Are there very many message boards out there anymore, or is it mostly all comments on blogs and articles? I’m not talking about your Reddit or your 4chan but something an organization might host for its members, or a company for its customers, or a magazine for its subscribers. Anyone willing to toss me some examples of flourishing ones, or tell me about how they’ve all died off because they don’t drive revenue or whatever?
Ravelry.com has three million users, though I don’t know what proportion use the message boards, they are very active and popular. Google doesn’t crawl them so unless you know an avid knitter/crochetiste, you’ve probably never heard of it.
Chronicle of the Horse forums for equestrian matters is strong and kicking. They are backed by a successful niche magazine, which helps, but its a very active forum that’s strictly on topic, except for periodic off-topic Day “vacations”
Pretty sure most if not all the large message boards are topical in nature.
I saw what you did there…
For a research project I’ve been looking at the site Big Boards, which ranks by size (post totals is the default) over two thousand message boards.
The criterion for inclusion is that the board must have a minimum of half a million posts. The membership can be any size.
It’s rather fascinating. You can look at just the sites running any particular software (with vBulletin being the giant), or look at sites ranked by number of members rather than by posts, or look at sites in certain categories (“humor,” “gaming,” “religion,” and so forth.)
I don’t mean to be promoting that site–in fact, I was happy to see this thread up on the board, as it may bring in a Doper who knows of some other site or sites that cover the same territory. But at the moment this is the only one I know of. (Alexa does rank sites, but not forums as such.)
As Hello Again said, by the way, “general interest” boards are few and far between. The majority listed seem to be oriented toward particular special interests. Of course, at many of them, the General Discussion folder is the one that’s most active.
XKCD has published ‘The Map of the Internet’ every year since 2007. On this, the 2010 edition, you can see the region of Forums in the lower right corner.
How interesting! I look at XKCD cartoons whenever I think to (they’re always insightful and funny), but I hadn’t come across this, before.
I’d say they are very popular. LoveShack is very popular for romantic troubles, and Yahoo Answers is popular also.
Thanks, all! Very helpful.
Um, really every year, are you sure? I’m not finding anything actually made by xkcd after that 2010 one. See, I’m trying to convince to my boss that we should invest some time and effort in updating our company’s forum software, and she’s countering that people would rather comment on blogs in the Now of 2013 These Modern Days, Unlike the Olden Days of 2010, so we should just close the forum (and redirect its seemingly valuable and substantial traffic to the blog we’re planning to make but haven’t yet).
I have a soft spot for www.aantares.com, an old school message board… but sadly the number of active users there is probably double digits.
Moved Cafe Society --> MPSIMS.
OK. I guess message boards aren’t culture. Duly noted.
College Confidential seems pretty busy, but it is, again, quite special interest. BTW, if you’re a kid or parent of a kid going through college admissions, this is the place to go to really amp up your anxiety level.
Heh. Well, it’s true that message boards are not books/movies/music (etc.) in and of themselves (though discussions of such things are a big part of forum activity). And I gather that the Cafe Society folder is very busy and it makes sense to prune it of all that’s not specifically books/movies/music/etc.
But yes, of course message boards are a part of modern culture.
And they are that rarity: something truly new. Fifty years ago, if you wanted daily communication with strangers from all over the world, each making their contribution on their own time and at their own convenience, with all responses preserved and viewable…well, it didn’t exist.
No one can tell me that this–that having this option–is mundane or pointless. grumbles :mad:
The Straight Dope message board is currently shown as #97 and the other board I frequent for car nut related issues is at #104.
At least we beat out Reef Central (Fish & Aquarium boards, #100). Screw those guys!
Yes, this is probably the most well-trafficked general discussion board. I still find it interesting that there aren’t more general boards near the top of the 2,000+ that are ranked. But many people get their ‘fix’ of general topics (culture, current events, and so on) on a sub-board of their specialty board.
It’s probably not unrelated to the specialization of many other phenomena. News (broadcast, print, and otherwise) is marketed to partisan segments of the population; music is often targeted at particular demographic groups; filmed fiction (movies, television) seen by some people has never even been heard of by others.
Grass City at No. 93!
I wonder how accurate those listings are? Do they bother accounting for the periodic purgings that (at least some) boards do or do they just figure that it all comes out in the wash at the end of the day?
That’s a handy list to have in case you’re really bored one day; you might just stumble across something really good.
There are 5 small message boards I visit mostly every day. I don’t post at them, but I visit them more than here.