply changed. phpBB and forums in general have evolved from a technical aspect (even IRC has evolved), but nowadays people simply like to follow the herd and share their lives with everybody in the easiest way possible. It not the fault of old systems and technology, it is about what consumers want and their complete lack of care for privacy. Instead of clicking on threads or join topics, it is much easier to scroll aimlessly every day and share some pictures and videos every now and then so one does not feel lonely.
It is sad when I think about it, not because of old systems, but because of what humanity is turning into. Or maybe this is just my opinion and I am simply too old for this social media junk.
I bought a theme and plugins for phpBB to play with phpBB once. I don't see spending money on software as an issue, especially if it makes things nicer, more pleasant, or more comfortable.
Me neither. In fact, one reason lots of free software goes deadpool is because people aren't willing to pay for premium features or contribute to maintaining the code (giving time instead). I'll happily buy premium themes and software, or use commercial products.
I more meant that forums are becoming less popular, vBulletin still looks dated, and the monthly (recurring) licence fees are really not cheap.
I hate discourse
Bigger platforms took over. Groups on Facebook, Reddit etc.
Also no antispam protection.
There are tools designed to spam forums like Xrumer. Without serious modifications forum will be spammed to death by bots.
Just imagine that you want to start forum, buy domain, hosting etc and one day your hosting account is blocked because of resources overusage. Tons of fake profiles, posts etc - you need to remove these by hand. Or just start over.
So you implement recaptcha and forum is still spammed to death (Xrummer was albe to break recaptcha v1).
There's been a couple projects to provide a unified discord/slack like interface to multiple communities/platforms. I haven't tried these yet, but:
Might be something to look into if you want the central app without the central authority.
Forums usage in general has decreased a lot due to:
Also, relatively speaking, phpbb has become less popular than other forums due to it not having a number of modern features users & admins want like realtime interactions and e-mail digest (those weekly "what's new since you last visited" e-mails) that help keep people engaged. Pace of development has been quite slow and it hasn't kept up.
For me personally, I was 2 when DSLReports launched yet I truly miss DSLReports. It was a great resource for networking and telecom information.
Yes, there's Reddit. But Reddit attracts so-called "mere mortals" who aren't as technically savvy. DSLReports attracted very technically savvy networking enthusiasts. I learned about how broadband worked from DSLR.
A lot of DSLR' use declined when US cable ISPs monopolized in the early 2010s and DSL resellers declined. DSLR was basically LEB/LET for early US broadband ISPs, but evolved into a techical forum as US ISPs became mostly Big Telecom.
And even when non-cable ISPs showed up, DSLReports stayed dead. Yet 4chan had the same website issues and they survived.
Ye but those you do get to join your gnarly old server you know will be hardcore aficionados with very similar cynical views to your own.
Yes me too. When I have rediscovered forums I hate to see they are using a modern one over a classic, but of course most who run forums will think they have at least look current.
I noticed more entrenched nerdy niches like electronics forums or ones with an older userbase generally like cycling, will still use phpbb which works for me!
The electronics forum I joined, and left, not long after though I found just as bitchy as your average social media. The cycling one and others with older user base people are more polite and I notice treat people more how they would treat them in real life.
Oh and I seem to recall that discourse is the hated suggested forum that archlinux is to be updated to.
forums for legends and social media for noobs. social media is pure addiction with shit content while forums were full with excellence.
The reason is, quite simply, cost. It costs money to host a forum. You also have to spend time maintaining and securing it and setting up monetization.
It costs nothing to have a social media profile. All the maintenance, security, and monetization are taken care of by the company hosting the platform.
Sure, you can use a cheap VPS to host the forum and hire volunteer moderators, but the majority of people don't want to go through that. Forums might make a comeback in the future as Internet censorship and age verification requirements increase and people realize they're better off self-hosting their communities.
They wont make a comeback because - bots - you dont even know these days if you replay to a human or some agi.
With the time passing it will get worse.
And phpbb vs vbulletin or etc forum software it dont matter
What matters for users is the template and the forum needs to load fast. Phpbb is better, js based ones like discourse are horrible.
same here!
Not sure what bots have to do with whether you use social media or a forum? Can't they just as easily go on either platform? Or are you making a case for extreme privacy invasion and demand for ID and such that social media use in order to block bots?
@user3028938 i mean, for example, you could be a bot and i cant know. So i engage in a conversation without knowing if you are real or no.
Yes i understand that but I don't see what it has to do with being on social media or forums. The issue would be the same wouldn't it?