The end of forums as we know them?

[Morgain]

I was interested in Scott Molinari's point in his recent interview about the global pool of forum users.

He replied to my question on his project's competition with XF like this:
I don't think Kier, Mike or Ashley would appreciate me selling my ideas for a new system here on their forum, so I've answered your question on Admin-Talk.

I agree with Scott's comcept that the barriers between forums are annoying and artificial. To participate in various forums i have all these signups to do, email confirmations again passwords avatars, birth dates, location, timezone UGH It's the same ME. Why can't I just BE ME and dip into different places in the same empire?

Wouldnt it be great if I didn't have to do all that? I just ID myself as an XF lady Morgain and powzap all that stuff auto fills for me. This would be a big plus for XF too It would help XF forums get those precious users in and make the "XF Zone" a very attractive place to be. Participating XF admins would benefit alot.
There could even be shared XF meeting halls run by some XF admins with merged interests, with links off to there separate boards - bit like the old webrings only the user has control which ring forum to visit, not a linear series which forces user visits in order.
There are obvious challenges about spammers but I bet our clever devs could think around that. Apply select password, and do captcha maybe but all the rest gets filled in.

Where I don't follow Scott is that the Facebook model is so great. Facebook is already waning quite strikingly. Its very strength is its weakness. It can connect you with long lost friends, and connect families together. It can whip news around the world in minutes.
Trouble is it also connects you with a mountain of junk, and within an hour you are cluttered. Nor is being a Facebook person any status of pride or dignity.

So I think it would be great to have the ease of access of FB giving an XF global signup - to participating forums. Those forums would get boosted visits good for ad revenue, and maintaining activity.

But forums provide so much more. They serve a primitive need for tribe both for admins and users ("my people"). Or they can do.This is an ancient and intense need not to be overlooked.
They also give a far more nuanced and triaged kind of discussion with a far greater richness of response. Nor would a global platform cover the genuine needs for privacy which some forums have. Online community is not a glass city.

 

[Walter]

I just ID myself as an XF lady Morgain and powzap all that stuff auto fills for me.

Good bye, anonymity.
And anonymity is mostly used for legit purposes (e.g. talking about diseases, s.xual preferences,...)
Actually, thats one of the strength of forums.

 

[CTXMedia]

Facebook is about "you" - forums are about "the subject"; which is why Facebook was never going to kill off forums - it doesn't provide the subject-specific richness that enthusiasts and professionals get from forums full of like-minded people.

People have blamed Facebook for the failure of their forums, but I suspect in most cases their forums were simply not engaging enough - or they were motivated by money and assumed throwing up a forum would be a nice little Internet cash-cow.

Forums take a LOT of time and effort to build and nuture and not everyone has either the personal skills or patience to do it properly - but for those who do, the rewards are still there and regardless of the growth of Facebook and similar social media, there's still plenty of room for good, well-run, forums to grow too.

Cheers,
Shaun

Oh, and your "one" user account idea sounds similar to the "one" avatar idea the Gravatar provides; but you'd need a common format and all the major forum developers to support it - why not float the idea and see if anyone fancies the challenge?

 

[Alpha1]

Facebook, etc provide social interaction, but forums do fail in informative discussion. The format is simply not good enough to cater to information gathering and dissemination. It only lasts until something better comes along. That's why sites like stachexchange, wikipedia, disqus, answers, etc. are so successful. I expect that Scott has understood this. So, yes this could well be the end of forums as we know it. But it all depends on how successful the implementation is.

Zoints already did the universal forum account and that did not turn out well. Maybe Scott can do it better though.

 

[Martok]

The problem with a single ID is that you can't base it around a username. Not everyone wants to use the same username on every forum, nor the same avatar. Also your preferred username may already be used on a forum by a non - single ID user.

 

[akia]

IP Connect is one of the things that attracted me to IPB. How many of us have more than one forum site, so at the very least I'd like to be able to share users between those sites, but it would be amazing if there was some sort of openid type shared log in that allowed people universal log in.

 

[Morgain]

Good bye, anonymity.
And anonymity is mostly used for legit purposes (e.g. talking about diseases, s.xual preferences,...)
Actually, thats one of the strength of forums.

Yes absolutely and there would still be need to be private forums. An admin would join the XF Zone to enable XF global membership. That;s what I meant by participating admins.

Facebook is about "you" - forums are about "the subject"; which is why Facebook was never going to kill off forums - it doesn't provide the subject-specific richness that enthusiasts and professionals get from forums full of like-minded people.

Nor can FB provide the depth of personal relating IME. So I dfont agree that forums are only or even primarily about 'subject' not person. I found FB pretty impersonal and fled.

Forums take a LOT of time and effort to build and nuture and not everyone has either the personal skills or patience to do it properly - but for those who do, the rewards are still there and regardless of the growth of Facebook and similar social media, there's still plenty of room for good, well-run, forums to grow too.

Couldnt agree more.

Oh, and your "one" user account idea sounds similar to the "one" avatar idea the Gravatar provides; but you'd need a common format and all the major forum developers to support it - why not float the idea and see if anyone fancies the challenge?

I wasnt suggesting an all-forum platform, I mean an XF Zone.

 

[erich37]

XenForo OAuth Login Authentication


http://xenforo.com/community/threads/xenforo-oauth-login-authentication.48218/

 

[erich37]

Facebook, etc provide social interaction, but forums do fail in informative discussion. The format is simply not good enough to cater to information gathering and dissemination. It only lasts until something better comes along. That's why sites like stachexchange, wikipedia, disqus, answers, etc. are so successful. I expect that Scott has understood this. So, yes this could well be the end of forums as we know it. But it all depends on how successful the implementation is.

Zoints already did the universal forum account and that did not turn out well. Maybe Scott can do it better though.

innovate or die... it's as simple as that.

 

[Morgain]

The problem with a single ID is that you can't base it around a username. Not everyone wants to use the same username on every forum, nor the same avatar. Also your preferred username may already be used on a forum by a non - single ID user.

good points martok

single username - many do use same one. I do for all XF or site related stuff ten I have a few others for specific uses. So permit aliases. The point is to allow the form to populate - user can always edit it - change username, change avatar, but this is then my selection on what I want to tweak THIS time.

username in use - this is covered by email services who flag it up and offer slightly edited versions. So eg if you saw a user on another XF forum named Morgain9 with my pusscat avatar this would strongly suggest it's me and provide continuity of ID.

There would have to be an option to sign up independently for those who want anonymity. Or some admins might prefer to disable this. Others by not participating cover the option of not using a global ID.

IP Connect is one of the things that attracted me to IPB. How many of us have more than one forum site, so at the very least I'd like to be able to share users between those sites, but it would be amazing if there was some sort of openid type shared log in that allowed people universal log in.

I didnt know IP do something similar. Plus good point on admins doing multiple sites.

 

[craigiri]

Same issue with passwords on regular and commercial sites. It's really a big part of the interweb which needs upgraded. SSO of sorts needs to be automatic to clear the next hurdles.

FB login and some of those others are too revealing and too muddy...I don't trust facebook anyway.

 

[erich37]

I don't trust facebook anyway.

I do not trust FB at all.

why should we promote Farcebook and Twitter Logins when we could have a central XF-Login ?


I am not interested in using or promoting a service I do not trust.... having FB and Twitter totally disabled at my Forums.

 

[Alpha1]

why should we promote Farcebook and Twitter Logins when we could have a central XF-Login ?

That would be sensible once xenforo as a platform gets over 50 million active accounts.

 

[Mouth]

http://about.me/developer/api/docs/

 

[erich37]

That would be sensible once xenforo as a platform gets over 50 million active accounts.

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/xenforo-oauth-login-authentication.48218/#post-517945

 

[Adam Howard]

This is why I would like to see Mozilla Persona added to XenForo
http://www.mozilla.org/persona/

People could use their sign-on to register at any XenForo site. No having to fill out anything, just user name and password and it would fill out everything for you.

Spam could be managed the same way as it is now.... Ban x user, e-mail, and ip. So spam isn't an issue.

 

[karll]

I had been thinking about something like this before ...

It would be cool if people from different forums could have inter-board discussions. Let's say on my forum I started a special thread and used a special feature to invite members from one or several other forums to participate. These users could then post in the thread without creating accounts on my forum. They would keep their usernames from the other forums, but it would be prefixed with the name of the forum they belong to (or a shorthand name for that forum).

 

[Lisa]

If you want to be able to log in everywhere using a single id, then you probably should be using Yuku for your forum experience.. or something like it. Personally I prefer deciding whether to register or not on a site and not having my name automatically ready everywhere just in case I happen across a forum that I might want to be a part of. If I like a forum enough, I don't mind taking the time and effort to register on it.

 

[craigiri]

I think people are somewhat limited in their ability to belong to communities anyway...at least to some degree. I do like the "sign in with yahoo" or "sign in with google" for placing comments on news stories, etc......

But I don't think most people have the ability to keep track of more than 4-6 communities - that is, be a member who contributes, etc.

 

[Jake Bunce]

Why the end?

Make a proposition, then I will comment.