Are forums dying?

[kday]

Random thoughts: So it seems like Facebook groups dominate these days, which is a shame. I feel like this forum used to be a lot more active a few years ago.

And not only is the information on Facebook chaotic and disorganized, the algorithms and as well as the moderators themselves are censor heavy. I started posting more on here because Facebook was no longer allowing me to post links to published science that contain certain keywords. They aren't just actively suppressing what they call misinformation, they have gone full force and are now suppressing science as well.

Coming back, I realize what I've already knew: Old-fashioned tried and true forums are a much better place for discussion. What can we do to keep forums alive. Because I believe independently owned forums helps protect our freedoms. When a monopoly controls discussion, free thought and expression just diminishes.

What can be done to bring forums back? Reddit is now heavily censored too, as well as others. Centralizing communication structures turned out to be a really bad experiment. It's been bad for society as a whole.

I just wish I knew how to convince people to stay off the dark services and come back to forums like this one that allow and tolerate freedom of thought and expression.

A bit of a ramble. And I don't necessarily expect anyone to have answers.

 

[Hip]

I started posting more on here because Facebook was no longer allowing me to post links to published science that contain certain keywords. They aren't just actively suppressing what they call misinformation, they have gone full force and are now suppressing science as well.

I am intrigued by this: can you give any examples of published science keywords that are not allowed on Facebook?

Which Facebook groups would you frequent, by the way, in place of ME/CFS forums?

 

[kday]

I am intrigued by this: can you give any examples of published science keywords that are not allowed on Facebook?

Which Facebook groups would you frequent, by the way, in place of ME/CFS forums?

I sort of had it when it wouldn't let me post PubMed links of meta-analyses from China and Egypt, and other places in the world about the increased prevalence of MTHFR in Autism. This speech is not allowed in some (or all?) groups.

They also censor many comments and have been for a long time. You can verify this easily if you have a second Facebook account. If you don't have a second account, you'll likely never know if your comment shows up or not. But they now have the audacity to blatantly censor science. You can comment and it shows up in your history. But you and nobody else can see the comment.

I'd rather not mention groups by name as I don't want to advertise them. Facebook and its groups need to disappear in my opinion.

 

[Hip]

I'd rather not mention groups by name as I don't want to advertise them. Facebook and its groups need to disappear in my opinion.

I just wonder if there are any with a reasonable intellectual standard. Many of the Facebook groups I've seen have a lot of inane and pointless content.

 

[kday]

I just wonder if there are any with a reasonable intellectual standard. Many of the Facebook groups I've seen have a lot of inane and pointless content.

For some niche subjects, Facebook groups are the only choice. And yes, for most, such groups are not for intellectual discussion. You can't even format text. I think they appeal more to low IQ individuals or people who don't know how to type well on a phone. But as horrible as they are, I believe these groups are part of the reason forums are dying.

I know places like Reddit and Discord probably have some to do with it, but I think the impact of Facebook Groups on Forums is underestimated.

 

[sb4]

@kday I see this kind of thing a lot to. I think a significant reason for this is that big tech companies all tend to align with there political view points, which are usually quite left wing. This informs there ideas on what is acceptable content and what isn't. This can lead to a position where simply arguing against there idea of what is morally correct is in fact considered hate speech.

I think enough people will get sick of this after a while and either new competitors will (slowly) overthrow the current monopoly or they will change there business model.

 

[*GG*]

For some niche subjects, Facebook groups are the only choice. And yes, for most, such groups are not for intellectual discussion. You can't even format text. I think they appeal more to low IQ individuals or people who don't know how to type well on a phone. But as horrible as they are, I believe these groups are part of the reason forums are dying.

I know places like Reddit and Discord probably have some to do with it, but I think the impact of Facebook Groups on Forums is underestimated.

What kind of formatting are you doing? You can create paragraphs on Facebook, which I wish people would do, large blocks of text are very difficult to follow reading online.

I don't spend as much time here, just don't see the point. The forums stink in some regards, people introduce themselves, you might not want to follow most of them. Would be nice if more descriptive headlines were "required", I only have so much time and energy to be online.

GG

 

[wigglethemouse]

I feel like this forum used to be a lot more active a few years ago.

There was another thread like this last year but I can't find it. @Hip had a great post showing site statistics over the years.

Also a second ME forum started up. Members there do a pretty good job of having good descriptive titles especially for scientific papers.
https://www.s4me.info/

 

[Wishful]

I sort of had it when it wouldn't let me post PubMed links of meta-analyses from China and Egypt, and other places in the world about the increased prevalence of MTHFR in Autism.

Umm, it's possible that they think it's an acronym for 'motherfu....'.

 

[kangaSue]

They also censor many comments and have been for a long time. You can verify this easily if you have a second Facebook account. If you don't have a second account, you'll likely never know if your comment shows up or not. But they now have the audacity to blatantly censor science. You can comment and it shows up in your history. But you and nobody else can see the comment.

I had an ongoing problem like this for about the last 12 months in all of the facebook groups I'm in where whenever I posted a comment that also had a link to a Pubmed or other medical science paper, the whole thing got hidden. They eventually started shooting me back messages saying that it was forbidden content, or something along those lines, as soon as I had posted it but had a link to request that this be reviewed by them.

Nothing changed for months though in requesting the content be reviewed so one day about 10 weeks ago I just posted about 20 links to papers one after the after over about 20 minutes and requested they review each one when the forbidden content message came back and that seems to have done the trick as they have stopped blocking my content with weblinks, only as of about 3 weeks ago though.

I did see mention by others of having the same issue in a forum to do with having facebook problems so maybe it's an issue facebook admin has fixed recently. Try posting a link to a Pubmed paper and see what happens now.

 

[kday]

I had an ongoing problem like this for about the last 12 months in all of the facebook groups I'm in where whenever I posted a comment that also had a link to a Pubmed or other medical science paper, the whole thing got hidden. They eventually started shooting me back messages saying that it was forbidden content, or something along those lines, as soon as I had posted it but had a link to request that this be reviewed by them.

Nothing changed for months though in requesting the content be reviewed so one day about 10 weeks ago I just posted about 20 links to papers one after the after over about 20 minutes and requested they review each one when the forbidden content message came back and that seems to have done the trick as they have stopped blocking my content with weblinks, only as of about 3 weeks ago though.

I did see mention by others of having the same issue in a forum to do with having facebook problems so maybe it's an issue facebook admin has fixed recently. Try posting a link to a Pubmed paper and see what happens now.

I think pressure needs to be put on Facebook. If this is a widespread issue, we need to find others and write a media article.

I have the title:

Is Science the New Hate Speech? Facebook Censors Science.

I should just completely step away from Facebook, but I need it for a couple things. Accidental censorship or not, things are really bad! And they have a history of claiming that their acts of censorship are "accidents." But once the evidence comes out, it becomes clear that many of these actions were not mistakes at all.

 

[valentinelynx]

Also a second ME forum started up.

I also lament the diminished activity on this forum. I haven't seen the other thread mentioned or @Hip's statistics. I feel that the very unfortunate split in the community that happened about year ago leading to the establishment of the other forum is one reason for the decreased input to this one.

 

[Avena]

Navigating FB grups are unbearable for my foggy mind, I could never have participated in a discussion there. Even as a lurker, I find it hard to follow the discussion, search up old info etc. FB and it’s functionalities is simply not as user friendly as a forum.

I would also never be comfortable being active in any health related group under full name, particulary on FB and their lacking relationship to privacy.

I am so glad this forum is still alive.

 

[Hip]

There was another thread like this last year but I can't find it. @Hip had a great post showing site statistics over the years.

I haven't seen the other thread mentioned or @Hip's statistics.

That other thread with its stats graph is here.

The stats on that thread come from Alexa, and I've just updated graph on that thread, and it does unfortunately show a further drop off in recent months (that's assuming Alexa data are reliable).

The Alexa graph shows the number of PR forum page views per month. Page views will come from both PR forum members, as well as non-members who stumble upon a Phoenix Rising article, blog or thread in an Internet search.



The Phoenix Rising forum software (Xenforo software) also maintains its own internal stats, and for admin staff provides a graph showing the number of new posts per day. Info for the last 10 years is available, but unfortunately this internal stats graph seems to be incorrect.

The internal stats are currently (erroneously) showing around 200 new posts are made per day. But if you actually look at the New Posts page of this forum, and you count up the new posts, you can see that only around 20 new posts are made each day.

So something has gone wrong with the internal stats; perhaps the other tech support members @PatJ and @Oberon might be able to work out why.



I remember 3 or 4 years ago, I actually manually counted how many posts were typically appearing daily on the New Posts page, just out of curiosity; back then there were around 100 new posts per day on Phoenix Rising. But at present there are only 20 per day. So there has been quite a fall off.

Part of that fall off can be explained by some PR forum members going off to set up the S4ME forum, but even on S4ME, they currently also only have around 20 posts per day. So with both forums combined, there are about 40 posts daily — still less that the 100 posts a day that Phoenix Rising had a few years back.

 

[Sushi]

The internal stats are currently (erroneously) showing around 200 new posts are made per day. But if you actually look at the New Posts page of this forum, and you count up the new posts, you can see that only around 20 new posts are made each day.

But when you count the entries in New Posts, it is only showing the last post in a thread, isn't it? For instance, the CCI threads right now get about 20 new posts a day, but I think you will only see the last one in New Posts.

 

[Hip]

But when you count the entries in New Posts, it is only showing the last post in a thread, isn't it? For instance, the CCI threads right now get about 20 new posts a day, but I think you will only see the last one in New Posts.

Very good point Sushi! I never thought of that. That's the obvious answer — but D'oh — it never occurred to me!

OK, well if the forum internal stats are indeed accurate, I'll post that stats graph below, as this graph actually shows a much more optimistic picture:

Graph of number of daily posts made on the Phoenix Rising forum, over the last 10 years

In the above graph (which covers 2009 to present), the vertical axis shows the number of daily posts in Phoenix Rising forum threads. So you can see that at present (May 2019), this forum is getting around 225 new posts per day.

This is similar to the period from 2011 to the beginning of 2014, where there were around 250 new posts per day.

The period from 2014 to the beginning of 2018 was the most busy, with around 350 posts per day.

But this graph shows there has not been any major decline in posting, with current daily post counts being similar to previous periods.

 

[Wayne]

I feel that the very unfortunate split in the community that happened about year ago leading to the establishment of the other forum is one reason for the decreased input to this one.

Hi @valentinelynx -- I understand the sentiment that the split in the community was unfortunate, but I myself have not felt that. I think the split has actually made for a kinder and gentler PR forum.

 

[andyguitar]

Even if the number of posts went down it's quality that counts not numbers.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

I haven't seen the other thread mentioned

I visited briefly. Visually: its harder to deal with the fonts, maybe its just different. Not used to it.

 

[Avena]

Regarding number of posts. I think internet habits has changed in general. There is so much more to take in now than a few years back. And everything is moving towards being more instant. Where people took their time to leave a comment earlier, they click «like» and move on today.