Do you think that forum boards are better off nowadays?

[Rabbitearsblog]

So, lately I've been going on lots of forum boards and talking with other fans and members of the community and I find that being on forum boards nowadays is a lot better than it was years ago.  Like, I remembered when I first went on the IMDB forum boards and things were pretty bad over there as there were a lot of members that said offensive things and even put down other members for having different opinions.  It got so bad that IMDB ended up shutting down the forum boards.  But now with the creation of Twitter and the more toxic fans going over to Twitter (for better or worse), it seems that the forum boards are a lot better off nowadays without the toxic fans coming here and ruining the experience for people who just want to talk about their favorite franchises without feeling bad about their opinions.

But what do you think?  Do you think that forum boards are better off nowadays or do you still think it's the same?

[Solister]

Other than SSMB, I'm not active on any other forum, and if not for Reddit, not even any other social media.

I do have an account on a Star Wars Forums, which alongside Sonic would have been my biggest franchise passion, but my stay pretty much lasted until the end for the hype of The Rise of Skywalker.

I'm not really sure if I agree that Forums these days are better than they were on their hey-day (which is not like I can say anything, because I've already gone to some where accounts and even posts were made near if not earlier to the date I was born) but I can definitely say I had some unpleasant experiences in the past 5-7 years in other forums. However, I feel I was a very annoying teenager back then.

I do think that with popularization of other social medias, annoying people probably left the forums and let it to the most dedicated fans instead.

Regarding social medias, I never had a Twitter account, despite already considering it, but I don't think I'd like the environment and definitely wouldn't use it to interact. I did have a Facebook account, but pretty much abandoned it about a year ago. Reddit on the other hand still remains my main social media, which is similar to the usual forum format, but I'd like to point how it pretty much substituted many forums I could have used simply for the fact of needing a single account.

So yeah, in short, I think it can be more complex than it seems, you'd need to analyze the kind of community, its demographics and where they better established themselves, for example, would you say that Forums got better or that the people who use them today are better educated?

Indirectly related and self-promoting myself, I really enjoy this text I wrote a bit over a year ago:

[JezMM]

There's generally less drama these days compared to the Sonic forums I frequented as a teenager, mainly because the staff aren't made up of angsty also-teenagers and can thus nip most drama in the bud in a mature manner and/or without adding to it all and/or without feeling like they're throwing their weight around.

Usually. =x

[Rabbitearsblog]

8 minutes ago, JezMM said:

There's generally less drama these days compared to the Sonic forums I frequented as a teenager, mainly because the staff aren't made up of angsty also-teenagers and can thus nip most drama in the bud in a mature manner and/or without adding to it all and/or without feeling like they're throwing their weight around.

Usually. =x

That is true.  With forum boards, there's much more moderation with forum boards these days then back then and that probably helped make the forum boards a bit safer to use.

[SolidSurgeTT]

I primarily exist on GameFAQs but not for any Sonic community.

I trust very few places to open up about my interest in Sonic.

[Rabbitearsblog]

2 hours ago, SolidSurgeTT said:

I primarily exist on GameFAQs but not for any Sonic community.

I trust very few places to open up about my interest in Sonic.

I feel like this site is the safest place to talk about Sonic without getting into spats with other fans.

[Cuz]

Most of the forums I knew of are dead by down. So in that regard they're not so better off. xD Would love to find a few active comunities but most people have moved to discord in my experience. It's not the same thing. 

[Rabbitearsblog]

50 minutes ago, Cuz said:

Most of the forums I knew of are dead by down. So in that regard they're not so better off. xD Would love to find a few active comunities but most people have moved to discord in my experience. It's not the same thing. 

Oh yeah.  I have a discord account, but it's hard to get a lot of people there to communicate.

[GeAr-DX]

On general I think that on the actual days things are better in forums, especially Sonic forums, because most of the people in the forums today really like the franchise or focus of these forums. God, the late 2000s until the end of the forum era was a terror, I got out of all forums at this time, even my favorites, with were two international of Sonic, one brazilian of Sonic, a Crash Bandicoot forum and a Rockman forum (with was the most toxic together with the Sonic forums). The Crash was cool until 2008, one day started with a lot of new people appearing and after some weeks the general topic of the forum was just "Crash of the Titans/Mind over Mutant sucks, it killed the franchise, Crash was good only in the first three games" and atacking the good part of the forum that liked the games. It even have similarities to what happened in Sonic and Rockman forums. This kills the forum because most of the people become unconfortable of posting and when most of the dudes stop posting the jerks don't have their dopamine shot of making someone angry.

Most of the toxic dudes are in the Facebook groups, Twitter and I dunno what they have at a Discord. And god bless this, the net is kinda of divinding itself now. I even want to make a topic about it... guess I will later.

[Rabbitearsblog]

2 hours ago, ART-DX said:

On general I think that on the actual days things are better in forums, especially Sonic forums, because most of the people in the forums today really like the franchise or focus of these forums. God, the late 2000s until the end of the forum era was a terror, I got out of all forums at this time, even my favorites, with were two international of Sonic, one brazilian of Sonic, a Crash Bandicoot forum and a Rockman forum (with was the most toxic together with the Sonic forums). The Crash was cool until 2008, one day started with a lot of new people appearing and after some weeks the general topic of the forum was just "Crash of the Titans/Mind over Mutant sucks, it killed the franchise, Crash was good only in the first three games" and atacking the good part of the forum that liked the games. It even have similarities to what happened in Sonic and Rockman forums. This kills the forum because most of the people become unconfortable of posting and when most of the dudes stop posting the jerks don't have their dopamine shot of making someone angry.

Most of the toxic dudes are in the Facebook groups, Twitter and I dunno what they have at a Discord. And god bless this, the net is kinda of divinding itself now. I even want to make a topic about it... guess I will later.

Oooh! You should make a topic about this!