phpBB is dead

[Rhino.Freak]

It all boils down to convenience.
Is facebook convenient? Hell yea.
Is twitter convenient? Hell yea.
Is reddit convenient? It is!
Is BB convenient? Not really.

Say I want to give some information to someone, I have to go on my forum, navigate to the right subforum, click on "create new topic", type a lot and with formatting for clarity and hit send.
A user then has to visit the forum, make sure he seems a "new post" on a specific subforum and then click on the thread to receive the information I intended to spread.
Now it may not sound that bad but then again people don't open forums much in general, perhaps once a day or so, not to generalize but in comparison to social networks.

Now let's see Twitter/Facebook/Reddit.. First and foremost, they have an APP. Shit ton of people use mobile phones only to browse web/kill time or whatever (I am one of them).
What happens when I click on my facebook/twitter/reddit app? BOOM! One click access to content that I am subscribed to and want to see. And is there any menu or something to navigate around? Hardly any. Just SCROLL. HOLY SHIT that's convenient. You feeling me peeps?
Plus push notification whenever some shit happens. JEEZUZ CHRIST THE CONVENIENCE IS AMAZING. That's what this generation is all about.

A mobile app is super super helpful in boosting activity and I'm talking from experience, when I used tapatalk in past, I used to get much more activity.
And next thing is, like someone mentioned before, threads like Reddit. We see on the homepage itself what new posts are trending by their votes and its all on front page.

And one last thing which may not be that important is the fact that forums in general too much power to mods and admins. They are rulers pretty much. Democracy system is more likely to get popular

[Lumpy Burgertushie]

first, you are comparing apples to oranges here. a bulletin board is designed to be a place to have discussions, not instant messaging. if you want instant messaging you use facebook or twitter or texting etc.
If you want to participate in a discussion you use a bulletin board like phpbb etc.

also, a bulletin board is not a democracy. the owner gets to set the rules and visitors must follow them or go elsewhere. the boards that try to be a democracy usually wind up becoming a complete failure and everyone leaves.
by the way, this is also true about your facebook page, you set the rules about what and who you will allow to post etc.
facebook is certainly not very democratic about what they allow and disallow on your site are they?

whoever owns/runs a bulletin board gets to set the rules. if you visit, you play by their rules, if you don't like their rules you leave. very simple, very logical.

robert

[Rhino.Freak]

first, you are comparing apples to oranges here. a bulletin board is designed to be a place to have discussions, not instant messaging. if you want instant messaging you use facebook or twitter or texting etc.
If you want to participate in a discussion you use a bulletin board like phpbb etc.

Discussion is a super set here. Instant messaging means you are able to message someone instantly, which is a feature of facebook but you're making it sound that's the only thing there.
You mean to say discussions don't happen in facebook? You couldn't possibly be any more wrong. I use facebook and forums both. I've had all kinds of discussion in both.
There are groups in facebook where we discuss specific topics and it works well (and has all the merits of convenience that I posted about.) it's not any different from BB in terms of what is being posted.
You can find all kinds of thing in all kinds of system, it just depends on people who are communicating and nothing else.

also, a bulletin board is not a democracy. the owner gets to set the rules and visitors must follow them or go elsewhere. the boards that try to be a democracy usually wind up becoming a complete failure and everyone leaves.
by the way, this is also true about your facebook page, you set the rules about what and who you will allow to post etc.
facebook is certainly not very democratic about what they allow and disallow on your site are they?

When I mentioned this point, I was not comparing it to facebook anymore, I simply mentioned that some people don't like to follow each and every rule that an owner has set, I know very well bulletin boards are not democracy that's what I posted in the first place. But I feel if they were in some manner they'd have more appeal.

[kaptanjak]

I don't know what the cool kids are doing, but people in my subject area still love their forums. Granted my user base is a little older than most social media targets but a forum is still the best place to go if you need to learn how to do something.

[AmigoJack]

One click access to content that I am subscribed to and want to see. And is there any menu or something to navigate around? Hardly any. Just SCROLL. HOLY SHIT that's convenient. You feeling me peeps?
Plus push notification whenever some shit happens. JEEZUZ CHRIST THE CONVENIENCE IS AMAZING. That's what this generation is all about.

Yes, this may certainly happen. But it also means consumption only, not contribution. In my days, killing time and being contributive wasn't mutually exclusive - but nowadays looking at all the people in the train it just seems so.

What you describe only addresses read-only members to BBSs. Are those the majority?

[Crise]

What you describe only addresses read-only members to BBSs. Are those the majority?

This depends on the style of community you are talking about... for some fields, all there generally is contribution wise most of the time is "when something goes wrong/doesn't work" or "when you need to do something, and can't find out how" (the latter even to a lesser extent these days, I'd wager).

The general "enthusiast" communities that are about actively discussing a subject on the other hand live and die based on community. Whereas, the ones in the first category can survive for as long as their management (and by proxy whatever the forum is providing information about remains relevant) is active. Typically those boards are either used as means to distribute information and/or provide support.

As far as this forum is concerned, for example, it is definitely in the first category... although because of the sheer size of the forum/community it does have a bit of the second category mixed in as well.

You can generally judge which category a community is part of, depending on overall size, based on whether the information and discussion is generally user initiated or produced by the "management" (to which the community then may respond to and spark discussion about, depending on the health of the community).

I'd say that in the first category both passive readers and the "one off" members are definitely in the majority, whereas in the second category it is the opposite.

The "problem" is, that phpBB can not or should not really focus on either sub type too much... likewise trying to focus on both would turn phpBB the proverbial "Kitchen sink" (which some of its competitors have turned into).

[wadie]

The main reason I started this thread isn't to compare phpBB with Social media, but because in my opinion even when it comes to bulletin boards phpBB is way behind. Reddit is obviously the best way to keep in touch with a community but even when it comes to open source projects there is at least one which most of you probably know or have used.
It's probably against the rules to post the name here, but it' was written using Ruby as backend back the founder of Stackoverflow and why is it super popular ? because it uses new technologies and simply looks and feels new. nodejs and that kinda stuff.. so yeah social networking might be a reason for BB going behind, but phpBB itself is way behind when it comes to bulletin boards software in general.

[kustajuspin]

What?
The Phpbb is a free software,but it still to be better,and there are something free to change.Else forums even have encryption files or bug files.
The world's most popular forum is Phpbb I think,I'm used to using it for 5 years.
Maybe someone are finding a simpler way to create all kinds of websites to exchange the only texts htmlweb.

[SalazarAG]

I believe that when myBB 2.0 is released, most phpbb users will convert their forums to it because the system will be all overwritten and will be very good for admins (complete system alerts, rewritten profile, rewriting index, easy system plugins ) ...
I would like to see phpBB take that same course one day.

[Lumpy Burgertushie]

I believe that when myBB 2.0 is released, most phpbb users will convert their forums to it because the system will be all overwritten and will be very good for admins (complete system alerts, rewritten profile, rewriting index, easy system plugins ) ...
I would like to see phpBB take that same course one day.

I am sure that a lot of users might convert but considering how many hundreds of thousands of phpbb users there are in the world, I would seriously doubt that "most" will change to anything, doesn't matter what it is.

and, there are probably still thousands a day that download and install phpbb.


robert

[Rhino.Freak]

One click access to content that I am subscribed to and want to see. And is there any menu or something to navigate around? Hardly any. Just SCROLL. HOLY SHIT that's convenient. You feeling me peeps?
Plus push notification whenever some shit happens. JEEZUZ CHRIST THE CONVENIENCE IS AMAZING. That's what this generation is all about.

Yes, this may certainly happen. But it also means consumption only, not contribution. In my days, killing time and being contributive wasn't mutually exclusive - but nowadays looking at all the people in the train it just seems so.

What you describe only addresses read-only members to BBSs. Are those the majority?

You made a great point about consumption and contribution, I admit I did not consider that. Majority of facebook for general users is consumption, sure we have contribution and discussions with other people but in my experience the consumption side outweighs a lot. People are on either ends of spectrum as either huge consumers (most people) or huge contributers (most page admins).

I think it'd be best for a forum to be like reddit where users are huge contributers AND consumers both, which is what a forum should be like (of course depends on the forum).

[Crusoeman]

It looks as though broadly speaking we are in agreement over this and that phpBB is not dead.

I see Facebook and Twitter as though they are daily newspapers. What's written today is in the bin tomorrow. No-one is interested. Forums are more like libraries. You go there for information that will still be there tomorrow for you to go back to. We need daily newspapers. We need libraries. They can both live with each other.

Tim

[Mick]

I see Facebook and Twitter as though they are daily newspapers. What's written today is in the bin tomorrow. No-one is interested. Forums are more like libraries. You go there for information that will still be there tomorrow for you to go back to. We need daily newspapers. We need libraries. They can both live with each other

Well said that man!!

[wadie]

It looks as though broadly speaking we are in agreement over this and that phpBB is not dead.

We agree that forums, communities and the contribution to them aren't dead. not sure about phpBB though.

I see Facebook and Twitter as though they are daily newspapers. What's written today is in the bin tomorrow. No-one is interested. Forums are more like libraries. You go there for information that will still be there tomorrow for you to go back to. We need daily newspapers. We need libraries. They can both live with each other.

Tim

Well said.

[Talk19Zehn]

Hey, looking forward ...

https://www.google.de/trends/explore?da ... -m&q=phpBB

Currently, an increase of 400% for phpBB-3.2 ... Statistics speak for an interest - would be.

Social networks are the private living room and can not replace forums, a special conversation. Time does the rest .. Please do not be so negative, the factor time is also important from my point of view.

Tragically, I believe that phpBB does not continuously record details and desires in the new software generation, but rather realizes its own concepts, which are always a change in the schedule, and that phpBB may not be desired by the phpBB site operators. There is perhaps a lack of flexibility at this moment. I do not know.

The chances are great, but we must not miss them.

Well then ...

Best wishes, regards at all!