Decline of the internet forum
 

With the slow decline of this board, and others I've seen... does anyone else see a trend?

It seems that forums (car related) are only live for the current model years that they are produced, and a few years shortly after. IE: Fbodys not made since 2002, the peak of this forum ~2004-2007 (Am I wrong?) LS1 GTO seems to have been a decline as well, not much activity, where it used to be really busy back in the day.

The only place that I'm pretty much an active member that's really busy, is CTS-V owners since they are newer production cars.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Agreed, which makes sense. The masses move with the latest and greatest. Some die hards hang in there and some forums like nastyz28 break that trend. jeepforum.com and wranglerforum.com seem busy in most sections but the jk probably helps.

Tough to compete with social media sites, instant response etc.

And Facebook groups are so full of stupid it makes my head hurt.

And it's too bad. Some forums are such great resources for information. The info available to people on both old and new cars is amazing. But people are too lazy to look, and the FB answers are not searchable nor organized.

The amount of stupid makes it amazing cars still even run or drive.

:bertstare:

I was thinking the same thing. They really allow anyone in, open or closed groups even. So of course you get the spam/fake users. But I often see someone ask a simple question and then get all irrelevant responses. The one NJFBOA group that exists, when i get a new member request, I look into who they are. If they don't list living in or right near nj or don't have any pictures of a camaro/firebird, I then look at what other groups they are in and if they have like 5000 groups, they get blocked. You can tell who's legit and not with a little work. But also most often, no one truly knows anyone on some of those groups and you can't really know who to trust. And with many questions, people don't read previous responses. So you end up getting the same answer multiple times. At least on an established forum like this, users can usually tell who to believe if they have a question, or other users can point them in the right direction such as "ask so and so...".

Thirdgen.org seems to be decently active but thats also due to the large amount of archived info available on that site too. Ive also noticed thirdgen is a lot more friendly than a site like camaro5. And that goes back to the whole "latest and greatest" thing. The 5th gen owners are, for the majority, not normal. I'll leave it at that. The typical thirdgen.org user has a longtime history with their cars and will always own/want to own one. A 5th gen owner will have no problem trading it in for a new model.

One big thing that I think helps online forums is the occasional meeting up. Our monthly meets are good but not always "big" enough to draw newer members. thirdgen fest and camarofest or whatever are huge and get talked about year round. I know those are too large of a scale for a site like this but when we had the nationals, It would attract new members just because of it. If njfboa wants to stay active, I think we need to promote our tech forums and the knowledge of our members as well as try to get a yearly, larger meet set up to kinda make members strive to get projects done so they can attend it and show their work.

That's just my opinion lol.

I'm not on Facebook, and don't plan on being there any time soon. And don't feel like I'm missing a dayum thing.

Monthly meets shouldn't be getting food. We're car guys, do something around that. Go karts was a blast imo and I'd do it again in a heartbeat! Always fun going to race wars too.

^^ this or incorporate both. Yes it can be a challenge and often times cost prohibitive. If it is a food destination run, pick a neat distance location with a fun drive/ run in the middle. Somewhere on the road(s) less traveled.

Also notice that Fbody and some other groups are afraid to drive their cars if there has been inclement weather in the surrounding 6 days within a 1500 mile radius while the sun is between a 45-30 deg angle with the horizon. New car peeps , mustang and import owners dont seem to give $h!t. Understandably if its crappy out, but some take it to the extreme.

Also as Scott mentioned, the fly by trenders/ bandwagoners. That's a given in anything. Sports especially.

So you are signing up to coordinate meets?

I think he did :bertstare:

Also, I blame facebook. There's plenty of fbody groups in there with bafoons as mentioned lol

Maybe. They all seem to follow on my rotation week though....

Well, if you coordinate one, you set the date....

Fair enough, I'll text half the guys that post regularly what works with them :lol:

Ok, I'm dragging you in full boat.

when you text don't forget to text the guys that say they are coming and then no show. :)

I have yet to receive a text, da faq?!

me neither wtf.

thank god no one knows my cell #. its to nice outside to play with my phone or sit on a forum lol.

that being said i still lurk on a ton of car forums. the problem is i lurk do way to much reading and very little posting.

I'll occasionally post, I lurk but kinda got burnt out on the whole message board thing. Plus for a while the immaturity here was a bit much lol. Plus working 60-65hrs a week my time is limited to lurk or post let alone even think about attending a meet.

I prefer the less hectic format of forums versus social media. Sure you get some instant gratification with multiple notifications and comments on social media. Forums still provide useful info if you know how to search. I usually post only when I feel I can actual contribute to the conversation.

A possible reason for decline is so many issues have been discussed that you only need to do a search rather than a post.

Also many new car purchasers wait several years before they start modding their cars.

So with the 8 year gap you have older cars that have been modded and the owners are experienced needing less input and new car owners not modding yet, No middle cars being modded.

I disagree with this.

Many companies (now defunct) used to make products when the Fbodies were new, just like the GTOs, TBSS, G8(just talking GM/LSx platform here) when they were new/just a couple years old.

I find forums that grow to find daily users tend to devolve into cliques of the everyday daily members, turning the forum into a tight knit group of friends...which is a great thing, however usually leaves new members feeling on the fringe or not part of the ''inner circle'' which leaves them to seek other means of connecting. Facebook works for the fact that you already have friends on your timeline in conjunction with your groups timeline, making you feel less left out of the group since they usually contain your IRL friends more often than a forum would.

I sometimes feel like it's a Jeep forum here. Otherwise I like to pop in and check out the for sale section and would like to threads that get interesting not get locked

I haven't been on this board long enough to do anything but assume, but other boards (TGO for example), have declined slowly over time - but are not DOA.

But the new car specific forums (5th gens as an example) are overloaded with tens of thousands of posts a day and heavy sponsorship of said forums. When online forum companies contact us to advertise, they give us monthly postings and member data - some forums have well over 50k members - even though there aren't a fraction that many cars of those types on the road...