Is there anyone else still here?

[Butterfree]

Honestly I don't think Discord is even maliciously out killing forums. Forums were declining before Discord got popular - the main thing is most people use big social media sites or apps to socialize online these days, rather than seeking out independent websites. But also, the live chat element of chat clients like Discord did sort of outcompete forums for the niche interest spaces, once they had decent organization features: quicker, shorter messages, more instant gratification with immediate reactions and responses, etc. I love forums, but even I can feel my brain getting more out of the everyday socialization drive with live discussions.

Which is a shame, because as you note, it's a lot more convenient for the internet as a whole when helpful information exists in places like forums, where search engines can index it. I'm still devoted to maintaining my website as an actual, searchable website with a proper menu and most all the content that's ever been on it still there, and it's very important to me that that means the info on it is searchable and will continue to be there and work. Community management was never my main passion, though, unfortunately, and then I basically thoroughly burnt out on it some years ago for various reasons, so I don't quite have the drive to be here personally trying to fight the times to keep the forum discussion going.

Always enjoy when we do get a thread that actually generates some talk, though!

 

[Trinket]

I still lurk intermittently. I keep thinking how nice it would be to get back into the swing of forumposting, what with the wider Internet being on fire and all, and then not getting around to it ehehe

 

[A_Polished_Scyther]

Reddit has some responsibility for killing forums too, although discord is worse because it's not indexed by search engines. Back in the day you could google some hobbyist like game modding and find a guide written on a forum that's viewable on the open web. These days all those forums just point towards a discord community, so one discord goes down it's lost forever without any wayback machine archives (and searching on discord is a pain, too).

This. There are still forum posts from 10-20 years ago that can help answer some questions even now, and can be found with a quick Google search, that is if the forum is lucky enough to still be around. But we're in the future now, why should something so simple be harder to do?

Because it's the future, everything has to be overcomplicated in the future!