edit: I ain’t complaining. If reddit engagement is dying and forums are taking it’s place,
Forums are more private and I generally hate reddit :)
I want to know just who these people are? I mean, the success of forums have been a surprise to me. And recently, in my experience Tech reddits (linux distros and such) haven’t been getting as much attention as they used to get.
If I have a question regarding MX Linux or someone has asked a question regrading it, it seems reasonable to me that I would find it on Reddit. Since there are generally more people on reddit than on forums and reddit is like a super forum with almost everything under the sun attached to it and showing up in your feed. So, I might not be passionate enough to just stay on MX forum, but I will get enough variety on reddit that I will be able to stay interested and browse it more.
I don’t know enough about MX Linux to frequent the forums, not do I want to know/read every small issue someone else has. But, if I come across a post on reddit while I am just browsing through my feed, I will make sure I try to help them as much as possible, but yeah, I don’t see myself going to forums to try and help people. So, I don’t get why forums are so successful.
Are there really so many people to frequent forums and provide answers to people who seem to be in trouble. I love MX but it’s not my passion and frankly, I am surprised that there are many people for whom it seems like it is.
I was a big forum user in the early 2000s. Facebook pretty much killed all the ones I frequented (I’m still bitter).
The community on the forums was something I’ve never really seen on something like Reddit. Reddit is too big.
With the forums I got to know people’s personalities, I saw people grow up. I was invited to wedding, met people’s families. People came to the forums to celebrate a marriage or graduation, but also to morn the loss of parents or to help cope with cancer. We were like an online family. I spoke to a lot of those people more than anyone else in my life and it spanned over a decade. I miss it.
For the ones that are more focused on a single topic vs a general one, like I was speaking of above. It’s an interest. Forums were a place to get news, share and talk about that news, ask questions, and help others. And for the people who were there all the time, there was a community. Reddit always felt more like a bunch of random people posting random stuff. The avatars and signatures of forums really helped to identify people, have some insight into their personality, and get to know people. Mega sites like Reddit, and even Lemmy, are setup in a way where usernames are mostly ignored. Everyone is part of the anonymous hive mind.
I was on the major forum for a particular book series for a decade. I’m still good friends with several of the people I met there. It was an amazing experience, and it makes me sad that they’re not the same now.
Depends on the size of the community, on some of them the most common posters are known.