Are Forums Making a Comeback in 2026? Real Communities in the Age of AI

[JamesBrown]

If your community is just about facts and facts alone, then you lose to AI. But if your forum is about people and their experiences then you win. AI cannot answer questions like these.... and if it tries the answers will be crap.

My Forum
What would you never buy again
What broke for you after 6 months
Check out my new, whatever
Biscay, How rough was it really, and what month did you go?
Has anyone had this exact gearbox fault on a 2017 Ducato and what fixed it in the end?
Which lithium setup looked great on paper but turned into a nightmare?
Has Company X’s build quality dipped in the last 12 months?
Where did you feel least welcome, and where did you feel genuinely welcome
An AV Forum
Headphones for jazz vocals: what actually sounds natural?
Is £X a good price for this TV right now in the UK?
Dead pixels: what’s acceptable and what do retailers actually do when you tell em?
A Hamster Forum
Is this enclosure actually big enough for a Syrian, or will they go full prison-break?
Male or female? The… equipment is confusing.

Answers to these questions are the gold that users want. Not some Ai Slop guess, or Just the facts maam

 

[80sDude]

Bottom line is forums aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Sure they're not as popular as they used to be but half the time that could be because of us the owners not being creative and persistent in keeping our forums attractive for visitors to want to participate. The other main and biggest reason because of social media, Quora and Reedit. AI has nothing to do with it in my opinion.

 

[Suzanne O]

If anything you should have a theme with your forum.
That theme might be something you do for your work or it might be a hobby such as art.
I've seen some forums and i used to do this too just use the default theme and not add anything else.
That's boring for you.
My own forum is AFL Footy related and it's also touches base with normal life and other sports and hobbies.
Even that is considered boring. But for me it's actually fine.
I've managed to get by just by having a general forum.
I've added different sections to it.
Just to make it more interesting.
We've only got 5 members.
We've had so many people who have tried to join my forum only to be done for trolling.
Hence the low membership.
We'll get more and more people.

 

[dunowat]

I tend to think they're coming back in fashion if you have the right niche's and the right discovery tools. People like to connect and AI doesn't allow too much of that. In a lot of bigger social communities there's a lot of bad attitudes along with AI. It'll be interesting to see but I think there's a spot for forums.

My main thing is just condensing the text boxes for discussion so it's more mobile friendly. Once we can get threaded discussions i think that'll be a game changer for my users at least. 80%+ of my users are on mobile but these forums were built for a different time. If the dev's or UI folks can make the UI sleek, i think there's definitely a way to migrate people. That and also provide a way for discoverability and unified logins

 

[Alan_SP]

I actually see it differently. With AI becoming such a huge part of our daily routines and business workflows, I think it might actually kill off forums together wih social media rather than bring them back. Moving forward, why would people spend effort searching through forum threads when AI can give them exactly what they need instantly? I believe convenience will win out.

AI is designed to be stupid, and can't be made to be intelligent.

They talk about general AI, but the moment they create it (if they manage to do that), we will be exterminated. Something like this: