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 Giving reference info in a forum is a bit more difficult, you could make 'sticky topics', but the info will get outdated, someone needs to keep track of it and update it.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.

Forums vs. Wikis, different solutions

[Kadin2048]

There's always going to be a place for forums and wikis, even if the introduction of the latter makes aspects of the former somewhat redundant.

Forums are important because it provides a way of gleaning multiple opinions from distinct individuals, in direct response to a particular issue. Wikis are good at giving a group consensus opinion, but they're a poor way of showing someone all sides of an issue. 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; it's entirely possible that fallacious or spurious arguments get given improper weight because of efforts to appear 'neutral,' or that good but unpopular viewpoints are left out because of groupthink and self-censorship.

These problems may still happen in forums, but it's a lot easier when people can respond individually and don't have edit rights on each others work to give dissenting opinions. It's also easier to ask a particular question and get a particular answer; wikis are great for developing generalized reference, but they're a poor way to answer questions in a back-and-forth format. I've always felt that forums (aka Wikipedia's discussion pages) done through Wikis feel like a hack. With a forum, you can ask one question and get a dozen answers from a dozen distinct individuals; with a wiki you may not have an opportunity to ask a particular question, and instead you really have "one answer" (the entire document) which might or might not answer a lot of questions.

Thus I think they'll always be a place for both. Where Wikis may take over (and rightly so) are places where forums are being used as document repositories, for collective opinions. E.g., the "sticky" posts you see at the top of many forums, giving answers to frequently asked questions.

I'm still waiting for someone to develop a true combination of wiki and forum; maybe it's out there and I just haven't seen it yet, but I think neither extreme really does the job of the other well. A combination, maybe of wiki-type pages with attached discussion forums, would be best, and the two are really complementary, not exclusive.

Re:Forums vs. Wikis, different solutions

[Kadin2048]

Actually, no.

But I think the "NPOV" (or any 'neutral' or 'group consensus') perspective is almost always artificial; nobody actually has a 'neutral point of view,' so you're inherently striving for a finished product that cannot represent the entire opinion of any single person. In some situations -- where you actually want to form or represent some sort of consensus -- this can be a good thing. I've contributed to Wikipedia and I think it's useful in this way. (Actually I think it's amusing that you think I'm WP-bashing, since in other contexts I've been accused of fanboyism.)

However, I stand by my assertion that a Wiki page which is open to public edits, or for that matter a committee-written white paper, really isn't the best way of showing off the complexities of a particular issue and capturing the various differing opinions. It's the difference between original sources (actually hearing various opinions on an issue from the people that hold them, in their own voices) and a secondary one, where the various sources have been amalgamated together. Even if all the factual information in each is retained somehow, much of the tone and contextual information is still lost. It is, in short, like a lossy compression method. Sometimes it may be desirable, but its lossiness should be noted.

Sometimes a wiki can be handy; they're great for getting an overview of a particular issue, and of the various parties involved. But on a contentiously debated subject, there is almost always some watering down of the arguments on either side in order to produce 'neutrality,' not to mention the impossible-to-remove author/editor bias, and thus there is still (and always will be) a place for discussion forums where a consensus-derived product is not the goal, but rather individual opinions are more valuable.

And I think groupthink is a significant problem; put people in a group and there is a strong tendency to discourage and suppress viewpoints which are disharmonious, even if they are sometimes factually correct. This is a greater problem when people are working together in person than collaborating online (since people, in my experience, are much more willing to self-censor in person to prevent confrontation than when psuedonymous), but it's naive to pretend that it doesn't exist.

Forums suck as a repository for information

[gregmac]

There are many many forums that are basically the "center" of a community that revolves around a piece or collection of software. Often the forums are very active, and most questions are answered very quickly. These places are a great resource, and definately a nicer interface than mailing lists (and their archives) for essentially the same type of thing.

The problem with forums is once they get 'big', it becomes incredibly hard to keep things organized, and as a user - especially a new user - hard to make sense of it. Often when you ask questions, you'll be pointed to another thread that has the solution. These threads can often be several pages long, with the original question at the top of page 1, an initial solution on page 2, some follow-up problems on page 3, and more solutions to those as you read through. The result is that instead of being able to go and get the full (and current) solution to the problem, you end up having to spend a great deal of time reading through the steps everyone else took when the thread was active, as well as all the off-shoot discussion that takes place around it ("Yeah, I have the same problem.." "My error message is different, I see...."). No one from the original thread bothers to summarize the steps at the end (since for them, it's all fresh in their mind as they've spent the last few days or whatever posting to the thread), and in fact, to do so would probably be considered annoying.

Wikis can provide that initial solution, then mould it over time into a fully working solution, while still maintaining a history of changes - if you want to see it. As a user, wikis are virtually always easier to find information in than a forum.

What I haven't seen is a wiki that has a really good forum built-in, especially something that would post the changes to the wiki in the thread as it was changed (so when you look at it later on, you see a couple posts, then the wiki modification, with links to that revision, as well as a diff from the previous revision).

Oh, the irony

[MarkusQ]

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?

The irony here is just too thick. If you really have these sort of doubts, why "Ask Slashdot"?

Why not put up a wiki to let people thrash out the answer there? Or ask your dentist? Or toss some yarrow? But no, of all the possible ways you could have approached the question, the one you decided on was submitting it to a web forum.

On the plus side, I doubt if you're going to get any "google is your friend" responses with this one.

--MarkusQ

Online forum

[Mr_Tulip]

Forum, Noun:
        * a public meeting or assembly for open discussion
        * assembly, meeting place (a public facility to meet for open discussion)

I'd say, from the definition, that a forum appears to be a public meeting place for open discussion, not an archive of knowledge.. just coz it's online, doesn't make it any different.

An online forum as a repository of knowledge is a side-effect of searchable online content, not the main purpose of a forum.

Forums are even more vital than you think

[CrazyJim1]

If forums would bloom into their next generation, you would be amazed. Firstly everyone needs to label their group: Political Party, Religion, Sex, Prolife/choice and all the things that divide us. Secondly the moderation system similar to Slashdot be used, but with no cap on the high or low the piece to be moderated. Now when you browse the moderated forum, you can see the highs for your demographic, instead of the general populace! In fact, you'll be able to find popular authors as they'll be modded up often. These authors could be the next leaders in various fields such as politics if the forums become large enough. Of course someone would have to code forums like that, and they'd have to become popular first before people start trying to build an image on them. I went over next generation forums very briefly here, I hope I don't confuse too many people.

Nonsense yourself

[Freaky Spook]

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

Re:Nonsense yourself

[kevlarman]

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

I've webmastered a forum since 1998..

[the_rajah]

It's about herpes simplex. The forum operates at several levels and, in my opinion, is not replaced by a wiki in any significant way. People find us for two main reasons. One is that they are looking for information and the other is that they are looking for support. The result is a true virtual community with a few current members dating back to 1995 or early 1996 when the forum went "on the air". People confronting a health issue like this often feel alone due to the extremely unfair stigma attached to this most common virus. IMO the single most valuable service we provide is that a new person discovers that they are not alone and that there are lots of people out there, just like them, that are dealing with the same situation. For the record, the infection rate for the virus "below the belt" is about 25%. Overall, including cold sores, the same virus, the percentage rises to around 80% by adulthood.

To answer the questions, "Can forums exist on a purely social level?"
Absolutely. I participate in a couple of other forums that are entirely social. We discuss almost everything about our lives from sex to automobile repair. People come and go, but overall it's been a relatively stable group of diverse people from across the US, Canada, Australia and Korea, with a couple other countries represented from time to time. The ages represented range from early 20's to several folks around my age.. 50s and 60s. I really enjoy that it brings demographically, geographically and economically diverse people together in a way that would probably not happen in real life.

What shortcomings endanger the forum's future, and what characteristics have allowed it to survive so far?
I'm not sure that it's endangered at all. One possible trend that I see is that younger people seem to prefer more fast moving modes such as Instant Messaging and Chat rooms. I guess I'm an old fuddy-duddy at age 60 and much prefer the more deliberate pace of the forum format so that I can focus on my messages or replies and make them more elaborate than a quick burst of typing. I like, too, that forums don't require the seeming immediate attention that chats or IMs do. I can take time to do some research for a reply if needed. Similarly I don't have to be time-coincident with another party as would be the case in a chat or IM. That helps a lot when some of the participants are half way around the world.

The characteristic that allows it to survive so far is that it seems to meet a need for this sort of interaction with other individuals regardless of geography or timing.

Why do we need forums in the first place?" Need? We don't really need them, but then we don't "need" a lot of other things that we find enjoyable or useful. Forums have provided thousands of us a way to interact in a way that allows us to form a virtual community. If it's purpose is to provide information, then it's not much different than gathering at the general store and asking someone a question about, say, "What kind of barn paint was that you used, Jake, that held up so well?" It's just that you can do it when it's convenient and can often tap into a much larger collective intellect than at the general store down at the junction.

No, I'm not going to post the URL for the herpes site. I'm not looking to be slashdotted. If you have need of us and look, you'll eventually find us.