Are Internet boards and Forums dead

saltynuts420@lemm.ee to Technology@lemmy.world – 230 points –

i started using the internet in the late 2000's and still remember when you search for something most of the times it would return with a forum post ... now its just random websites ... if you ever need real and concise answer you have to add site:reddit.com at every search and since discord or twitter are not crawlable by these search crawlers they are not mentioned . Where did all those forums went...are there still active forums ?

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Discord is pretty much the worst thing that happened to readily available information on the internet (when it comes to games and tech in general at least). No, I don’t wanna join your very specific niche server and use a search function worse than any forum back in the days had in hope to find the information I want.

Also Google got way worse, but that‘s no secret.

I agree. I don’t use Discord at all. Chat rooms always suck for questions/support.

That‘s not even all. The process now is something like:

Search on Google: no answer -> search on Google with Reddit.com appended: no answer -> search on Google with Reddit and Discord Server appended: click through 3 expired invitation links -> finally find a working one: scroll through pages and pages of memes and rule34 content to find the answer you wanted

I want my searchable forums and bulletin boards back ffs.

Search Google-> 5 YouTube videos pinned to the top

Search Google with Reddit appended -> deleted comments in a thread 5 years old not even about my specific problem

Search duck duck go -> numerous highly detailed websites that may or may not be related to my specific problem

The number of those comments that are deleted sure went up a couple of months ago. I wonder what happened 🤔

People falling back behind closed or private barriers for guaranteed human to human interaction and information as AI rises is more and more likely in the future … IMO.

you can search specific channels on discord. if you're seeing memes and r34 while searching for something in a hub server for a game or something then you're not searching correctly. or the thing you're trying to find info on is so niche and poorly organized they have 1 channel.

They got better with threads but not that popular. Still, I prefer forums over Discord.

I love Discord for gaming with friends. I don't mind some programs using it for releasing things. Like I play Session(skateboarding sim) a decent amount. It's usually used for people throwing up custom maps and mods.

But anytime people talk about going to a discord to really discuss things and keep up with them, I'm just gonna move on.

Discord is just not suitable for any group larger than a WoW guild. I don't understand why anyone would ever think it's a good idea for software/mod projects. Anything that needs to be searched should not be on discord

Discord is like using SMS to run something like Stack Overflow. When subreddits were moving off Reddit (which is good), some were talking about moving to Discord and I could not understand why anyone would think that was a comparable migration option.

"Join our discord".

No I don't think I will. I don't want to chat. I want to RTFM.

Two months ago I started using Kagi as a Google alternative. It's amazing how much of a difference it makes not having to wade through a list of sponsored links first and actually getting the results I want.

$10 a month seems a lot for a search engine, but maybe it's just because I've gotten used to all of them being free.

I am on kagi's free trial right now actually. Honestly i thought i searched more than i have so far. I have been on the 100 search trial for like 3-4 days now and have only used like 11 or 12 searches. I never paid attention to how much i searched before. The great thing is that they accept crypto now.

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