Regarding forums dying out, have people tried petitioning search engines?

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MaximilianKohler

Well-known member
I posted a related thread: The Discussion Forums Dominating 10,000 Product Review Search Results - Reddit's dominance and the downsides of that
"I didn’t notice a single new or low-post-count forum"
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You can make a garbage reddit sub and show up at the top of google search results. But if you put much greater effort into creating your own high-quality forum you barely show up at all. This is obviously terrible design.

Many of us left forums for reddit because it was free and more convenient to subscribe to numerous forums/topics on one site/page. They also advertised themselves as a public good whose owners had integrity. But there are huge downsides to letting single entities have so much control, and they recently demonstrated that with their bait and switch -- completely overturning longstanding policies and promises, taking over other people's work, and shi**ing on the people who helped them grow. It's important to continually educate people about those downsides. Joining the fediverse should be a huge boon for forums, but we should also directly petition search engines.

I've seen people complaining and giving up about the death of independent forums. I took action, and I encourage others to do the same:

Google:

Bing:

Misc:
Alternative search engines:
I've tried quite a few, and the two I've had the best results with are SearX/SearXNG https://search.disroot.org/search, and Mojeek
 
MaximilianKohler said:
This is obviously terrible design.
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Is it though?

If I'm a user, do I want to access a discussion with social vetting and arguments by hundreds if not thousands of users, or do I want to access a discussion where only one or two users provided input? Which one do you trust more when you do your comparison shopping?

In no way am I suggesting that we shouldn't help new and developing forums flourish, but the argument that Google must somehow help new and starting forums simply because they're new and starting and independent is entirely irrational. Google will direct its attention to those sources that can provide the highest experience, expertise, authority, timeliness (or money!).
 
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AjayJunkies said:
Google will direct its attention to those sources that can provide the highest experience, expertise, authority, timeliness (or money!)
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Google will direct its attention to those sources that can provide money! (or the highest experience, expertise, authority, timeliness)
 
AjayJunkies said:
If I'm a user, do I want to access a discussion with social vetting and arguments by hundreds if not thousands of users, or do I want to access a discussion where only one or two users provided input? Which one do you trust more when you do your comparison shopping?

Google will direct its attention to those sources that can provide the highest experience, expertise, authority, timeliness (or money!).
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Reddit is none of those things. Reddit is one of the least trustworthy sources of information, so I'd trust virtually any other source more than reddit.

the argument that Google must somehow help new and starting forums simply because they're new and starting and independent is entirely irrational
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That's not my argument. The argument was that there are smaller websites that are much higher quality and more trustworthy than anything on reddit, yet reddit gets dominance over them due to "domain authority".
 
Forums are not dying.
Social media are gaining all the trolls who are wrecking groups on facebook and making people move back to forums.
 
I recently learned that Google added a "forums" tab at the top of their search, which is one of the suggestions I made last year. So I might have been successful in reaching the Google devs. I've also petitioned the Bing and Ecosia devs to implement the "forums" tab as well.

I think Google probably also doesn't like the fact that so much information is now hidden behind private groups on Discord, Facebook, and other social media & messaging apps. So I think it's in their interest as well for people to go back to forums. I don't think it's good for Google either if Reddit and Quora are dominating the search results.
 
MaximilianKohler said:
I recently learned that Google added a "forums" tab at the top of their search, which is one of the suggestions I made last year. So I might have been successful in reaching the Google devs. I've also petitioned the Bing and Ecosia devs to implement the "forums" tab as well.

I think Google probably also doesn't like the fact that so much information is now hidden behind private groups on Discord, Facebook, and other social media & messaging apps. So I think it's in their interest as well for people to go back to forums. I don't think it's good for Google either if Reddit and Quora are dominating the search results.
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Quora isn’t exactly dominating the search results, but Reddit is. You can find Reddit’s content on top of a lot of search results before you find any of Quora’s content in the top results.

Reddit is starting to lose some visibility though.

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Suzanne O said:
Forums are not dying.
Social media are gaining all the trolls who are wrecking groups on facebook and making people move back to forums.
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I think Facebook has recognized this, and to my recent observation, is trying to push groups harder.

If you scroll to the bottom of any high followership Page's post comments, it will now suggest groups that other commenters are in, regardless if they are relevant to the Page. It seemingly suggests high group member count groups that other commenters are in, probably because they are aware that statistics of group member counts will likely get someone to engage or join the group, as opposed to showing a group that 500 people might be in.

But in my example of 150K members and 51K members, 10+ posts per day is a joke and shows how badly they're doing if you compare them to even the newest of forums.

PSX_20241001_144148.webp
 
frm said:
But in my example of 150K members and 51K members, 10+ posts per day is a joke and shows how badly they're doing if you compare them to even the newest of forums.
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The problem, perhaps, is that on Facebook you create a group like you make yourself a coffee, so they multiply, if some remain empty others are filled with friends/relations of the creator but the content risks to be quite poor. A Facebook user can also join a group with a click or two, and sometimes without any real desire to participate.
 
frm said:
But in my example of 150K members and 51K members, 10+ posts per day is a joke and shows how badly they're doing if you compare them to even the newest of forums
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This is not targeted at the user, but this observation is incredibly disingenuous and very poor analysis.

1. A Facebook Group with 10+ posts doesn't actually mean only 10 posts. It means more than 10, which means it can have a thousand or ten thousand new posts.

2. A more important point: Facebook has spent more money, time, behavioral research by PhD-level design experts on that one phrase than any independent forum admin will ever spend on their entire forum.

When you are Facebook, you operate on a whole different scale. You have the problem of overwhelming content aka overchoice. If you told a user they had 1000 new posts in one group, another 10,000 new posts in a second group, and 5000 posts in the last group, it becomes psychologically overwhelming. Who has time to browse 20,000 posts every day?? Hence, Facebooks design theory is to make it approachable. Hey, you only have 5 notifications. Hey, you have new groups with 10+ posts.

It's populist and feeds into the crowd to bash Facebook, and caters to the lowest common denominator. Rather than bashing Facebook though, maybe we should attempt to understand parts of it - like behavioral design in large communities - and see where it can apply to our forums. Otherwise, for all of the criticisms that we throw at it, we will find ourselves further left in the dust. How much of our Facebook bashing will help us then?
 
AjayJunkies said:
1. A Facebook Group with 10+ posts doesn't actually mean only 10 posts. It means more than 10, which means it can have a thousand or ten thousand new posts.
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Replicating this by searching general groups that you'd expect to have more than 10, you're right. It will only show 10+ posts per day when there are more likely than not more in those groups. They will probably see this and fix it eventually.
AjayJunkies said:
2. A more important point: Facebook has spent more money, time, behavioral research by PhD-level design experts on that one phrase than any independent forum admin will ever spend on their entire forum.
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Your theory might be correct. Just show 10 and that it.
 
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