Forums as a whole seem to be a dying medium

[Eric]

I don't mean this site, we've never had huge numbers to begin with but as a whole it seems like most of the forum sites I used to visit are either gone or dying. Sure, there are some exceptions but it seems like social media is the gold standard.

 

[RockRock8]

Social media itself is decreasing in users as well. Also sorry, I accidentally pressed the eye roll reaction lol.

 

[Cmaier]

My wife sees me spending time here and she’s jealous - “where can I find something like that for my interests.” I suggested reddit, but she hated it here (for many of the same reasons I do.)

Forums are great. Not sure what the issue is other than people get stuck in the tiktok algorithm and run out of time for other things.

 

[Citysnaps]

My wife sees me spending time here and she’s jealous - “where can I find something like that for my interests.” I suggested reddit, but she hated it here (for many of the same reasons I do.)

Forums are great. Not sure what the issue is other than people get stuck in the tiktok algorithm and run out of time for other things.

Maybe a Facebook group that's about what your wife likes to do? I belong to a couple of photography focused groups and for the most part they seem to be OK. Though I wish there would be more discussions on the craft of *making* photos rather than just posting photos.

 

[Cmaier]

Maybe a Facebook group that's about what your wife likes to do? I belong to a couple of photography focused groups and for the most part they seem to be OK. Though I wish there would be more discussions on the craft of *making* photos rather than just posting photos.

she had already tried facebook. she’s a member of one facebook group still, in fact. Guess it isn’t doing it for her, though.

 

[Eric]

Maybe a Facebook group that's about what your wife likes to do? I belong to a couple of photography focused groups and for the most part they seem to be OK. Though I wish there would be more discussions on the craft of *making* photos rather than just posting photos.

I use FB groups for drone and photography stuff as well and it's a great example of social media taking the place of what forums used to be. It's also much easier to join and manage since there's no need to create new accounts for it all.

 

[Citysnaps]

I use FB groups for drone and photography stuff as well and it's a great example of social media taking the place of what forums used to be. It's also much easier to join and manage since there's no need to create new accounts for it all.

That sounds like it would be a good place to share information, techniques, legal considerations, drone videos (I've come across and like a lot of yours), etc, etc as personal drones are a relatively new hobby/business, and I suspect there's a learning curve that takes a lot of time to get to where you're at.

I'd like to get into ceramics. Same with my wife. And am looking at kilns. The good news is there are a lot of community groups and classes that cover that. Being an artist with a lot of paintings under her belt, my wife would take to ceramics much faster than I will.

 

[Roller]

I used to participate in several forums. These days, I only post regularly here, in large part because the level and tone of discourse are generally high and respectful. Over the years, MR descended into a mess with a low signal-to-noise ratio, a reflexive anti-Apple slant, and little or no effort from many forum members.

I remain fairly active on Reddit, mostly because it's a convenient place with subs that are tied to my specific interests from which I've learned a lot. Of course, there are jerks on Reddit, as there are on other forums and social media, but I don't interact with them.

 

[Herdfan]

Forums are great. Not sure what the issue is.

With FB you can join hundreds or thousands of groups with ONE login.

With Forums you need to create and maintain multiple logins for multiple forums.

People are lazy.

 

[Nycturne]

With FB you can join hundreds or thousands of groups with ONE login.

With Forums you need to create and maintain multiple logins for multiple forums.

With the advent of password managers, I'm starting to believe the bolded is an upside, rather than a downside. Eggs all in one basket/etc.

 

[Eric]

With the advent of password managers, I'm starting to believe the bolded is an upside, rather than a downside. Eggs all in one basket/etc.

PW managers are just not ubiquitous enough yet and are regularly confused, I would say better than 50% of the time I have to reset a password due to the hurdles LastPass makes me jump through when accessing sites you haven't been on in a while. I get that it's all in the name of security but it's such a pain in the ass you have to ask yourself which is worse, changing the PW or trying to get into your password manager in hopes that it'll get you in when it's so hit and miss.

Passkey is the way forward IMO, like a fingerprint as long as you have your device with you and so easy to work with.

 

[Nycturne]

PW managers are just not ubiquitous enough yet and are regularly confused, I would say better than 50% of the time I have to reset a password due to the hurdles LastPass makes me jump through when accessing sites you haven't been on in a while. I get that it's all in the name of security but it's such a pain in the ass you have to ask yourself which is worse, changing the PW or trying to get into your password manager in hopes that it'll get you in when it's so hit and miss.

I'm curious about the bolded bit. Since I'm a 1Password user, I'm not familiar with this. Old accounts or new, it all generally works the same. I have stuff dating back to 2012.

Passkey is the way forward IMO, like a fingerprint as long as you have your device with you and so easy to work with.

Except passkeys need to be managed like passwords on the client. So you still need something managing them. Built-in to the platform or not. Specifically because how iOS/etc work with passkeys, each site gets their own passkey.

I prefer passkeys to passwords, but management is even more important with passkeys.

 

[Cmaier]

I was a long-time 1password user, but switched to apple’s password manager because 1password got insistent on hosting things. I find it works pretty much as well as 1password for me. Seldom have any problems.

i prefer passkeys, but sometimes implementation sucks. Like I have a passkey set up for the health system I use, but whenever i try to use it it just reloads the website’s page and doesn’t log me in.

 

[Eric]

I'm curious about the bolded bit. Since I'm a 1Password user, I'm not familiar with this. Old accounts or new, it all generally works the same. I have stuff dating back to 2012.

Sure, for example a site I haven't visited in a while which is cleared from cache for whatever reason. I now need to login into LP, only wait, it's MFA and I now have to go through the runaround of logging accessing it, and it is a total hassle when their proprietary app fails to open for authentication, now I have to give it an alternative so it will send it SMS.

Wait again, it's been 30 days since my last attempt so I have to go through another set of checks that includes manually typing in my complex master PW that I'll never remember and is saved to a flat .txt file. Who is going to set up an entirely different security protocol to secure the PW for the secure PW protection site. Fucking ridiculous.

By the time I'm done with that and attempt to login to a site where the PW may or may not have been saved since my last change I now have a 50/50 chance that it'll load with the saved PW. When it doesn't (and it's a lot) then I have to change it anyway, only I just went through all that bullshit to login to LP for nothing. Also using multiple devices initially setup logins, etc. then trying to access from another presents many of these issues.

It's a systemic problem, if you don't capture everything in a central place every single time from the same device this is the risk you run into. For me I just want to throw the computer through the window every time it happens.

There must be a better, more ubiquitous, way in the future and I'm hoping Passkey is it.

 

[throAU]

yeah, privacy and content restriction laws etc. make running any online service a liability.

 

[japanime]

I was a long-time 1password user, but switched to apple’s password manager because 1password got insistent on hosting things. I find it works pretty much as well as 1password for me. Seldom have any problems.

i prefer passkeys, but sometimes implementation sucks. Like I have a passkey set up for the health system I use, but whenever i try to use it it just reloads the website’s page and doesn’t log me in.

Same. I dropped 1Password (which I had used since version 2) when they insisted on keeping my passwords on their servers, and requiring a subscription for the privilege. Forget that.

 

[KingOfPain]

With FB you can join hundreds or thousands of groups with ONE login.
With Forums you need to create and maintain multiple logins for multiple forums.
People are lazy.

I don't say that you are wrong.
But strangely, Usenet also had hundreds if not thousands of topics with one interface, but I believe it was killed by forums.

Unlike Facebook & Co, Usenet was decentralised. If the next Cloudflare bug or something different blocks Facebook, then nothing is working. With Usenet at least some of the servers might still work.
And Usenet servers probably weren't used to spy on every detail of the life of its users (and in the case of Facebook even non-users). Here different forums have the advantage that one might only reveal part of oneself, not the full picture.

But I admit that I also stopped using Usenet out of convenience, and because some of the groups simply weren't frequented anymore.
EDIT: I remembered that the Usenet server that I was using had shut down and I was too lazy to search for an alternative. The point that people are lazy is definitely valid.

 

[Eric]

I don't say that you are wrong.
But strangely, Usenet also had hundreds if not thousands of topics with one interface, but I believe it was killed by forums.

Unlike Facebook & Co, Usenet was decentralised. If the next Cloudflare bug or something different blocks Facebook, then nothing is working. With Usenet at least some of the servers might still work.
And Usenet servers probably weren't used to spy on every detail of the life of its users (and in the case of Facebook even non-users). Here different forums have the advantage that one might only reveal part of oneself, not the full picture.

But I admit that I also stopped using Usenet out of convenience, and because some of the groups simply weren't frequented anymore.

I miss Usenet, back when it was all about simply sharing information without all the strings attached.

 

[DT]

I go to a few vehicle forums, since they're nicely focused, some seem pretty active. Here (of course ), and this is my only "general purpose" forum, even if it's got a little technical/tech emphasis.

Reddit, I'm mostly just in read-only mode, and nothing that's too controversial, more cars stuff, audio, Universal/Epic, a few bands.

No FB or X accounts for a long while.

I hang out on a few Discord servers, including my own, also focused (like HHN), the others are small personal servers with friends.

 

[rdrr]

I am holding on to 1Password, mostly because work has an enterprise license that includes a free Family account. Also, the downside to passkeys could be the risk of your phone being swiped and the bad guy having the keys to the kingdom. Now granted, there are ways to make sure that doesn't happen, but after chasing a bad actor for nearly half an hour in Nice, France, on the back of a scooter (going the wrong way on one-way roads and up on sidewalks), I did have a moment of horror about that very situation. This was pre security update, to delay of the recovery of your apple ID.