Are "forums" dead in general?

Differences in communication and discussion taking over

[explorador]

This is related to csdude55 thread here: [webmasterworld.com...] and a few threads I opened in the past, but mostly with the twist of questioning what's happening with people in general. You could say the big questions are:

1. How to keep a forum alive
2. How to motivate discussions
3. Questioning if forums are dying or dead

I'll try to explain what I see.

A. Csdude55 describes challenges managing a forum that has been taken over by political discussions. I've seen the same on other forums that have multiple areas for discussion, or are just open to anything and everything, but anyway people (or just "some" people) insist on talking about politics. Somehow it seems on specific forums, people don't want to discuss anything but politics and go on rants and personal attacks.

B. I've seen some other forums that used to encourage discussion, going on page after page discussing empty stuff like "is there really free will after all?" and I'm quite shocked to see how far people go at pseudo philosophizing around it, and won't engage on any topic that requires real life experiences, it's like... today we have tons of lifeless people.

C. Locally in my country, a huge forum with tons of traffic is dying, but beyond just "dying", it's been a while (years) since it's all about dreaming on becoming rich, or complaining about how hard life is. All the other discussions don't go beyond 2, 3 posts top, but talk about stupid ideas on how to become rich overnight or crypto and it's page after page.

D. On diff places people say forums are dead, and Twitter + FB killed them because today people only discuss things there... but that's not true. Twitter is famous for being a flaming place and it's been wisely called by psychologists "an unhealthy place, a place to avoid". On the other hand I joined graphic design and developer groups on FB and oh yeah there is a lot of movement, no!, there is no discussion, it's all short posts about saying nah! whatever, there is no depth or silly questions on help me to do my homework (lazy posts).

E. Today I searched the web for specific topic forums in order to TRY to discuss something, or ask about something in specific, and to my surprise, (developer) forums with lots of movement are now dead, abandoned threads, silly short questions, a few long and detailed questions but with short answers like "yeah, PHP should do it", or "python rules, it's better than PHP", but that's it. Ask about how to deal with low rankings and some weird 404 errors on a webpage and the replies are like "JSON + VUE and some PHP should do it", should do WHAT?

F. It takes time, but I've seen PLENTY of people without a job bragging about stuff online saying you are charging little money for that, you should charge tons of dollars, or "you should use Flutter instead of Angular", but if you go after the specifics, they have never created a mobile app.

Beyond the discussion of "are forums dead?", all I see is bitter people sitting on a bench at the park nagging and complaining about anything and everything, and most seem unable to build an argument beyond 4 lines, is this related to my old threads of people becoming dumb and dumber? affected by the twitter style? I remember people disagreeing with me but over the years ended up saying "man you are right, people are dumber today, can't read, can't write, and their heads will explode with anything beyond 4 lines".

I have a collection of things to discuss, but all I see today is 2 extremes: (1) people not even saying a word, and (2) people saying they have the solution for everything, but won't say a single word beyond that, and if you dig long enough on other areas of the forums... they do sound unemployed and without experience about what they are talking. A lot of forums today sound like the famous toxicity on Linux forums.

So, do you have anything to say about any of this? do you think forums are dead? or is everyone loosing the skills to discuss anything?

[explorador]

csdude55: I've always been a hater of Fakebook, and in my mind it's just a poorly designed message board. I've never really used Twitter beyond glancing at the occasional post, but it seems to have the same general format.

@csdude55: surprisingly I think the same, word by word (the whole post). I didn't join FB until many years later only to explore the social media on traffic, didn't like it so I removed it, but I've seen movement on groups that I'm not seeing on forums. Depending the cases, the people within the communities have been more of a positive force doing the moderation and reporting, something now rarely see on forums, at least not that I've seen it a lot, so, still looking for new places.

On groups at least I'm seeing people sharing tools, tips, advice, yes making questions, pointing to solutions or sharing stories on how they solved something. While forums (after exploring) have become something of "do my homework, no I don't know javascript, do it for me, here is the code I wrote -create free app now, compile now- but gives error, fix it".

[explorador]

me: Depending the cases, the people within the communities have been more of a positive force doing the moderation and reporting, something now rarely see on forums, at least not that I've seen it a lot, so, still looking for new places.

Quoting myself, right now seems to me... on most forums most people stepped back from moderation because somehow correcting people or their behavior... sends a vibe of "not cool", or even makes those people go away and "kills the forum". But compared to social media I easily see the other members correcting others, exposing them, punishing them, reporting, and even asking the user to be removed. From my perspective it's not about A vs B, but what could be adopted to make something better. Recently on the few forums I visit, I've been taking a more active behavior about this, and no I'm not a moderator (and I don't want to) but I guess we all have a bit of responsibility within communities.

[csdude55]

on most forums most people stepped back from moderation because somehow correcting people or their behavior... sends a vibe of "not cool", or even makes those people go away and "kills the forum". But compared to social media I easily see the other members correcting others, exposing them, punishing them, reporting, and even asking the user to be removed.

Oh, don't even get me started on the double standard! LOL

My sites include locally-targeted message boards. A few years ago they were the bread-and-butter, but now the classifieds are dominant and the message boards have taken a back seat.

First example...

A few years ago, there was a horrible local accident where a man hit and killed someone on a horse. Just an accident, no wrongdoing or anything, but there was a lot of talk about it on both my site and Facebook.

Well, more recently his wife (widow) is a real estate agent that posts on FB religiously. At one point I asked, why not post on my site, too?

Her response was that she would NEVER use my site, because people were talking about her husband.

I replied and pointed out that, while that was true, they were saying the same thing on Facebook.

She then replied about how my site is used to hurt other people.

I replied and pointed out that my site doesn't allow any names or identifying information of other people unless they're publicly known, and then I only allow them to discuss that for which the person is known. For example, they could talk about her husband's accident, but couldn't say he's ugly or accuse him of anything beyond the scope of the case. In comparison, there's no real moderating on Facebook at all!

Further, I pointed out that Facebook was created with the intention of letting men anonymously make fun of teenage girls. And even now, this lady was a member of several groups that existed only to make fun of local people. Worse, there are several hate groups on Facebook that would never be allowed on my site.

She didn't reply any further, but of course she still posts on Facebook daily and never on my site.


Second example...

A local commercial real estate developer was arrested for driving on the interstate while blitzed out of his head with cocaine, and had more cocaine in the car. It was in the newspaper, on Facebook, and discussed on my site.

He called me and demanded that I remove it and protect him. Of course I couldn't do that, but I promised to moderate heavily to ensure that nothing else was said beyond that case.

In response, he told ALL of his commercial renters that "it would be heavily frowned upon" if they advertised with me, or supported me in any way. Which, of course, resulted in my losing a lot of advertisers.

They can still use the newspaper and Facebook, of course. It doesn't matter that the exact same thing was on all three, but for some reason I'm punished and the others aren't.


I could go on and on with these examples, but long story short is that, for some reason, small businesses are held to impossible standards while bigger businesses are given a free pass. It's an uphill battle for us every step of the way.

[explorador]

csdude55: I could go on and on with these examples, but long story short is that, for some reason, small businesses are held to impossible standards while bigger businesses are given a free pass. It's an uphill battle for us every step of the way.

That's so unfair, I guess talking to a real person didn't help as they wanted to make you responsible for the noise somehow, good luck (for them) in FB because they will never get to talk with a real person, there is a lot there to unpack on how unhealthy it is for them, but yeah, the deal here is how it hurts websites, forums, forums owners, advertising, income, etc. Besides, I don't think what they say is realistic or making sense.

Ever thought about a temporary section on your forum?

There is a local forum that used to have TONS of traffic, it was like Reddit, yes it's not the same anymore but it's still alive. The thing is, quite often local events, personalities, accidents, etc would end up being discussed because people wanted to say something, complain, whatever. Frequently, jokes and making fun would become the usual and honestly... it was hilarious, but yeah it would hurt people in some way or another. The reason I'm sharing this case, is because the forum has a specific section for "whatever, fun, jokes, and not suited for work" (does not cointain adult content).

Whenever someone became a target, be it a politician, public figure, or people from the same forum, the moderators would allow it for a while, and if things got hot, they would warn on moving the thread to the whatever section (it has a name but won't make sense in english). Most people would celebrate this, because that section allowed a higher level of jokes and making fun of someone, but it would make it easier to close the thread. So, these 2 things happened:

1. People making fun of others and giving a possible bad impression of the forum would get the chance to play a bit (under moderation) the thread would end up moved to the "whatever section", some would celebrate this, and due to the rules, this meant giving more expression power to the "bullies", increasing the reasonable action of locking the thread. I never thought too much about it then, but now I do, and this would allow the site to give the vibe of "we care, we protect people, don't abuse your freedom of speech", you know? you could explain anything you want there that works for you, and locking the thread with that conclusion served somehow as social service "kids don't do this".

2. The threads sometimes got locked, and then deleted. This worked way better if there was an intervention by the person who is the target of the jokes. Deleting the thread ended up working as a good action in public.

In a way, the forum gives both sides what they want and enjoy. And allows you have a social say on the events. The magic here is creating the terms of use so people know... eventually, if they don't behave, the threads get locked and possibly deleted, and it's also useful to send social messages to everyone.

[tangor]

Once again, forums are NOT DEAD, but civil discourse between human beings is decimated by all kinds of "cultural", "validation", "diversity", "etc." and that will take down any forum over time if Moderation is not required with a strict adherence to topic/theme/intent.

Forums are just one way of communication on the web and will continue, even if most folks are distracted by other methods. Forums still live, but civility and "thick skins" are getting sparse and hard to find.

[csdude55]

@explorador, I really like that idea!

@tangor, I feel like I've gone on a little bit of a rant in this thread, but you're right. My sites actually had a record number of users last year! So they're far from dying. But I'm also dealing with fewer pages per session (roughly 1/4), fewer posts, far fewer posts that aren't about national politics, and my revenue is about 1/5th of what it was a few years ago.

In my case, those problems all lead back to mobile users. My desktop users are still the same as always.

But I also realize that my sites are 20 years old and very well established locally, so while my Google placement is for crap, it's not particularly important. Newer sites would definitely suffer more from that.

[Kendo]

While both Facebook posts and forum posts are threaded, forums win hands down with sorting by topic and serve as searchable archives while Facebook posts are easily lost and most difficult to find at any time beyond the present.

Searchwise FB cannot compete with forums.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Forums are like destinations that can't be reached because those in control of the roads have built roads leading elsewhere and away.

Google now trusts entirely AI written content, on a site like CNET, when it has a single person responsible for vetting the 'content'. You would think Google could trust a forum moderator to do the same, but they really don't. Google seems to have an E.A.T.ing imbalance.

- Unlink all member profiles, unless logged in.
- On threads, link the moderator name to their off-site signs of E.A.T., social profiles work if they are filled with posts about the sub-forum topic
- Moderators can link to their forum profiles from their social profiles, if they wish, but on threads in the forum their names should point off-site.
- Set the thread OG meta property="article:author" content="point to OFF-SITE moderator signs of E.A.T."

It MUST be off-site or it yields no signs of E.A.T. according to a dozen test cases I've seen, even when it's the same person both on and off-site. Google raters are also instructed to look OFF-SITE for signs of E.A.T.

I know some forum owners will disagree about using the article:author tag on a forum thread, but forums are so overlooked that what other options do they have? The moderator is responsible for the content, regardless of who wrote it, and they provide the E.A.T.. Works for CNET.

Just make sure the moderator has off-site signs of E.A.T. for the sub-forum they moderate, and their name is close to the thread title with good surrounding text like "moderated by" or "Page Administrator"... anything without the word forum in it.

CNET, and other AI content publishers, hire people for their E.A.T. since they don't really need authors. Forums need to get in the E.A.T. game, too.

The other two knocks against forums are bad titles and redundant threads canibalizing each other. Google only ranks ONE page from a domain for any given keyword, you can see this in search console keyword reports. Mods have their work cut out if a forum is to get search attention.

[Brett_Tabke]

The problems with forums boil down to a few things:

1. Identity. Most forums (like this one), still operate under the anonymous nickname system. Then along comes Facebook and shows the world what a 'forum' could be with identity.
   

   I remember at Pubcon Florida 2004 when we put "real names" on name tags for the first time. People refused to wear them for fear 'googleguy' would connect them to their websites.

   
   
   Yet there is little doubt what transparency and identity did to the quality of information on the social networks. Forums on the other hand were still the wild-wild-west with anonymous posters throwing up junk.
   
   

   About a decade ago, an employee of a very large PPC agency told me that he was instructed to go into forums and sow disinformation any time Google updated.

   
   So, Identity - as practiced by the big social media sites - led to a credibility of the poster, as well as the credibility of the information.
   
   <aside>Remember when Elon took over Twitter, the first change he wanted to make was the 'blue checkmark' to give everyone identity.</aside>
   
   
   
2. Panda and Penguin. Google decided it didn't want to link to forums any more. Lots of theories abound about why that was, but suffice to say, every major forum owner (ya, we have a club), saw large traffic decreases from those updates. After a decade of steady traffic, we lost 90% of our Google referrals in one day, and it never recovered, We went from a steady 120k-150k referrals a week day to 15k to 1500 today..
   
   Even some of the massive sites like Flyer Talk are shells of their former self.
   
   It is difficult to have a growing business when the road to your business is torn up.
   

Only a couple forum sectors I know of are thriving:

1. game related. Kids and parents like the kids to be anonymous (Discord)
   
2. Highly technical niche forums. Things like XDA Developers, StackOverFlow.
   
3. Sites where the forum is not the main event - it supports the main event.
   

Some people consider the Reddit, Quora, 4Chan, TripAdvisor, and Imgur to be forums. Technically you could argue they are, but they all have variations on the traditional forum (bbs) format.

[csdude55]

Most forums (like this one), still operate under the anonymous nickname system. Then along comes Facebook and shows the world what a 'forum' could be with identity.

Perceived identity.

I had a very similar conversation with the local Town Manager a few years ago, when asking why he actively promoted Facebook over the locally-owned website (that paid local taxes and supported local events... but I digress...). His response was that, since people used their real names, he felt like they were more accountable and wouldn't bad-mouth his work.

While we sat there, I went to his page and downloaded a few pics, created a new profile with his name, and sent friend requests to the first few people I could see on his friend list. At the end of the meeting I showed him what I had done, and pointed out that literally anyone could do this! And within a short period I would be able to post things that could destroy his life and career. How easy would it be for someone to use that account to make a few fake posts, maybe just copy posts that he had made on his regular account, and then when the time is right it could be used to announce that he's accepted a job in another town? Or that he's leaving his wife? Or use it to send private messages to coworkers or something... anything that could be used to blackmail him?

I wouldn't do that, of course, and gave him the password while we sat there before he had a heart attack. But I wanted him to see exactly how dangerous it was to have this perception of people on there being "real". And explained that this is why I have always heavily frowned on people using their real name on my site.

And it's just gotten worse. Within the last week I've had about 15 friend requests from fake accounts using pictures of real people.

But of course, I'm preaching to the choir on this one. You all know exactly what I'm saying, but for some reason Google doesn't :-/

[explorador]

Kendo: Searchwise FB cannot compete with forums.

True, absolutely. Other areas are open to discussion still within the FB ecosystem, like "Lois: here is my opinion on web development blah blah, and you can check my work here [links to FB stuff]" and people can check, then like (I don't mean to sound like a FB preacher) but the likes there might have impact, at least more than on a forum, it's been a while since I see people sharing a thread on FB, vs other stuff. And this might be tied:

Brett_Tabke: Identity. Most forums (like this one), still operate under the anonymous nickname system. Then along comes Facebook and shows the world what a 'forum' could be with identity.

True, and perhaps many of us from past times grew too familiar with anonymity.

I've been tempted to open a discussion about identity and relevance, but I'm still not sure how to explain it. I remember creating a thread about how others did what I was doing: competitors, and the differences on how far we all went. There are several factors involved, but one huge difference is the "website X featuring whatever content and who knows the owner might be", VS identity/protagonist role of "website X by Peter Black featuring content signed by Peter Black, and stories sharing stuff like -how I built this app, or MY trip to some place as a code developer still working on a project". I've been very curious over the past 2 years about this, and it goes as far as "hey this is Peter Black blah blah" talking on Youtube. The web has changed a lot, and I think personal exposure is a big part of it bringing relevance to authorship, content, and this even relates to forums... perhaps I need to explore more places but I've seen differences on forums where at least one time the story of it was told and mentioned the owner, who that person is, etc. Whatever the conclusions: I see several aspects going around personal exposure pushing in the same direction.

I've been questioning myself more and more the differences between promoting [my business, my skills, my websites], and promoting my [name and persona]. Seems to me these years the second option became more relevant.

csdude55: I had a very similar conversation with the local Town Manager a few years ago

Funny thing is anyone can do that identity pretending on both FB and Forums. It sucks, because on FB you can find TONS of people interacting and it's just fake profiles. I'm not sure how people care so much about this on FB and not when it happens on forums, I guess it's about reach, and how most people might actually believe "yeah that's him" if it happens on FB.

[tangor]

Forums ain't dead. You're here, right?

Brett revealed what happened after g made a call...

And we are still here.

Why?

One thing a forum can do that FB can't, other than all the other things noted above, is build a true community and a margin of trust among those who play the game. Particularly when a major multi-national tech giant has done all it can do to kill the venue off.

We ain't dead, we are just reduced to those true believers, thick and thin, who are in it for the long haul.

Now ... the burning question: Can you monetize it, moderate it, make a living? That's the determination that is yet to be discovered. But as long as you guys, Brett and team are still here, I will be, too.

Ain't dead. Just isn't popular among the sheeples out there since it takes dedication and work to be part of a community.

[explorador]

Details would be needed for specifics, yet... I've seen differences on certain topics among Forums / websites / social media / Youtube.

Regarding certain technologies and issues, I had little to no luck finding discussions, testimonials or solutions on the Internet EXCEPT on Youtube, where surprisingly, I've found detailed videos of "how to solve X issue" or "how I solved X issue", and people go deep in specifics, many times showing screenshots, videos, or the whole process. A minority appeared on websites, articles on how they manage the situation.

On the contrary regarding those same topics, I've found tons of abandoned thread questions on forums. That's very interesting, as it seems some people with experience have a preference for video instead of writing. Some of what I've found has been amazingly useful.

[csdude55]

The unfortunate thing there, @explorador, is like someone said earlier: Google is actively promoting videos (especially YouTube, since they own it) while actively demoting message boards :-/

I recently had a problem with my (20+ year old) lawn mower that I was trying to fix, and the only way I could find a solution was to search for "lawn mower repair message board", then create a new thread in that forum. I had several replies pretty quickly so it was an active forum, but I had to explicitly look for a message board before I could find it.

In that case, at least, the problem came back to Google. Which is really weird since these sites all use Adsense! You would think that Google would promote sites that use Adsense over those that don't...

[explorador]

@csdude55, true, I've seen Google sometimes filling too much space with "video results". Regarding repairing things, I developed a preference of video over forums and articles. Some things change from version to version (even sub-version), meaning descriptions might not be useful because your device it's just different somehow, I hate this with computers like model HP-LL24LA, and turns out there is LA-24 / LA-24A, etc and many times it's not even visible, but you know later when you find out the description doesn't match what you have on your desk already disassembled. These situations justify that seeing the devices is a must, and it has to be a decent picture (not like many makezine sites and forums with terrible blurry pictures). At least in that sense Youtube means people even without interest on such videos will take the time to say "this sucks, terrible thumbnail and terrible video", discouraging people or motivating them to do something better, better quality, better images. I confess many times I just see a badly taken picture on an article and I'm like "meh... just 5 more seconds and I'm out of here" because it's most times related to the quality of the content.

But I guess it's fair to establish a difference between:

• A. Traffic going somewhere else, because the search engines won't place the forum results decently, and will promote other stuff due to algo changes or their own priorities instead.
  
• B. The very specific users who decide to leave the forums behind, be it for low traffic, boredom, not finding the answers they are looking for, etc, there could be tons of reasons there.

Regarding B, I no longer have any forum online as it's not within my interests, but I did some experiments on some forums where I hang out. Noticing the traffic went down, I used those forums as an opportunity to play, explore, and test titles and text for new articles on some of my sites, this allows me to check the response and interest from people to certain stuff, or certain style of writing. The results have been encouraging as it helped me to use new ways of writing. Also, noticed clever writing (by me), translated into making some areas of those forums active again, or even the whole forum, I hate to sound like taking credit for it, but it's been the case.

So, we could say people really interested on the forums (like forum owners or moderators) should play an active role on content generation keeping things alive.

[csdude55]

Some things change from version to version (even sub-version)

Haha, my mower model number is 3029X92NA. A lot of times you'll see 3029X92 that's the same thing, but there are other models of 3029X92A or 3029X92B that are totally different! LOL

Which leads to a big annoyance I've had with videos: watching a whole tutorial for 10 minutes just to discover that the model they were working on is an A or B :-/

And then, when my hands are deep inside of the carburetor I want to just read what was said real quick, not try to hunt around in the video for the right section.

I've had a similar experience working on my girlfriend's Pontiac G8, which is an awesome car that hasn't been made in 14 years so it has a cult following. When there's something that needs work, it's a LOT easier to turn to the pros rather than sort through dozens of videos that may or may not have the answer.

And then, of course, there are the questions I've posed on here. I can't imagine that I'll ever find a video that can narrow down why the dang <If "blah">...</If> in my Apache config isn't working! But when I search for it on Google, WebmasterWorld isn't anywhere in sight.

I wonder, though, how much of it is our own faults? I see that WebmasterWorld doesn't have schema tags, which Google has said they like. Maybe forums are getting poor placement because Google said jump, and we're too busy asking "how high" instead of just jumping until we've made the Google Gods happy?

[tangor]

Forums are getting whiffed because G said UGC is not to be trusted... and that was more than a few years ago.

[csdude55]

Not arguing with you, @tangor, but with Google's logic.

Aren't YouTube videos UGC?

[tangor]

Aren't YouTube videos UGC?

Yes they are, subject to YT approval first.

UGC on forums (example) do not go through YT's gateway and g doesn't have the ability to do the same for CONTENT on forums, so they just deprecate it---make it hard to find.

[explorador]

csdude55: Which leads to a big annoyance I've had with videos: watching a whole tutorial for 10 minutes just to discover that the model they were working on is an A or B :-/

I now now the consistent practice of fast forwarding or checking the end of the video, this helps me to verify if it's the same thing, same model, or to avoid watching 10, 20 mins only to find out the guy on the vid says "ok, so I don't know what's going on, I'll post some other video when I find out", pure waste of time!, also, I jump right away to the comments for the same reasons, saves me a lot of time.

tangor: Forums are getting whiffed because G said UGC is not to be trusted... and that was more than a few years ago.

Sadly the same happens on YT (like explained above).

I forgot to mention: supposed market research. Long story short part of my work relates to university students proposals, or product "research", and turns out they are now doing market research on Facebook. WHAT? yes. I'm against this, specially due to my marketing background, but turns out university studies push people to perform this via FB, I'm not kidding, and it's insane, they post invitations or quizzes for people to answer, and no specialized forum or community (or real life people) is taken in count. Their "market research" often involves from 15 to 25 individuals, that's way low, and the amount of data they get is very scarce, but still they build arguments and conclusions around this. It's insane how some people trust FB results so much, this means questioning them brings unreasonable answers on how FB can help them to get results fast.

[Kendo]

Call it "social media", though, and everybody suddenly thinks it's something different.

Without categories and indexes it can never be the same.

[csdude55]

they post invitations or quizzes for people to answer, and no specialized forum or community (or real life people) is taken in count. Their "market research" often involves from 15 to 25 individuals, that's way low, and the amount of data they get is very scarce, but still they build arguments and conclusions around this.

Worse, Fakebook tries its best to show you posts from people that think like you; making it an "echo chamber". So what the students are getting are 15-25 responses from people that are pre-selected to think the same way as the researcher!

Dear God, I hope that they're being told that this is a highly skewed way of getting samples :-O

But nothing surprises me anymore. I used to teach Perl at the local community college, which was their last class before graduation. I can't tell you how many students came in to my class that had NO idea what a variable was, much less an array! More than one told me that they had never once gotten a program to successfully run! But they did the homework and showed up for class, so professors kept passing them.

I went to the director and expressed my concern. And was not invited back to teach the next semester :-/

[explorador]

Yesterday I finished reading a "field study" on a proposal made by a graduating student, it was interesting, and at the end includes the "evidence" of the support and approval of people in the field... it was about two (2) posts on FB and counting the likes from the audience (supposedly, people who know about it, but it's just a fan page of hobbysts, and it's a maximum of 25 likes. I've talked about this, but they say the university it's ok with this, and teachers push them to use FB for their "research".

csdude55: I went to the director and expressed my concern. And was not invited back to teach the next semester :-/

that sucks! Many students can't write, some can't read properly, one year ago finished editing a book (yes a book) by an architect who decided to write something and yes it's a book. I believe my IQ lost points after reading it, and I had to rewrite a lot of things. Nobody is born being a writer, but my point is many lack basic skills. A friend of my wife (university director and teacher) says she is becoming frustrated on how difficult it is for students to deal with ONE page of text, ONE... not 10, not 20... it's one page of paper with text and they complain as if they were being tortured, and mos fail on reading comprehension. No wonder! because it's now an increasingly popular practice to assign homework based on "watch this movie and write something", I've seen those texts, they go like "it's a movie about an actor who has a gun and the movie goes on with the actor and his gun and then at some point the movie gets interesting because the actor says I have a gun", and many times the teachers won't even read those things.

[csdude55]

it was about two (2) posts on FB and counting the likes from the audience

Another major problem there that people don't seem to understand... FB is mostly used by the 50+ crowd, and from my experience a LOT of them will "like" literally anything that a friend posts. My dad passed on January 8, but for his last week I sat with him in the hospital. He would almost constantly scroll through Facebook, just liking everything like it was his job.

Point being that a "like" doesn't imply an agreement, just an acknowledgement that it was seen.

A friend of my wife (university director and teacher) says she is becoming frustrated on how difficult it is for students to deal with ONE page of text

Which comes back to the discussion at hand. I've seen that my forum's mobile users often reply with 1 sentence (less than 10 words) that are usually just argumentative and insulting. The desktop users are the ones that have well-thought replies, often 2 or 3 paragraphs.

But when people that were raised on mobile phones see those 2-3 paragraphs, their eyes blur and they could never imagine reading it.

Just for fun, try opening this thread on your phone, start reading from the first post and see how far you get before your mind starts to wander...

[explorador]

Yes, exactly (the whole thing bout the likes).

Regarding mobile, my take it's seeing things separately:
1. The limitations of the devices (size, keyboard)
2. The stupidity of people, because, yes

I've read lots of threads on the phone on the go, and rarely interacted because I'm not good with small keyboards and I'm really fast on a physical one, but mostly to me it makes little sense trying to interact in such small device, and I don't want to say meaningless or limited things while I can wait and write later, or say "abc, and 123, will post details later". But I don't understand why many (dumb people?) ask complex things and expect complex explanations to be translated into 2 lines of text, exactly as (again dumb) people asked me at times "how would you fix this huge problem with so many variables? but try to answer in 10 words, and I said "only nonsense can be given within that range".

Just for fun, try opening this thread on your phone, start reading from the first post and see how far you get before your mind starts to wander...

I've done this and at least personally my mind deals with it but I see no reason to use the phone to reply, I do that later, but I get your point. Mine goes around how silly people are doing this, same way as watching a film on the phone, or tv series, and yes they do it, a complete movie. There are many things we can do on a mobile phone, but this doesn't mean it's good, a good idea, or efficient; people who expect those results are out of their mind.

[csdude55]

Mine goes around how silly people are doing this, same way as watching a film on the phone, or tv series, and yes they do it, a complete movie.

Not too long ago, my girlfriend's mom came over to visit. We were watching the recent episode of Resident Alien (hilarious show), and it was about 10 minutes in when she showed up.

She's a widow and was just lonely, so she insisted that we keep watching and she'd watch it with us. She'd never seen an episode before, so remember that at this point we're in the middle of an episode in the middle of the season.

During the show she got up a few times to go to the kitchen, and she played on her phone.

When it was over... she complained that it didn't make any sense!

Long story short, this is how I perceive the mobile crowd. Very, very short attention spans, and anything that takes longer than a few seconds will be ignored. Then they leaving thinking that whatever was presented was wrong and didn't make any sense.

[Kendo]

Facebook groups are good for promoting coming events as the notice pops up in their face and gets noticed. But add a few more posts and it is unlikely to be seen.

Forums are better for everything else because they can be categorised and indexed. For tutorials, user guides and threaded discussion, forums rule.

Two different kettles of fish.

[explorador]

Oh, attention spans, I've had discussions with some people who are in denial about this. They keep mentioning the need to adapt things to "them", people with short attention spans: less text, more images, changes every 3 seconds, 10 seconds is already too much, etc they say. "Professionals" in graphic design telling others to modify things to have less and less when people actually need instructions, guidelines and the ending piece says nothing, and sure... it doesn't work, they end up with non-working pieces, and so you have people asking the instructions or failing to follow because the final pieces say nothing.

The problem is a lot of people (even educators) seem to see this as a virtue, something good, when it's a negative thing. They even make it sound as if it's a characteristic of smart people, and I've proved them wrong by explaining simple things people fail to understand over and over, and their response is "it's too complex". Or I just ask them how many times they had to repeat something simple, and so they end up confused (they are dumb too).

A friend of mine became a social media "expert" and promoted FB and such over and over, we had constant frictions over work we shared and she was one of the "yeah, new generations are smarter, they were born digital natives, they need less text and more images because they can process whatever", and then she complained OVER and over because her campaigns on FB failed, stuff as simple as "BIG SALE this saturday Dec 10", and she showed me the tons of messages from people asking "what day?" / "info" / "day" / "send info", I laughed so hard :)

There are natural limits to how much something must be condensed, and people must show some effort in order to learn. Sad days we are living.

* Resident alien is such an awesome show.

[csdude55]

Going down the rant on mobile and the mobile generation...

I mentioned that my dad passed away a few weeks ago. I'm working on clearing up his estate, and emailed the funeral home to ask for a copy of the invoice and 2 additional copies of his death certificate. The girl at the front desk is mid-20s.

She replied to the email and asked for my phone number so that she can call.

Then before I answered, I guess she pulled my file and found my number because she called and left a voicemail. The voicemail said that she received my email and would do as I requested.

But... you could have just said that in the email... that you sent anyway... !

I was thinking about this, and realized that I'm constantly getting requests from younger people to call them. That feels so obsolete, but just today it hit me that they're replying to emails on their phone! And typing up "OK, I'll order that for you today" is just overwhelming and they would rather call.

There are natural limits to how much something must be condensed, and people must show some effort in order to learn.

Similar story here... my girlfriend owns a Dream Vacations franchise, so she plans vacation trips for people. I convinced her to invest in a billboard.

The company supplied her with a design with a collage of 5 or 6 pictures on the left, then the right includes the Dream Vacations tagline, her name, phone number, website, email, and then their logo. I looked at it and said it's WAY too busy and the text is too small, no one will be able to read it while driving by at 45mph. I made some tweak suggestions which included removing that collage, which she hated because it's not as "pretty". So she ran the one they sent.

Now it's up and, sure enough, it's completely illegible and she's had no calls.

Naturally, it's my fault for pushing her to "waste money" on a billboard. She has no recognition that the problem is with the bad design.

Second story, my very first business had a cute, clever name that I loved and was proud of... but nobody understood. I since then learned that the wise business name is short and to the point, leaving NO room for confusion.

[explorador]

Over the last 3 years I've been exposed (sort of saying) to multiple examples of autism one after another, both in real life and on forums, and yes, literature. It's "interesting" but also saddening because the patterns are quiet persistent on "I didn't understand this", but comes mostly in the form of "HE/SHE didn't understand it", and increasing demands of "make it simpler, shorter, less text", while at the same time some of them want to presume "they are brighter, smarter" believing the movies.

To some, this might sound offending, but it's not. At my wife's work (administrative and teaching area of one of the largest universities in the region) they are facing these challenges themselves more and more, and someone in the admin area has been proposing an special support unit for autists, but this is controversial as they are mostly trying to adapt the university and teaching to them, not the opposite way. The question is... IF they adapt the courses and methods to them? what comes next? trying to adapt the world to them as they can't adapt to the world?

There are interesting cases where the parents don't get involved and let this young adults crash if needed, but these students are getting better bot academically and socially, VS the others that need constant enabling and assistance. Since my digging on the area I've been constantly thinking on social media or forums "yep, sounds like one", sure I can't diagnose them. What makes things worse is hearing people who work in the field saying today more than ever autists (people with asperger) are more frequently marrying others in the same spectrum, and this being genetic only increases the chances of more kids with the condition. Wish I was kidding, it's not fun to deal with people who stare at you (mostly something, not you) and eventually you get the idea clear of "do it again, do it again" until they seem to understand what you are trying to teach them. My editing work had multiple encounters with people with autism producing academic work, and it's... alarming, specially when you make corrections, sometimes stuff quite simple and they don't get it, or you send 5 simple corrections per page and they don't even blink when you explain they failed to correct 4 of those.

@csdude55, I got it clear since the first mention but had seconds thoughts on saying "sorry to hear your dad passed away" but it's honestly what I wanted to say from start. Regarding the phone calls, that's interesting, it is my understanding new generations avoid phone calls and want to solve everything via text messages (unless they are very upset and want to vent), at first I thought it was a joke, but then I found more and more sources explaining they don't want to call, and they don't want to deal with phone calls, I've read comments from people explaining how much they dislike this, so I don't know what to think.

About the billboard, yes, I've seen this on graphic design students, they seem to become so convinced less is more, they celebrate things like "yeah, just 3 words" failing to see people don't understand their messages because... well, obviously!