On the Changing Role of Online Forums?

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?"

Comments

Nonsense

[AKAImBatman]

The "purely social" aspect you're referring to is known as "collaboration" and "discussion". It's how the information that ends up in a wiki is developed. Without forums, wikis wouldn't exist. And without wikis, forums slowly lose their potency under a mountain of repeated questions and discussions.

It's a symbiotic relationship, not an either/or. :)

wikis not so much community-based

[pimpimpim]

Wikis are fine as a knowledge database when the problems you have can be solved in a well-known way. Giving reference info in a forum is a bit more difficult, you could make 'sticky topics', but the info will get outdated, someone needs to keep track of it and update it. There it would be the best to put a wiki in. But if you are doing motorbike maintenance, or setting up a new router, unexpected things might happen and you often need information that can not be put in a certain form, and discussing this on a forum is the best way to solve the problem.

Another difference between forums and wikis is that in forums it always remains clear who contributed what, and who has a certain expertise on a certain area. This gives a larger sense of community. As it's rather difficult to browse the history of a wiki, you'll hardly ever find out any personal approach/speciality for a certain wiki-user. Furthermore, chit-chatting in a wiki is difficult as well, and it's too easy for someone to pull a prank on someone else. I have a bit of a bias to forums on this point, though (as moderator in a reasonably large DSL forum).

I'd say, let wikis and forums live side by side, happily ever after.

Re:wikis not so much community-based

[The Snowman]

I agree. I find that wikis are more like FAQs. People collaborate to explain a topic and answer common processes, questions, and issues. However, we've all been in a bind where we have some esoteric problem that no FAQ in the universe cannot answer: by the very nature of the problem, it is not "Frequent" enough. Forums are a great place to discuss these issues. Another advantage is talking about new developments, discussing rumors about the future. E.g. a new motorcycle coming out, a new game, new software patch, etc. before it is released. In a way this is social bantering about junk that doesn't really matter in a practical way, it's just a bunch of guys talking about what they'd like to see in a product, or speculation. It doesn't belong in a wiki, but can be useful nonetheless. A beginner can read a discussion like this and gain some insight into the topic -- what do people like or dislike about a product or process? How does an experienced user think? What do they find useful?

As you said, the two will live together. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, and each has its place.

Born in 1990...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

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.

...by "forum", did you mean "usenet"? (Or even, "newsgroups"?)

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.

Wiki = highly searchable? Hmmm...never used one tied to MySQL's default "full text search", have you?

even wikis have forums

[gsn]

Remarkably even the Wikis have a discussion page which is basically a forum for the article. Also if you had a specific tech support question which isn't dealt with in the instructions (which you could have on your wiki page) then you are going to have to resort to a forum.

The above is true even if the forums in question don't have a social aspect.

Forums connect people, Wikis connect people to...

[PotatoHead]

information.

We need both.

Re:Forums vs. Wikis, different solutions

[Planesdragon]

The false "NPOV" perspective that an author has to take when writing a wiki is the same problem faced when you're reading a paper written by a committee

Spoken like someone who has either been burned by Wikipedia or upset that their school paper didn't want to carry their Liberatrian / Green Party rant.

Not all wikis strive for, or should strive for, a neutral point of view. The good ones tend to present information in an otherwise unbiased view, true, but that's not necessarily NPOV. Its more akin to how you would write any document intended for general consumption -- you don't go off on tangents that have no bearing to the subject at hand.

IRC vs IM

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to recall this same argument 10 years ago in relation to IRC vs IM clients. In the end IRC survives. They serve uniquely different purposes.

Re:Easy

[LincolnQ]

Why does it seem like most open-source projects have abandoned the idea of documentation for a wiki? Is it just because we developers are lazy and figure if we put up a wiki, we won't have to do any documentation because we think users will write the documentation for us? Or did I miss some great open-source revelation that thou shalt use wiki? Maybe I just misplaced that memo.

I don't think this is the case -- I think it's natural evolution. Wikis are essentially "open source documentation." I think generally maintainers used to accept patches to their documentation, but have recently moved to putting that stuff up on a wiki. And this is understandable -- it's much easier for the maintainer to let people simply edit the wiki than to accept patches. (On the other hand, people still generally accept patches for code, because it's much more dangerous to let people commit code willy-nilly than to let them write documentation).

A responsible maintainer will spend the same amount of effort on wiki documentation that he would have spent on other forms of documentation -- or perhaps less, since the wiki provides a more convenient framework for formatting and hyperlinking than many other forms of documentation. When a project has little documentation on their site but somebody put up a wiki, I tend to think the maintainer probably wasn't inclined to write any documentation in the first place, wiki or no. I guess the point is that wikis are just a framework for writing and storing documentation and nobody intended them to be a replacement.

Exactly!

[Rob T Firefly]

This may be the best, simplest answer to the whole question. As fluid as a Wiki's content is, the basic idea is still you sucking down info from a site. Forums are a multidirectional exchange of info with other human beings.

There is also the purely social aspect of a forum will never be replaced by a Wiki, simply because you don't have to be trying to write a reference book when you post to a forum. You can post to a board for your favorite (TV show/scientist/actor/religion/historical period/political subgroup/flavor of pudding) with something like "Wow, how about that (last episode/recent theory/talk show interview/spiritual revelation/new textbook/recent speech/vanilla bean controversy)?" and start a fruitful discussion. Try that with nearly any Wiki community and you'll be tarred and feathered before they ban you.