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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?"
You're an idiot. Feel free to archive this valuable information.
Forums have always been first and formost a place for social interaction. Archived knowledge has always been, and will always be, an optional side-effect of this interaction.
It has always been the case, and will always be the case, that many forums do not keep archives. You'd think your "study" would have turned up that tidbit, but I suppose if posting to the first forum you've ever come across five minutes after hearing the concept of "forums" is your first step in this "study" (which I can only assume is the case from your horribly stupid question), it's excusable.
This is not trolling. This has given more information than the lies of the original question.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
ever on slashdot?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.