Food for thought: Forums Vs. Social Media

See topic. I’m curious what folks think. Are forums like this one still relevant in this day and age of social media? I see new members joining all the time, but still only about 10-20 posters on a regular basis. Is commenting on a topic becoming irrelevant, or outdated, to just hitting a “Like” button? Is it about ease of use, or bashfulness? Please comment.

Personally I prefer the forums, I won't touch Social Media so yea I think the forums still relevant.

Oooh, wow. This is a hugely important topic for me. Mainly because I grew up on online discussion forums, and to this day they remain my favourite way of interacting on the internet.  Even in times like this, when social media is the norm, and, as you say, forums are perhaps seen by younger folks as being outdated, I still love them and find them useful and valuable. 

Personally, despite the fact that social media currently reigns supreme for many, I still believe strongly that there is still a place -- and a need -- for discussion forums. Both in general, and for this hobby in particular. Since the topic is pertinent to the hobby and that's why we're all here, I'll discuss it in those terms. In the 1/6 scale world, there are many positives to social media -- the strong suit there is networking. On FB, Instagram, twitter, or whatever, one can so easily connect with hundreds or thousands of people almost instantly. That's why it's probably so popular with many artists and customizers, since social media gives them a much bigger audience and gets their work out there much more quickly to a larger amount of people. And vice versa, a collector can more easily connect with artists to commission work, etc. 

The downside of that from my perspective is that things can easily start to become almost about personalities and cliques of people fawning over the most well-known people's work.  Because social media is so focused on promoting the individual, this might be good for said individuals, but it's not all that great for establishing a sense of community. I realize that Facebook does have 'groups' but those vary  in terms of moderation and focus. Where a forum like this comes in, is that [ideally] most people here are not solely here to promote, but to share and, hopefully, to learn from one another. And again, some things like FB groups can also include that, I suppose, but there is a key difference between the format of social media vs. a forum, and how this affects accessibility to what is shared. And that is, the fact that forums are like an archive of information. While I know that social media has searchable 'tags' and sometimes even proper search options, everything moves at such lightning speed there, that information is easily swallowed up and lost a few moments after it's been posted.  It's much different when you have a forum with pages and pages full of topics and discussions that you can spend time browsing through. Forum topics also tend to show up on google searches when people who may not be members of the forum are trying to research a topic, whereas something like FB comments are private and generally only viewable to people who are friends with and/or follow each other. So the existence of a forum is akin to having a library full of interesting tomes, with new ones still being added. Not always at the same speed at which information passes on social media, but at a pace that is often more pleasant and fulfilling to follow. As someone who believes strongly in not only sharing, but also archiving and preserving knowledge, I feel that forums are still very valuable in that regard.

There is no permanence with social media. Topics get superseded very quickly and it is hard to go back at a later time and look for past discussions. It is ok for sharing knowledge but it is useless for compiling and archiving that knowledge.

I may not be an active contributor, but I prefer forums to social media. The latter is fine for casual conversation, but the former is better for in depth discussion. I swear I've learned more about historical figures, costuming, and the like on this forum than I did at any point in high school. Not to mention the treasure trove of customizing tips, clothing options and pretty, pretty pictures to inspire.
And as stated above, it's fairly easy to find past information on a forum, but good luck digging for a tweet or Instagram photo that had a snippet of information you need.

Another forum I was part of, Sourcehorsemen, which was about the 1/12th Mythic Legions figures and other products from the Four Horsemen, was recently shut down completely. So contacts, custom photos and tips, and general fan conversations and interactions are gone. They want the fans to join a invite-only group on Facebook or hop on Instagram to get snippets of info instead, neither of which appeal to me in the slightest. Guess I like being a dinosaur.

I generally prefer forums for informative threads and such but Facebook/Instagram are much handier in terms of posting stuff. The downside to them is that everything gets lost really quickly and it’s really hard to find discussions again. :/

Regarding the scarcity of comments and replies on forum threads, despite the growing number of members -- part of the issue is perhaps that a lot of people these days are primarily using the internet via phone, and for phone users, posting to social media is MUCH more convenient and a much faster process than posting to a forum. That goes for both text replies and photos. Tapping out an entire reply on your phone is tedious [at least it is for me, since I learned to type on a keyboard from a young age and can do that much more quickly than agonizing over stupid 'smartphone' constantly changing what I try to type], and I prefer to respond to comments on forums when I have time to sit down in front of my laptop and properly read through everything. And on product announcements I often miss fine print info when just scrolling quickly via phone. And then you have the whole issue with posting pics, which while perhaps not as bad as the typing thing, is still quicker to do via phone when posting to social media sites that have both the photos and site-apps directly on said phones. 

Personally, I much prefer to both reply to posts on this forum and upload images via computer, but it does require me taking the time to do that. And I'm guessing some people just aren't willing/able to take the time to do it that way, and thus social media may win out for them -- at least when it comes to active participation.

shazzdan wrote:There is no permanence with social media. Topics get superseded very quickly and it is hard to go back at a later time and look for past discussions. It is ok for sharing knowledge but it is useless for compiling and archiving that knowledge.

Couldn't have said it better.

I'm too biased to have any credibility on this subject, but I believe a forum would be the better format for reasons others have already pointed out. I suppose there are ways in which social media would be more convenient of temporarily effective for certain people and situations, but I wouldn't really know, since I don't use it and I'm happy being a dinosaur too.

I never understood why forums are seen as outdated by most people - whenever I try to use facebook and groups, I get annoyed very quickly - they are good places to get inspiration when seeing other peoples work, new product announcements or to get a quick answer to a short question like "where can I buy this or that figure?" But thats it.

Only seeing the active "threads" on top of the feed is bad for long term discuassions or archive. Sometimes I scroll through my news page on facebook see something interesting but already hit the back button. Man is it a hassle to find that post again!

I'm a forum person at heart and use like 10 different ones every day, not just for this hobby! - which is also a reason why I didn't post as much as I would like to at the moment. Too many interests and sometimes I'm using my smartphone and I don't like to write posts on the phone. (Another thing I will never understand - how did smartphones replaces notebooks for most cases is beyond me, it is so annyoing trying to navigate on a phone or writing stuff compares to a notebook with a mouse)

Like a few others, I'm guilty myself of not posting either commentary or content. Social media, to me lacks the permanence, like others have said. Forums are by far better for our hobby than other media platforms in my view. Come to think of it, I really have to get all my content from OSW onto here ( been almost 3 years since I had space to do the hobby.

Agree with you all! 

And henchman21 --- First of all, LOVE your username.  And secondly, please feel free to share your previous work here. Many have done the same, and brought over stuff from the 'old site', since there are lots of newer members here [myself included] who may not have seen it before. Plus, it's nice to have things archived here, too.

apart from a big dislike of any social media platforms no matter the subject i only take part in forum discussions for various reasons.

first of all the competence of people replying to subjects being an active part and contributor themselves. i rather read 3 replies from people knowing their stuff than having 100 "likes" from people judging with their gut feeling or personal preference.

personally i have a rather limited range of topics i'm really into (mainly videogame based figures), still i can value the heart, sweat and blood people put into their creations and value them based on said love put into the hobby. i don't need to "like" a certain figure or project to respect and appreciate the energy and skill that was necessary to make it happen in the first place. and to have your thought and fantasy take physical shape.

second, i can take a while off when i'm either occupied by other hobbys or just not in the mood to get stuff done without the pressure to churn out content to keep in the "hot list" or whatever it is called.
if new stuff keeps popping up by the second the individual contribution is forgotten or rather buried in hours or minutes.

third, honesty. if done in a respectful manner, constructive criticism or even explained dislike of a figure or project can give you a new perspective that gets you further in the end and even improve on occasion. it gets you out of your comfort zone hand helps you grow.
i don't think there's such a thing when "likes" are a currency of sorts.

so much for my opinion
cheers

That's a really good point about constructive criticism, Tjolnir. It's definitely something that is much harder to do on social media without emotions flying and people getting into arguments or going on the defensive quite quickly. So that is certainly a strength of discussion forums, where one already expects to receive helpful advice at the very least, rather than just blind adoration. ; )

Yes, agree on a lot. Still confused though. I will just write down what comes to my mind unfiltered.

I don't have Facebook,  but Instagram for some years.  
Although I am not very active, October/inktober is a time where I visit it more frequently. It's a daily art challenge for 31 days. Haven't posted 1/6 figures there yet. Maybe uninformed people might think I am a sexy cosplayer and creepy men will PM me,  haha.

My experience with Instagram: A lot of input, so much good stuff that your brain clutters, it's like visiting a city like Florence where you are beaten down and overwhelmed by fantastic art every second. Also inspiring.
But it feels empty somehow, a lot of liking and liking back without real communication. More like playing with an AI that knows what you want to see. Some comments read like pandering, some empty warm words so that the commentor just writes so the recipient checks back on their own profile and leaves obligatory likes without being able to go into depth, because it's just so much stuff. And what I really avoid are these lifestyle influencers who take selfies all the time. Those people one encounters at tourist attractions or doing yoga alone on a rock with a camera crew around them. I actually know someone from my old class, she is a certified yoga instructor now and films herself doing yoga on the beach. It's horrible, I never want to become that kind of person. Gives me fake black mirror vibes.

The forum is as you mentioned a slower, more considerate approach for people who really care about a single topic. A good meal prepared with love in a place you will come back too, while  instagram is more like (very tasty and trendy) tourist streetfood to go.
I 'liked' a lot of stuff on Instagram I really like, but never really revisited those liked posts...to be honest, I don't know how to find them again and forgot about most of them.

Here, on the other hand, it's more 'altruistic' as the 'attention treadmill' or how one would call it works different here. I might write more bit I forgot where I am going with this.

What you mention about those 'influencers' on Instagram is the exact reason why I loathe that site and will never use it. It's like the visual version of twitter, which I also intensely dislike for it's obsession with celebrity culture. I do have FB, because I live very far from my entire family, and it is the easiest method of remaining in touch with them all. And I have a tumblr, even though I don't much like that site either, but I endure it for the simple fact that my main online interest has always been and will always be fandom, and tumblr is really the main/only active site for that these days. But tumblr's version of fandom is not the same as it was on forums, or even back in the days of LiveJournal. I really miss being able to have in-depth meta-textual discussions with people on fandom topics. Tumblr is terrible for that, it's all just pretty gif sets, fan art, and people's immediate emotional reactions to things, which they nonetheless tend to present as immutable 'facts' that are not up for discussion. And the way it's structured as a micro-blogging platform means that, like with instagram, it's very fast-paced. I feel like everyone's attention span on there is like, two seconds long. People always just following whatever is trendy or the next big thing. Following the wave of pop culture. Whereas I can easily spend YEARS discussing ONE TOPIC and never get tired of it. Sigh. I feel so out of place in this world....

Haha, I know, right? We are like dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. And everyone loves dinosaurs.


I think the perfect kind of 'social media' isn't there yet, in some years we might have something that's connecting us in other way, who knows. The Chinese government might know!

Also, to cheer you up:

OMG, ahahahaha. That was perfect. 

I totally agree with all comments above, for me there is no "VS" since they don't have the same purpose and the same consistency. While FB or instagram look more userfriendly from mobile phones, they are not reliable place to archive data and knowledge, neither to have proper discussions except in private groups or messages (which seems contradictory with the "social" dimension of such apps)
As both are based on "timeline" feed, it's nearly impossible to track back an old post, subject, or even picture, just as it is impossible to see everything you subscribe too because of the continuous flood of content, mixed up with a ton of advertisement and sponsoring.

To my eyes the only downpoints of forums are the picture hosting systems that are not as effective and quick as those apps, and the "mobile versions" that are of very little if no help at all from said mobiles (tiny text, too many buttons, lots of functionalities not working because of ios vs web formats...)

BUT, and it's a big but, I believe forums will always be a better place to discuss whatever matters and archive all this knowledge, just like a meeting is better than a phonecall which is better than text message, itself better than an emoji...

I think forums are still relevant, perhaps they are not at the forefront of the modern era but they are still the accumulation of people who share both pictures, techniques, experience, reviews and history that we would otherwise not see in our specific niche communities. Social media on the other hand is more about photos (in my opinion), sharing this cool thing, getting likes, perhaps a few comments about how cool it is and that's about it. It should be noted that my personal experience with social media is quite limited, I made a facebook back in 2009 simply due to peer pressure at highschool, after I graduated I never looked at it again even when in university everyone considered it weird I wasn't on social media. After facebook came tumblr, and after tumblr came Imgur and then twitter where I get updates on why I have no water service at 5pm on a Thursday (pretty good for that sort of stuff).

I also believe that forums in general help keep things more civil, the people that are involved in a forums generally agree without signing anything or even talking about it that what is posted is for entertainment or even educational purposes. As for a lack of participation it's anyone's guess, some people might still be interested in the hobby but lack the time or the skills to put something together, or perhaps they don't feel comfortable commenting or they are more interested in certain topics that aren't being posted or even created.

One thing most people haven't mentioned is that forums generate at least in my opinion, more of a feeling of belonging to a group of people who

a) know what they are talking about
b) will be respectful even if there are disagreements or personality clashes.
and
c) will be supportive with any problems that other member might have.

Social Media Is easier to track, but strangers have an option to give opinions, with Forums there is more investigation on the subject and the person who post the statement on a forum.

Forums do offer a place for civility, but only if the community has a reasonable understanding of the moral law and are aware of the tone or language being expressed. We all have unique forms of conversation. Over time, we choose to understand or accept these unique dialogues.

However, there are times where not having any moral duties could lead to Bigotry, nationalism, tribalism, and misogyny, which tend to cement itself as axiom law at times in the 1/6 community.

The best way to fight this is with optimism. You don't have to like every figure or set, but there is a balance. A gentleman approach or a mere playful gif, is better than a derogatory remark.

For me, I honestly prefer forums when it comes to discussions or sharing ideas and other important things. Like others have stated above, I find forums to be more "functional" when it comes to having a record of what's been posted and even if say, years from now, you need to find something, a simple search in the proper category will yield useful results.

One example I have personally experienced on Social Media is pre-ordering stuff from local sellers or discussing things with other toy collectors. When it comes to posting things like guides or asking for solutions, those posts normally gets buried quickly since there's a constant stream of other people talking about other stuff. Usually, topics get mixed, unlike in forums where there's a cleanly organized list of categories that we can post in. For example here, we have a place for non-sixth scale toys so anyone interested in those can quickly find information or topics they're interested in. If you're looking for guides on the skin tones of Tbleague stuff, you can easily visit the proper 1/6 scale category and find the answers there. On social media like Facebook, that's extremely hard to do because even if you search one particular group for that specific topic, a lot of the "tagged" words can be found on other irrelevant topics, making the search results a nightmare!

In my opinion, there's a huge difference in functionality between forums and social media. Forums act more like repositories of information that people can look up even years from now, while social media primarily concentrates on what's currently "hot" or "trending". Also, social media seems to be designed to promote pictures and videos, while long discussions are just secondary. It's very hard to reference anything when discussing about a certain subject on social media because other users might make their own topic to comment on your original post. In a forum like this, a discussion about a certain subject matter can easily be contained in just one simple thread.

I mentioned pre-ordering from local sellers in my area via Facebook and let me describe how it can sometimes be hard to track orders. So basically, the owner of the store posts a Pre-Order listing for a specific date. Let's say since I love Street Fighter, I pre-ordered a Figuarts M Bison toy. Unfortunately since this is Facebook we're talking about and not a proper website or at least a forum, the listing for this pre-order will get buried under months of other pre-orders. There are times I'd even forget that I pre-ordered a particular thing simply because customers don't have a record of the items they pre-ordered themselves (unless of course you manually write it down in your computer in a text file). This February, I was surprised by three pre-orders that I made back in 2019 that somehow were scheduled to be released at the same time! Holy crap, $300 worth of toys that I totally forgot about lol! This is something that a lot of people usually experience when pre-ordering from those private Facebook groups owned by local toy sellers. The reason I order from them is that their prices are definitely lower than Amazon, Big Bad Toy Store, or any other actual site on the internet, PLUS you don't have to pay extra taxes and the shipping is already included at whatever price you bought your items for. So for example, I can buy a Figuarts M Bison for $65 shipped without worrying about taxes to pay (here in California, EVERYTHING is taxed), but if I were to buy that from Amazon or Big Bad Toy Store, it'll be $75 + California Taxes (and if it's from BBTS, +$4 flat rate shipping) so at most I'd be paying $80 for it! I get to save around $15 to $20 by buying from local vendors on their private Facebook groups.

Anyway, right now I still definitely prefer forums over social media. I'm not really a social media guy. I don't post about what food I just ate, what places I've been to, who are the people I just met. I don't like those "motivational pictures" or "inspirational quotes". If I wanted to share thought provoking ideas, I'd do it on a forum where a proper discussion can be had. I simply have no reason to broadcast to the world everything about my life lol! I'm not a "celebrity", I'm just some guy who prefers sharing and reading stuff from people with the same interests as me, as in this forum.

Likes, shares, validation, those are things that don't really matter to me. Even on places like Reddit, there's no reason for me to worry about "karma" points. I think worrying about validation is detrimental to being your true self. Most of the time, when a person worries about being "liked", they have to conform to whatever it is that the majority believes, even at the cost of throwing away one's true thoughts. I remember reading some psychological article about why a lot of people on social media are unhappy with their lives or even make up fake stories that show them in all sorts of unbelievable situations, and it's all because they are fishing for validation.

Another good point I saw above is that social media is something a lot of people access on their phones and that's why nobody really wants to get in-depth when discussing things due to the difficulty of typing things. Conversations are very short or not expounded on as a result. This is so true! A personal experience of mine is whenever I have to text a customer about the status of their service. Typing on the tiny screen of a phone is annoying, especially if you have big fingers lol! Auto-correct can help, but the act of having to do it almost every time can get tiresome. I prefer typing on a keyboard because it's much easier, especially if you're a touch typist.

I think forums still have their place and there are forums for everything if you can be bothered to look for them. (Which many can't as they lack the immediacy of social media.) They vary in quality and membership. I used to like the driving game Assetto Corsa, but, the community on the site with the all the best content was full of idiots and it tainted the experience so much that I uninstalled the game. I go back to the site to download stuff for other games now and again, but, I steer well clear of the forums.

I knew here would be just fine though as we took all the best bits of OSW and made them our own!

I agree with Roger

"I knew here would be just fine though as we took all the best bits of OSW and made them our own!"

although i didn't help set this up i was one of the first people to join and to be honest it kinda feels like home