Chimaera
03-04-2009, 02:29 PM
Hi all
I haven’t done a rant in a while so i thought it would be time for another. ;o)
The State Of Forums Today [My Thoughts On Our Internet World Today]
What would you say is the state of forums today?
Please bear in mind I’m talking primarily from a warez background in this post
Me personally I think they are slowly dying, and I shall try to explain why and see if we can stimulate debate on the subject.
Many will not agree, and some may be a bit shocked that they hadn’t considered it which is all to the good, and some will dismiss it out of hand.
In my opinion forums today suffer from the worst of the human condition, aka apathy.
I have been a member of, and worked on forums, for many many years and i have observed many attempts to bring a forum back to life.
Information used to be a valuable commodity, a download for e.g. of a game required seriously talented people that went out of their way to crack the game so that other could use it, many hours of work went into doing this and then uploading it so we could download it at a miserable speed until we had it.
And it was an achievement to get it and then even for it to work.
The vast invisible network which we couldn’t see, or even comprehend worked away behind the scenes where we oblivious to it.
Now as the years progressed then forums started to appear that had links that had downloads, what a thing this was when it started, organised places with all the files we desired. No longer hours and hours of scouring ftp links to find our downloads, which to be fair was a drag but it was all we knew.
Now then a peculiar thing happened; forum software evolved which made communication possible within the forum again a fantastic thing, initially it wasn’t easy and defiantly not smooth, but forums began to develop rapidly to keep peace with the ideas from the people that used them.
And so the community was born and the massive development of forums began, often with the user ideas implemented directly into the forums.
Which the next evolvement happened, forums became sectioned from each other i.e. 1st forum did warez, 2nd one did pics, 3rd did games, this is an inevitable thing that had to happen as no one forum can do everything although many try, even to this day
What I think was one of the biggest problems at this time, was people came to believe that their forum was better than someone else’s even though they probably had very similar files for download, now we had many forums that were kicked to the kerb due to this idea taking hold with the community’s in the forums, some because it was their natural time in the life of a forum others through misdeeds from people who masqueraded as friends and defiantly weren’t (and I saw plenty of that over the years).
So after this had gone on for a while we started to see a surge of competition which is good in any environment finding warez and things for a forum became an important thing, which was in my opinion the second of the nails in the coffin for forums as a whole (1st being the elitist view).As this progressed, it became too important and the community as a whole became a lesser thing, which is the start of the slope to where we are today.
Now I’m not foolish to imagine my view is universal but we shall continue, you’ll get your chance at the end.
Anyway, as the years progressed people that could upload and hold files for others became gods (in a general sense) and the view of the people became firmly fixed on getting people who can raise the profile of a given forum, and poaching people and stuff from other sites became rife for a while.
Now there were a lot of other mistakes made as well like promoting friends to mods, and giving status to the wrong people, who fell into the power hungry dictator role which caused over the net in general, thousands of people became disgruntled with forums in general.
Now this had a good effect because these people started their own forums and tried to do things from a sensible business minded premise and their forums began to work as the community started to surface again because things were being done from a community view, don’t get me wrong forums have to have rules but more importantly they have to follow them.
So we have arrived at the modern day and what would we say are the problems now?
1] People take forums for granted
2] Nobody except a faithful few can be bothered to help out
3] Stuff is too easy to get, which causes no 4
4] People don’t have respect for the hackers and crackers that provide the things you need
5] People can’t be bothered to be involved in a community [until the keys change]
6] People in general are downright rude and ignorant when they want something
7] People think everything should be for nothing
Don’t misunderstand I’m not knocking the good work many hundreds of people do on the forums around the world, because if you are truly honest with yourself would this forum still be here without the help of the people that give their time for nothing?
The answer for the brain-dead is NO
Imagine a situation where there was a file needed and only the selected few had it and weren’t allowed to give it out, imagine how much kicking off on the forums there would be, it would be mental
So how would we fix this situation?
1] Be nice to people in your life not just on here.
2] If someone does something nice for you [grow a pair] and say thank you.
3] Don’t take take, give something back, be a part of your community, you might find a piece of info that someone may need, but you won’t know that unless you post it.
4] I know people have busy lives but try and do something on here once a week, even if it means chat to someone in the shoutbox.
5] Make suggestions how to improve the forum, you may have a thought that none of us have thought off that might take the forum in a new direction.
6-20] Get Involved, because if you dont eventually the forum and this applies to all forums will fail, because its the community as a whole that make the forum what it is, and like it or not YOU are a part of a community
This post is hopefully a wakeup call for those that are bothered to read it, because i truly believe in time and it may be years or it could be months a lot of forums are gonna dissapear as the community's in them dissolve gradually through the many things outlined in this post
Btw im not saying that Wod is shutting just that it may happen
Try your best to help, it maybe your last chance...
Chimaera
I haven’t done a rant in a while so i thought it would be time for another. ;o)
The State Of Forums Today [My Thoughts On Our Internet World Today]
What would you say is the state of forums today?
Please bear in mind I’m talking primarily from a warez background in this post
Me personally I think they are slowly dying, and I shall try to explain why and see if we can stimulate debate on the subject.
Many will not agree, and some may be a bit shocked that they hadn’t considered it which is all to the good, and some will dismiss it out of hand.
In my opinion forums today suffer from the worst of the human condition, aka apathy.
I have been a member of, and worked on forums, for many many years and i have observed many attempts to bring a forum back to life.
Information used to be a valuable commodity, a download for e.g. of a game required seriously talented people that went out of their way to crack the game so that other could use it, many hours of work went into doing this and then uploading it so we could download it at a miserable speed until we had it.
And it was an achievement to get it and then even for it to work.
The vast invisible network which we couldn’t see, or even comprehend worked away behind the scenes where we oblivious to it.
Now as the years progressed then forums started to appear that had links that had downloads, what a thing this was when it started, organised places with all the files we desired. No longer hours and hours of scouring ftp links to find our downloads, which to be fair was a drag but it was all we knew.
Now then a peculiar thing happened; forum software evolved which made communication possible within the forum again a fantastic thing, initially it wasn’t easy and defiantly not smooth, but forums began to develop rapidly to keep peace with the ideas from the people that used them.
And so the community was born and the massive development of forums began, often with the user ideas implemented directly into the forums.
Which the next evolvement happened, forums became sectioned from each other i.e. 1st forum did warez, 2nd one did pics, 3rd did games, this is an inevitable thing that had to happen as no one forum can do everything although many try, even to this day
What I think was one of the biggest problems at this time, was people came to believe that their forum was better than someone else’s even though they probably had very similar files for download, now we had many forums that were kicked to the kerb due to this idea taking hold with the community’s in the forums, some because it was their natural time in the life of a forum others through misdeeds from people who masqueraded as friends and defiantly weren’t (and I saw plenty of that over the years).
So after this had gone on for a while we started to see a surge of competition which is good in any environment finding warez and things for a forum became an important thing, which was in my opinion the second of the nails in the coffin for forums as a whole (1st being the elitist view).As this progressed, it became too important and the community as a whole became a lesser thing, which is the start of the slope to where we are today.
Now I’m not foolish to imagine my view is universal but we shall continue, you’ll get your chance at the end.
Anyway, as the years progressed people that could upload and hold files for others became gods (in a general sense) and the view of the people became firmly fixed on getting people who can raise the profile of a given forum, and poaching people and stuff from other sites became rife for a while.
Now there were a lot of other mistakes made as well like promoting friends to mods, and giving status to the wrong people, who fell into the power hungry dictator role which caused over the net in general, thousands of people became disgruntled with forums in general.
Now this had a good effect because these people started their own forums and tried to do things from a sensible business minded premise and their forums began to work as the community started to surface again because things were being done from a community view, don’t get me wrong forums have to have rules but more importantly they have to follow them.
So we have arrived at the modern day and what would we say are the problems now?
1] People take forums for granted
2] Nobody except a faithful few can be bothered to help out
3] Stuff is too easy to get, which causes no 4
4] People don’t have respect for the hackers and crackers that provide the things you need
5] People can’t be bothered to be involved in a community [until the keys change]
6] People in general are downright rude and ignorant when they want something
7] People think everything should be for nothing
Don’t misunderstand I’m not knocking the good work many hundreds of people do on the forums around the world, because if you are truly honest with yourself would this forum still be here without the help of the people that give their time for nothing?
The answer for the brain-dead is NO
Imagine a situation where there was a file needed and only the selected few had it and weren’t allowed to give it out, imagine how much kicking off on the forums there would be, it would be mental
So how would we fix this situation?
1] Be nice to people in your life not just on here.
2] If someone does something nice for you [grow a pair] and say thank you.
3] Don’t take take, give something back, be a part of your community, you might find a piece of info that someone may need, but you won’t know that unless you post it.
4] I know people have busy lives but try and do something on here once a week, even if it means chat to someone in the shoutbox.
5] Make suggestions how to improve the forum, you may have a thought that none of us have thought off that might take the forum in a new direction.
6-20] Get Involved, because if you dont eventually the forum and this applies to all forums will fail, because its the community as a whole that make the forum what it is, and like it or not YOU are a part of a community
This post is hopefully a wakeup call for those that are bothered to read it, because i truly believe in time and it may be years or it could be months a lot of forums are gonna dissapear as the community's in them dissolve gradually through the many things outlined in this post
Btw im not saying that Wod is shutting just that it may happen
Try your best to help, it maybe your last chance...
Chimaera