10-12 years ago, writers.net was a lively, free-wheeling, usually unmoderated forum for all things writing+editing, fiction+nonfiction. Several members published novels during that time, including “The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril” and “Water for Elephants.”
This am I checked the site for the first time in a few years–zero active members. Wonder what happened…maybe people just lose interest…the Writer’s Digest Mag forum died too, apparently because of financial troubles.
Are online forums fading out? More people on social media or whatever?
I don’t know about that one specifically (although I read Writers Digest in the 90s an early 2000s I never joined their online community), generally speaking Reddit and Twitter killed a lot of message boards like this one.
Facebook groups have been where a lot of discussion seems to have migrated towards as well, at least in some of my areas of interest. Mildly unfortunate for me, as I don’t have a Facebook account. I have never been able to figure out a rhyme or reason as to why some forums were supplanted by Facebook, some by subreddits, and some have seen a less significant decline.