Steve_R_Jones Schwim - you tell us..... You've posted a few times recently but then have a two year gap in posting... Where do people go when they disappear for two years?
If you look at member schwim2 , it will close some of that gap. The forum system had stopped sending emails and something occurred that forced a lost password reset and I was stuck so I created a second account so the forum could help me out of another pickle I had gotten myself into.
That being said, there were long periods of absence, for reasons which you touch on below.
Steve_R_Jones I personally think forums are a dying thing... But, they are only as good as the members make them.
My all time favorite site is a sister site to this one... It's basically a Windows Operating System site... We used to get more new threads started in one day than the site gets in a month now... Ten to twelve years ago I never would have guessed in a million years that it would die.
I think you're right. With very few exceptions, my go-to forums are on the way out. I feel like a dinosaur because I don't care for the new manner of discussion(Reddit, social channels, etc) and I don't really understand how they're the preferred manner of asking a question(I can see the allure for just hanging out with 257 of your closest friends).
I do wonder, however, if the Discourse-style of forum does factor in somehow as well. I don't know if it's seen as too stripped down or what. Maybe it's nothing more than the fact that the change happens after the decline has already started and it just looks like a cause rather than a symptom.
I selfishly hope you guys don't disappear. I don't have any Facebook friends to help me out of my next coding catastrophe 🙂