The Future of Internet Forums

[edina]

The most active forum I was ever on was a forum for forum administrators.

There were a lot of tech and policy related type discussions.

It's been a few years since I was there. I went to look to see how it is doing today.

It doesn't exist anymore.

[edina]

I did a survey once on my on Facebook profile, to see how many of my friends were reading from a desktop, a phone, or both.

The ratio was about 90% reading from their phone. This was even among my older friends.

I'm 58. I definitely prefer a desktop, and do not use my phone at all for social media.

I was surprised to discover how many people don't even have a desktop.

They do everything on their phone.

My neice doesn't type.

She talks into her phone and then edits the voice to text which she then shares as comments and posts on her Facebook profile.

She's very controversial. She has found her voice on the circumcision issue and speaks out about that a lot on her profile.
She calls herself an Intactivist.

People often spontaneously thank her for the information she shares, and how it helped them decide whether or not to circumcise their sons.

There's a whole movement on that issue.

I've seen her posts get several hundred comments. Lots of huge engagement on her posts.

She's had at least 3 of her FB accounts shut down. She just opens another, friends her friends and starts all over again.

She asks a lot of questions. She's just a natural at engagement.

Her generation is very social media savvy. And, they are mostly on their phones.

If a platform is not mobile-friendly, they will bypass it.

(This typing style I use, is one I adapted over time, to be mobile-friendly. It's easier to read on mobile devices.)

[norman]

Posted by TomKat (here)

Posted by Anchor (here)
People still write long posts. I read reddit a lot and some of the longer posts often have "TL;DR" (Too Long Didnt Read) summaries at the end, a sort of one or two sentence short form summary of the post, it is almost considered etiquette these days for posting longer posts and if you fail to provide one, say for a story you were trying to tell, you might get people pressuring you to add one!

I noticed some people use that form on this forum and there have been some threads also advising people to do it.

For example:
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...er-of-a-thread.
What is interesting about that thread is that the OP (Original Poster) used a lot of acronyms in common use on social media form and got told off for it - including tl;dr

I tend not to read long posts. Seems like they're usually trying to sell something or recruit someone for something. I'm more interested in people's original thoughts than what group think they've bought into or are promoting.

Or, they are still working through their thought evolutions trying to get to the point where they would have something really good to share, but are fond of the old habits of co studentship.. and miss it when it's not there any more.


Here's a thought, what if learning to read overwrites the part of the brain/body mind that is or was capable of telepathic transference of information ? Is our word literate culture the block that is preventing our being fluently telepathic ?

[petra]

Without good moderators, forums are useless imo. The future of forums is going to depend on the moderators.

As for other forum activity, I don't know - but I do see a LOT on stack exchange, which is an evolved kind of forum style (ie: worldbuilding.stackexchange.com). It's really just a bunch of questions and answers, but the people answering questions can also earn "reputation points" and badges (kind of like boy scouts ha ha)

PA is the only forum I read or post on currently, so of course I hope PA will still be around in the future. If this forum eventually goes kaput though, I'd understand. I'm just being frank when I say the moderation is only going to get worse from here.

Posted by Arcturian108 (here)
Project Avalon Forum presents a plethora of ever expanding topics with no particular order emphasized. Thus the individual participant decides what is important, and thereby truly important threads get buried in the mix. My suggestion for how to improve Project Avalon would be to elevate, in a tier system, certain topics and/or certain contributors in a way that features their ongoing importance to the threats that we face now and in the coming years.

I like this idea, and I consider how I skipped the middle two pages of this thread and only read most of page 1. I'm not trying to be lazy, I'm trying to be efficiently using my time! My not reading those gives me time to post a reply, and the only risk I am taking is possibly overlooking a jewel on page three.

[petra]

Posted by norman (here)
Here's a thought, what if learning to read overwrites the part of the brain/body mind that is or was capable of telepathic transference of information ? Is our word literate culture the block that is preventing our being fluently telepathic ?

I had this thought already too. What if...
It's not as if I can un-learn English (ha ha)
Telepathy with words sounds like a headache to me, and besides, it'd be a lot faster to communicate without words

[wavydome]

As forum uses evolve… On line, spoken discussion, supported by special filtering tools, could assist people to find just the right discussion or contacts, as well as filter out polite irrelevance of tedious diplomacy; only by gradually finding agreeable discussions, potentially followed up with the old fashioned human discussions on skype, etc.., based on closer-mutual interests, using minimal bandwidth costs, also including file or link sharing, thus avoiding or greatly reducing needs for the advertising and profiling clutter of bigger-board-forums and, also reducing expenses for the matrix-escapees, (who actually get shunned and framed, to receive fewer work contracts with income). The historical value of archived forums is nice, but people may also use personal websites for such records and theoretically the archive org might maintain some things.

Posted by edina (here)
I did a survey once on my on Facebook profile, to see how many of my friends were reading from a desktop, a phone, or both.

The ratio was about 90% reading from their phone.
[...]
And, they are mostly on their phones.

If a platform is not mobile-friendly, they will bypass it.

(This typing style I use, is one I adapted over time, to be mobile-friendly. It's easier to read on mobile devices.)

A trend of this nature sounds possible for enhancement, where bandwidth costs might change the game. As 5G starts up, personal bandwidth costs might provoke people to stream line usages to one “mobile account”, at least speaking from an off-matrix approach to life’s expenses. If mobile phones provide better deals than land phones, why not quit the land phone? (I ask myself as rural land lines might cost more after 5G). Our private land line number has become so bogged down with spam calls, the time is right for closing the land line account and secreting the phone number, (where we advertised for contracting purposes previously).

The-bottom-line-costs will determine communications and also forum options.

I expect mobile phones could become more and more accessible to plug in PCs and also to keep the desk top, wired in through connectors, and use the phone at safe distances, somehow, as wireless devices are designed to maim humans in current usage habits, (causing serious damage over the decades). I found it easy to disconnect the internal antennas of modems to improve safety and instead use ethernet connectors, instead of wireless options. Checking with electro-smog meter verifies there is less electro-pollution. The possibility here is that 5Gs huge bandwidth, regardless how dangerous it might prove, has so much more bandwidth space than have the land lines; therefore the connection providers could compete them to death and the ethos of our time seems to be ruthlessness in business practices.

[edina]

I remember that the long term plan was to get everyone dependent on their phones.
And then to directly wire them into the system, without the hard devices (phones).

If you watch the patterns you can see it inexorably moving in that direction.

I remember when working as a Pharmacy Tech, realizing how many people think only one meal ahead.
Corporations think about 2 to 5 decades ahead.

The people who are setting these long term goals think centuries ahead.

That's a huge "thinking" gap to close.

[Hazelfern]

Posted by petra (here)
Without good moderators, forums are useless imo. The future of forums is going to depend on the moderators.

As for other forum activity, I don't know - but I do see a LOT on stack exchange, which is an evolved kind of forum style (ie: worldbuilding.stackexchange.com). It's really just a bunch of questions and answers, but the people answering questions can also earn "reputation points" and badges (kind of like boy scouts ha ha)

PA is the only forum I read or post on currently, so of course I hope PA will still be around in the future. If this forum eventually goes kaput though, I'd understand. I'm just being frank when I say the moderation is only going to get worse from here.

Posted by Arcturian108 (here)
Project Avalon Forum presents a plethora of ever expanding topics with no particular order emphasized. Thus the individual participant decides what is important, and thereby truly important threads get buried in the mix. My suggestion for how to improve Project Avalon would be to elevate, in a tier system, certain topics and/or certain contributors in a way that features their ongoing importance to the threats that we face now and in the coming years.

I like this idea, and I consider how I skipped the middle two pages of this thread and only read most of page 1. I'm not trying to be lazy, I'm trying to be efficiently using my time! My not reading those gives me time to post a reply, and the only risk I am taking is possibly overlooking a jewel on page three.

Petra, this forum that you and I love will no go kaput. I appreciate, sometimes adore your thoughts expressed and could not find them anywhere else. If Bill gave it up, not sure how that would go.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by petra (here)
I'm just being frank when I say the moderation is only going to get worse from here.

Does that mean that it can't possibly get any better?

[petra]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

Posted by petra (here)
I'm just being frank when I say the moderation is only going to get worse from here.

Does that mean that it can't possibly get any better?

Ha ha! How in the heck did I manage to word things that badly.

No, Bill. You can't get any better. You're already perfect (wink wink)

What I mean to say is, the job is going to get worse. Not the moderators (lol).
Why would it get harder to moderate forums in the future? Well that's mostly directed towards PA (I don't use other forums) and not forums in general. I predict an influx of new users, as people begin to "wake up more" so to speak, which will surely contribute to the difficulty of moderating.

GOOD moderation is always difficult, I think so anyway. I also realize PA moderators don't moderate alone, and often decisions are made as a group - which really is ideal.