Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

On the Changing Role of Online Forums?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the wikis-weblogs-and-forums--can't-they-all-just-get-along dept.

RighteousRaven asks: "I am doing a study on online forums and their place in a changing Internet environment. For the purpose of this study, I am considering that a forum has two roles: a social hub for people with some commonality, and a repository of information related to that commonality. Previously, forums were the best sources of information on the internet, from motorcycle maintenance to videogame modding, you could learn a lot from a forum. However, with Wikis dominating the internet as dense and highly-searchable information repositories, forums are becoming purely social with no utility beyond personal expression or companionship. Can forums exist on a purely social level? What shortcomings endanger the forum's future, and what characteristics have allowed it to survive so far? Why do we need forums in the first place?"

4 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Nonsense yourself by Freaky+Spook · · Score: 5, Funny
    And without wikis, forums slowly lose their potency under a mountain of repeated questions and discussions.

    Thats not true, Slashdot doesn't have a wiki and I still laugh when I see repeated jokes about

    • goatse
    • sharkes with laserbeams
    • in soviet russia
    • Microsoft
    • Vista
    • Profit
    • chairthrowing
    • welcoming overloards
    • Microsoft
    • Duke Nukem Forever
    1. Re:Nonsense yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      You forgot Microsoft.

    2. Re:Nonsense yourself by kevlarman · · Score: 3, Funny

      -does it run linux -imagine a beowulf cluster -microsoft -any reference to girlfriends -all your base

      --
      A mouse is a device used to point to the xterm you want to type in
  2. A funny thing happened on the way to the forum... by Slashdot+is+dead · · Score: 2, Funny

    I decided to use a wiki instead.