# Why have most Discussion Boards dried up? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 24, 2010, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-have-most-discussion-boards-dried-up/551309 "2010-08-24T17:00:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-have-most-discussion-boards-dried-up/551309/41 "2010-09-01T05:25:46Z")
> [@sunstone](#): > > The only other boards that I frequent are watch fora. Since the focus is very narrow, these boards attract members who are intensely interested in watches. So folks can appreciate comparing ETA movement XXXX with Seiko movement YYYY, and even more arcane topics. For the most part, personalities play a minor role and there are few upsets on the boards that involve negativity. > > BTW, these boards are populated by folks who are well spoken and very knowledgeable about their topics…I’ve learned a great deal more than I’ve contributed, just like on this board. > > I think that any board that has the general population giving their thoughts on most topics will wind up as either boring or as trainwrecks. > > Notice that the level of posting on the SDMB is high; posters are expected to be articulate and (usually) mature, unless posting in a humorous style. That’s true, come to think of it: There are very, very few general interest message boards that actually have interesting conversations. Look at the comments section from any newspaper web site: garbage. Until recently, I though that nothing could be lower than the stupidity that abounded on the youtube comments. But now I think I’ve found a new champion: The comments at fmylife are truly at the bottom of the barrel. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-have-most-discussion-boards-dried-up/551309/42 "2010-09-01T07:41:35Z")
Usenet was great in it’s day and part of that was it was unmoderated. It was especially great when you had a clever troll. I don’t mean a spammer but a troll who was smart enough to make everyone mad yet clever enough to know something about the topic to keep people reading. I don’t mean comments like “Is Milhouse Gay” but he’d specifically comment on episodes of _the Simpsons_ where it seemed to imply Milhouse is gay then he’d work people up and leave 'cause the rest of the people to fight. You see, this troll was clearly there to start up trouble, but knew enough about the subject to at least appear knowledgeable. Because Usenet was unmoderated for the most part, issues developed. As someone said, things you posted stayed forever. Spam was an issue. Back then a huge GB email account wasn’t an option. Remember when gmail first came out you had to be INVITED. Then Usenet tried to do things like “no-archive” which seemed good, your post wouldn’t be saved. No good because people would simply quote you. And while your original post wouldn’t be archived, another person would quote you and your post THERE would be archived. Blogs are another way. You can visit several of them, the blogger says something and people comment directly below it. Some newsreaders were better than others. Some newsreaders were horrible. It was a jumbled mess trying to work through the posts. This lead the WWW and messageboards. These were much easier to use. Usenet quickly fell to spam and the specialty servers for P2P, which even today are content scarce compared to other P2P applications. Another factor is commets. News and other articles now allow you to comment directly on their articles. You don’t have to post the news article here on this board and comment on it. You can simply enter your comments below the news story. ---
**Author:** ![Otara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a88e4f/32.png) [@Otara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otara)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-have-most-discussion-boards-dried-up/551309/43 "2010-09-01T07:53:01Z")
I think lack of moderation is what killed off Usenet for many too though. Otara ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-have-most-discussion-boards-dried-up/551309/44 "2010-09-01T16:05:16Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > Usenet was great in it’s day and part of that was it was unmoderated. It was especially great when you had a clever troll. I don’t mean a spammer but a troll who was smart enough to make everyone mad yet clever enough to know something about the topic to keep people reading. > > I don’t mean comments like “Is Milhouse Gay” but he’d specifically comment on episodes of _the Simpsons_ where it seemed to imply Milhouse is gay then he’d work people up and leave 'cause the rest of the people to fight. You see, this troll was clearly there to start up trouble, but knew enough about the subject to at least appear knowledgeable. > > Because Usenet was unmoderated for the most part, issues developed. As someone said, things you posted stayed forever. Spam was an issue. Back then a huge GB email account wasn’t an option. Remember when gmail first came out you had to be INVITED. > > Then Usenet tried to do things like “no-archive” which seemed good, your post wouldn’t be saved. No good because people would simply quote you. And while your original post wouldn’t be archived, another person would quote you and your post THERE would be archived. > > Blogs are another way. You can visit several of them, the blogger says something and people comment directly below it. > Some newsreaders were better than others. Some newsreaders were horrible. It was a jumbled mess trying to work through the posts. > > This lead the WWW and messageboards. These were much easier to use. Usenet quickly fell to spam and the specialty servers for P2P, which even today are content scarce compared to other P2P applications. > > Another factor is commets. News and other articles now allow you to comment directly on their articles. You don’t have to post the news article here on this board and comment on it. You can simply enter your comments below the news story. Oh my God there was this guy named “Darkfalz” who would pop up on all the relationship/support/singles Usenet boards and complain that he couldn’t get a date because women were evil. He lasted years and years with the same shtick. No way would a moderator let him stay. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-have-most-discussion-boards-dried-up/551309/45 "2010-09-01T20:51:08Z")
> [@Otara](#): > > I think lack of moderation is what killed off Usenet for many too though. > > Otara It’s certainly why I quit frequenting a lot of Usenet groups. I’d find a group that looked interesting, but when I started reading the posts, about 99.99% of them were spam or flames. ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-have-most-discussion-boards-dried-up/551309/46 "2010-09-01T21:09:22Z")
The message board I run has been holding steady. Posting activity is off a bit since its peak in 2003-2004, but it certainly hasn’t dried up. Traffic and rate of new legitimate, non-bot/spammer members continues to increase, but it seems like those new users are less likely to post. I attribute much the decrease in message board activity to Facebook. Even though it seems like there might be many groups dealing with one subject on FB, each with little posting activity, it hurts the forums because FB in general is a huge time sink. If I go to a coffee shop where a lot of people are using their laptops, maybe 50% to 75% of the screens I glance at will be displaying Facebook. Blogs certainly haven’t helped, either, at least for sites dealing with a certain subject. Many workplaces block forums of all kinds now, but they still allow access to Facebook and LinkedIn for professional networking. One of the mods on my site noticed that there was more mega-threads with hundreds of posts, rather than a large number of shorter threads as in the past. Our early results with breaking up the mega-threads are good; there’s a lot more posting activity. While it’s good practice on message boards to have a small number of very busy subforums rather than a large number of less active subforums, the opposite seems true for threads. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-have-most-discussion-boards-dried-up/551309.md?page=2)