I browsed the members list

[root]

If you want a forum with more members staying for longer and discussing more tech topics look at: AVforums there is a large community there. Computers and computing is just a small part of their topics list.

I kind of feel that the difference between an AV forum and a computer forum is pretty vast...
On an AV forum you'll still have people discussing the merits of oxygen free copper vs silver etc. (And what about putting gold connectors in the setup?)

But with computers now... For most of the world AV is something that you want to do in your down time, and want it to be good, picture and sound quality matter... But computers, have become essentially just tools.

Not that people won't still drop a grand on a PC and want it to be the best, but you know it's not going to last as long as dropping a grand on a decent tv or hifi...
And most people don't want to disappear to another room, they like portables, less choice, little to no customisation... Nothing really to discuss, pick a machine and use it.

Also, much as it feels silly to say it, actually there just aren't the kind of computer problems there used to be, for the most part, since Windows 7, The OS has been pretty bullet proof, doesn't crash randomly, etc, same for software: developers up'd their game to the extent that people just don't need help getting regular stuff done. And if you want advice on the professional end, you just go to professional product forums. (An example of this is I needed advice last week on a multi tenant cloud backup solution that we run where I work. -how to extract specific stats...) it would have been a waste of time to ask on any generic forum.

They also have social media presences, links to share content on Facebook and Twitter, -something we just never got off the ground here. So there may be an argument that they are simply managed better...

That all said:
They have pretty much the same problems as we do here, just hidden three layers deep. Loads of the forums are last post, today but hours ago, or yesterday, a week ago etc...

The forum format is dying. It's a slow death, and I wish it weren't happening...
The UG forums, (being pushed by an international publishing house, with all the opt in social media guff) slowing down is a pretty good testament to that. (Though obviously you can't read too much into individual data points.)

 

[~Darkseeker~]

As always Root, very well put!

There are some exceptions to the 'dying out' of the IT forum format - mostly the forums that are attached to media outlets, content creators or targetted squarely at enthusiasts (rather than broadly targeting all kinds of users)

https://linustechtips.com/main/

I was going to include Overclock.net at this point but I've just had a look and it seems pretty dead over there

 

[Alpha One Seven]

I use my computers for AV machines as well as tools.
I do concur that this forum has pretty much outlived it's usefulness as root pointed out.

 

[Celery]

Hah! I just realized why the gun forums are still going strong as I'm a member at a few.

People in social media do not like to talk about guns.

 

[~Darkseeker~]

Hah! I just realized why the gun forums are still going strong as I'm a member at a few.

People in social media do not like to talk about guns.

I do sometimes wish that polarizing issues would stay on forums, that way I could go on facebook without getting enraged by something

 

[root]

Hah! I just realized why the gun forums are still going strong as I'm a member at a few.

People in social media do not like to talk about guns.

do you think that there is a particular reason for that?

I noticed this on another thing also, bushcraft/camping type forums don't seem to be doing too badly, (that they receive little traffic for an absolutely specialist thing is unsurprising)
My dad seems to manage to find fairly active forums for RV/Caravan, and for his landrover...

it seems to be more "conservative" themed topics that the forum format is still working for.

(but at same time I wonder if those forums had slightly less traffic to start with.)

 

[Lotta Lumina]

I think the main cause of the problem is that people just want more and more convenience these days with social media and live chat, rather than forums. Places like LinuxQuestions.org are still very popular because Linux is a rather specialist topic with a lot of distributions, a lot of newbies and a lot of experts in, I think. The actual forum format or design doesn't always make a difference to activity, because in the case of LQ, they're using a very old version of vBulletin, and I pointed it out a while ago - they said they wouldn't visit more modern forums due to the excessive amount of bloat. So really, keeping a forum as simple as possible, as such is being done here it seems by not using the latest and most fancy forum software. I'd come back here because it's simple to use, I like the forum format, and it seems generally a friendly environment.

In the case of tech forums, someone else pointed out that many people don't bother with the community aspect at all (I'm the complete opposite: I try to become part of the community more than actually help out, because I'm more of an expert in tweaking stuff rather than general problems), and that's true. They just ask a question and then go away after it's answered. I think if we try to put an emphasis on the community here, it might be more active as a whole, but I'm not sure how that would work out. Most of the activity here does come from community discussions anyway, so eh.

Forums aren't ever going to completely die because there is still a need for them: community support is rather reliable and can usually get you further than official support for certain subjects. ^^

 

[Smart_Guy]

Testing and subscribing...
(Wanna see my join date)
Edit: it's Oct. 2011. That's more than six years! Not bad for a far foreigner, eh?

 

[Celery]

SG, there ain't no foreigner here.

 

[pete.i]

There are a couple of other reasons as well which apply to forums and social media. Trolls, keyboard warriors. There is even, at least, one in here that I have on ignore. The big problem with having anybody on ignore is that you still have to read their drivel if you do not log in. I do give advice on here occasionally. I don't always get it right and sometimes I read the post wrong. Invariably someone will jump into the thread and instead of just saying that that advice is wrong they will proceed to insult and generally just get pretty obnoxious. This doesn't just happen to me I have seen it happen on here and other forums I, generally, stop reading that post but others tend to feed the troll and that is just what they want. To be fair this forum is pretty benign in the troll/keyboard warrior areas but some forums that I am on just degenerate into a name calling/swearing match. Where the mods are on those forums I do not know but they do not seem to do much. The other problem I have found is that someone asks a question. I or somone else attempts to answer that question and then instead of coming back and saying either "that didn't work" or " thanks guys that worked" the OP just disappears into the ether never to be heard from again. That is very frustrating and, more importantly, does not help anyone else who may be reading the thread with a similar problem.