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 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