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[hector13]

whats df

dafuq

[ChairmanPoo]

Kill the heretic

[KittyTac]

This is the only forum I use much. Everything else I use Discord because I prefer the format but I like the community here enough to not leave.

This forum will probably just... coast for decades as long as DF is a thing. I'm not worried for it.

Forums as a format are past their prime already, and understandably so. For the same reason IRC is.

Might join Spacebattles though. Seems cool.

[Vector]

I definitely prefer forums. I know I'm a minority, but I feel like the UI is easier to use (for me) than Discord or Twitter. Forum Mafia is the best!! But then, I still like IRC, too

(Lest you think it's about a preference for ancient technology, I don't really like instant messenger or Facebook).

I'm not that worried about the place dying. Posting is slow, but that's OK. It's not as exciting and zippy as it used to be, but then, I'm a grown-ass adult now with too much to do, and there are way fewer fights here about silly things. If there's a revival, that would be awesome. If there isn't a revival, honestly, I'm surprised to say after about ~5 years of hiatus that most of the structures and people who I love are still here.

I've still never played DF.

[Rose]

Meanwhile I spend most of my time in a discord composed of a bunch of queer forum members. Just kind of always preferred chatrooms to forums.

I still come here, but not nearly as much as I used to.

[methylatedspirit]

Forums are a slower medium by nature. There's some measure of time-sensitivity with regard to topics, but it's nothing compared to the likes of newer platforms. There, you better bang out your messages fast before it moves onto a different topic. Here, you have anywhere from hours to days to say something. That level of speed you need there means that you'll end up making mistakes much more often than here, at least if your brain is anything like mine.

I think those errors can lead to misunderstandings and arguments over nothing. I think that's part of why Bay12, even in the politics threads, tends to be much calmer than most other places. You have time to respond.

I think it's more relaxing this way. I don't think my tiny brain could handle anything faster. I refuse to touch social media for this exact reason; I don't believe that I can engage in any meaningful discussion on those things without essentially being "run over" by people who can say the wittiest thing first. Only times I get "run over" on Bay12 is in the word association game, but that's basically inevitable.

[Magmacube_tr]

You are all right (Except for the heretic, burn him at stake!). There is documented decline of forums like these, and the current environment prefers speed and fanciness, not depth.

I just hope that someday, a replacement to the forums we know today appears, covering the same niche and all.

Also, is this really forum older than 2008? Wow this place is even more ancient than I first though. Exactly how old is it?

[methylatedspirit]

I can't be bothered to track down the first post on this forum, but a quick look at the Slaves to Armok: God of Blood board yields... around May 2001. It's older than I am!

If my nth-hand knowledge is correct, there was this board called Various Nonsense, which was... a wacky place, I'm sure. It's deleted (or was it locked and hidden?) now, probably because of the wackiness. I wouldn't know myself how it was like, since I only came in in early 2019, long after it was deleted.


I did some digging a while ago, and I came across this: a timeline of Bay12 up to 2016. It's a lot of history, frankly, and I'm surprised it's still accessible. There's people's posts in there. Granted, I had to use Jifodus (our resident lurker) to get there, but it's still feels surreal that these effectively-ephemeral posts are, in a way, still, well... there.

I feel strange looking at old posts, especially those from before my time. It's like looking at a world that you didn't experience, like if you watched really old home videos, colorized and cleaned to look modern. You're looking at fragments of what people experienced generations ago. Some of these people in those posts are around now, but most of them? They've moved on.

I dunno, it's strange to think, that as a relatively-new forumite, that there used to be more people before than now. After all, all of you are all I know, so to think there's other people that used to be here? Wow. Will I be one of those who moves on one day? Will people remember me, and be like "I liked them, they were cool"?

Sorry, looking at the past has a tendency to make me ramble on and on about the future.

[Magmacube_tr]

Oh my gosh! 2001!?

8 years older then Minecraft, 5 years older then Roblox and the worst fanfiction on the internet, and 2 years older than me.

And to think of it that I only came to this forum a mere 3 months ago. Crazy.

[Yoink]

Man, that history thread has some gold in it. RIP the Rage thread. Long live Derm (also I didn't realise the OOCQ thread predated Roll To Roll To Dodge, whoa). Good old Einsteinian Roulette, nice to see my character as one of the very first deaths on the original remembrance list. And then the 'scan thread, dang I had the motivation to create "art" way back then. What a crazy thought. Nostalgia.   



grisha5   

[MonkeyHead]

Forums are brilliant for niche things where fast responses aren't essential. I tend to use 3. Here, the NHL94 forum (yay romhacks!), and an ancient MOO3 forum. The other two move at a slow pace, but that is fine - mature forums don't need constant new things to be said, and when a post occurs, it means it is a meaningful thing. Sure, some forums grow into huge monsters (with the days of hundreds of new posts a day here representing an anomaly), but as discussed, other forms of social media are better suited to that. Oddly, thats why I left ~3 years ago. The amount of shit getting posted here I had no interest in drove me to FB, Twitter, etc. Coming back was a response to wanting a calmer place away from the bullshit of other platforms. Y'all are my old slippers.

But, yeah, this place will go the way of my other 2 visited forums - eventually, a core of 25 or so "old ones", with the odd rookie popping up once in a while to seek knowledge. Nothing wrong with that.

[KittyTac]

But, yeah, this place will go the way of my other 2 visited forums - eventually, a core of 25 or so "old ones", with the odd rookie popping up once in a while to seek knowledge. Nothing wrong with that.

Kinda is already. I could name all the actives (two of whom I introduced to this forum, those being Max and Steppe) if I thought a bit.

This forum is about as old as me.

[scriver]

People talking about age makes me anxious and sad.

[Caz]

This forum is about as old as me.

o-o

[MonkeyHead]

People talking about age makes me anxious and sad.

M'nearly 40. *Shrug*