Online Forums Drying up / Dying

Political opinions are like assholes, everyones got one, however some people get confused about which hole to their shit is meant to come out. Politics unmoderated tend to kill bulletin boards because its all negative and eventually the king posters group together and shit all over any newbies until the boards slowly dies. Facebook otoh is a just shitty hard to navigate advert platform. Great bbs threads last a long time.

 

I had to ask my 11 year old how to use it the other day. It had some updated software for my RaceCapture, and I was like you really need to be invited and stuff. this is kinda dumb.

 

I miss how awesome forums were for sure.. They were such a big help when I was younger.. I used to be really really into RX7's and I had a few T2 examples... If it weren't for RX7Club(dot)com I'd have been lost... There's a plethora of knowledge on that site and the mod/admins have always done a great job of cataloging things and removing wrong information. I'm not sure how good it is now though.

Instead of being lost, I ran out of money because I learned what to do and spent the money to do it. lol

 

Not bothered at all the Dungeon is gone. I've met a decent number of members here at the track and in other situations and have always gotten along famously. But people tend to say shit on a forum that they wouldn't face to face, and it got ugly at times. Like you said, I can simply put them on ignore, which I've done to at least 10 people here that can't keep their dumbass snide remarks out of the current forum. I get it, this place is chock full of Type A personalities, and nobody ever backs down or looks at the other side of an argument. And if you were face to face, people wouldn't act the way they used to in the old Dungeon. Don't miss it a bit.

 

Absolute truth in this post.

I'd say the WERA Board is much more tame than than a couple decades ago.

However I think difference of opinion is healthy. Being in a echo chamber tends to be boring.

I've seen a few times when someone's online bravado didn't go so well when crap caught up to them in real life. That is why I try like heck to be respectful and refrain from personal attacks / especially to those I don't personally know.

 

Boy let me rant with this one. I was a teen during the big internet forum era (early 2000s) and was on ALL of them car related, some bike related. They were so amazing for the most part. Researching old forum posts/threads is still how I do research on vehicles I'm interested in messing with, though it's usually old crap.

Now that everything is a facebook group, it's horrible. Most of the group is kids with dead batteries immediately posting wanting help why their new panigale won't start. There's NO search/history function, no capture of knowledge. Just an endless dredge of the same questions that are easily answerable with a quick google or a forum search if there was such a thing.

Not to mention back in the day if you had a Nissan 240sx, there was 2-3 forums that you were definitely on if you wanted technical information, and maybe 5-6 total. Now there's 38 facebook groups for each model bike and all have like 11 members. So pointless.

I used to be on here more then tapatalk decided my name and password wasn't correct (it is), and despite deleting the app, redownloading, changing it etc...I still don't have permission - I've resorted to only browsing my laptop at work.

 

Tapatalk doesn’t work here because I turned it off “temporarily” until I could figure out a fix to a major problem it was causing. The fix ended up being leaving it turned off permanently and say F you to it.

It had some major security issues that scammers could use to get on here without checks.

it ain’t coming back.

 

RX7 club was the bomb when I had my FC in 2013-2016. Aaroncake really kept that place in order.

 

I have similar stories about GenI MR2 forums and really appreciate the knowledge the old school formats provided.

Bookface seems to make a bad habit out of serving as the internet 3.0 for dummies and it along with other social media platforms are having a negative influence on overall WWW user experience, and one might argue society as a whole. But I know better than to argue that here.

I DO miss the dungeon because polite discourse is the backbone of our democracy, but I can also totally understand why the mods here got tired of keeping it polite.

 

The problem with the dungeon was a few wack jobs that made it their own cat box and scooping the turds after beer and chili night was getting to be too often.
I just basically stopped because I was full up and I think Papa and Lumpy just got sick of it.

 

This is exactly what @skidooboy said-

Google is what people go to when they need answers, and it almost always comes from a forum where shit is indexed- for some reason, Google doesn't scrape FB the same way. Probably because FB is full of so many off topic rants and general idiocy. People wonder why our society has fallen so far with the way we communicate. You just gave a bullhorn to half the population that were previously ignored. You have to make an effort to go on a forum, FB requires no effort.

 

the irony there is the difference in the Terms Of Service between the 2 mediums.
Before all of that "ease of access" was newsgroup messages where you had to subscribe & could get "spy" shots or leaked intel on bikes or racing or products that wasnt a contrived marketing click stunt. You could also troll the moderators like a boss if that was your bag...lol

 

Google doesn't scrape Facebook because Facebook doesn't want them to and tells them as such (using a robots.txt file). Facebook wants that content and data for themself and their users, not to be "cuckolded" (first time I've ever used that word unironically) by Google.

 

I'm definatley a forum guy, not so much with Facebook. Got hooked in 2003 when I graduated high school and bought myself a 1971 Plymouth Satellite. Since my family is all bowtie boys I needed resources to learn all I could about Mopars and forums were the ticket.

Same when I started riding bikes in 2016. I don't think forums will ever die though because they are so much better for technical discussions.

 

If I offend you and spend the time to find me, I'll save you the effort. Pm me, I'll send my address. Do your worst, one of us will remember the encounter.
Free speech has a cost, being offended. Once constrained via forum, Facebook, news, the tube it's great until the view censored is yours.
The came for them, came for the others, didn't say anything since they didn't come for me. Then they did, no one left to hear me complain.
If you give up your liberty for safety, you will have neither. Words do not make you safe or not. Action does. Peace.

I'm too old, much closer to checking out compared to when I check in. My give a care at a new all time low.

 

^
That’s deep…

 

Indy, you offended me! I’m reporting you to the mods!

the bbs is a safe space! Everyone needs to feel safe to join and post.

Except for those pussy locust kalifornia posters, they they can suck my fat tits!

 

Wow, you sure can tell when the PBR goes on sale.

 

Thanks……..I think?

 

Yeah for sure. The entire country hangs in the balance for you not being able to go on a private motorcycle forum and espouse your views on whatever. Write your congressperson or something as it's an outrage (make sure to include some mention of the Constitution so it really shines).