The Future of the Forum

[Paddy Landau]

Unfortunately, that could include 61k web crawlers.

Right now, down to 20,000 users currently online.

I don't suppose that there's a way to tell how many are normal users, not crawlers and other bots?

[Gushter13]

Man, I just randomly stumbled on to the forums here after forgetting about them for years! Managed to get my account back, migrated everything to my new email address, only to find out the forums might be closing down. What a bummer! :/

You guys do what you have to, I just feel so saddened by the shrinking of active online forums. Feels like it has become a dying breed

[turrican32]

Yikes, I've just had to login again after many many years to ask for help about a nasty issue and I get noticed about this!

Really hope the forum format can still go on, I *really* dislike nowadays modern alternatives (call me old fashioned if you want to!)

My humble 2 cents...
As others have already suggested, I wouldn't mind switching platform (i.e. a new forum engine/provider) as long as the current contents stay archived/read only for future reference if needed.

[Shishimaru]

Beside the tech issues, I find that convincing Canonical to at least mention the forum (or its future self version) even more difficult. Without members, I don't know if it's any worth. I stayed away from these OSs for a few years and I find forums (not just Ubuntu) to be generally empty, which is sad because I had a lot of good moments there.
But beside this, I still find forums much more useful than anything else. I see the general GNU/Linux community moving on Reddit, which doesn't help at all. Forums are where I can still get a discussion and a step-by-step approach to troubleshoot something, get an advice, anything else.
StackExchange/AskUbuntu... Never helped me, and I mean it. Also, there are so many rules that the topic gets usually downvoted and/or removed without even a real warning (example: "provide this and that info").

In the end: I'd still love to have the forum, and I'd even try to join forces with the Kubuntu forums if it's an option at all. It's a bit sad that there must be two different ones when Kubuntu is usually a solid flavour. I don't see it ever really dying. If there's any intention to keep on with this, we can only hope for volunteers. I don't really mind any kind of change. Need new software, staying on the new...

[halogen2]

Keep this forum as an archive only, and open a brand new subreddit,

https://www.reddit.com/en-us/policies/privacy-policy
https://www.reddit.com/policies/cookies

No thanks.

I also don't particularly like Reddit; I find its interface unpleasant. Like you, I also find social media difficult (I grew up without computers or the internet).

Seeing that they didn't state why they consider Reddit is no alternative, what makes you think any of this has anything to do with the concerns?

[hedgehog123]

I just can say I think a real and from other companies independent forum should remain available. But I have no solutions for the current problems.
Migration to Reddit sounds not like a good solution, subreddits are already available and everyone who like Reddit can already use it. I shortly had an account there but when they started to recommend me subreddits which are really far away from everything acceptable, I left it and surely will never join again.

[madscientist032]

Man, it's a bummer to read the status of the forums, but I'll give my two cents and voice my opinion:

On one hand, I completely understand the technical limitations & hurdles that accompanies a software & platform upgrade. I've done multiple upgrades & replatforms on both on my homelab and in my professional life. I know how difficult & frustrating it can be from a technical and personnel resource perspective. Add the complexity of the custom settings + getting a team of dedicated volunteers together to essentially rebuild the site from scratch, and you have yourself quite the challenge.

On the other hand, the forums personally contain a WEALTH of information, there are a number of extremely knowledgeble users, and it's relatively searchable & far more accessible than IRC, Discord, and Reddit (especially with the API fiasco and Reddit's quality going straight down the toilet these days, with users going as far as scrubbing all their posts & replacing with garbage data).

Someone mentioned "forums are a dying breed" and unfortunately I think that's true, the rise if IM programs like discord & matrix make it so much easier short-term for a user to get an answer & support for their problem. However, it comes at a cost - users in the long term don't really benefit (its hard to search for their issue on Discord, for example) and that is really where forums shine and have value.

I say that because the alternatives to forums are Discord, Reddit, or Discourse. Discord's a hellhole and not ideal for long-term support-thread preservation, Reddit's basically dead thanks to their fiascos, so a subreddit is out of the question. And Discourse - to me at least - feels like a mix in-between "Ask Ubuntu" and the Ubuntu Forums. Not a bad compromise, so maybe that would be ideal in the event the forums are ultimately archived and activity moved elsewhere.

So the question here is really "is the juice worth the squeeze?" Is it worth re-platforming for future benefit? I think so, personally, but it's still an insanely tough decision to make, and I'm just one of many forums users.

That said - If UF dies then it dies, and I'm happy I was able to participate while possible.

[werewulf75]

That makes you an unusual exception. A humongous number of people go to Reddit first without even considering other platforms. It's well known that Google queries often include the word "reddit" precisely because people want to narrow down their searches to just Reddit, and that others search Reddit without bothering to go to Google (or Bing or Duck Duck Go or whatever) at all.

Those people will never find an alternative source, except when explicitly pointed out to them — and I seem to be the only person on Reddit's r/Ubuntu who points people towards Ubuntu Forums.

I also don't particularly like Reddit; I find its interface unpleasant. Like you, I also find social media difficult (I grew up without computers or the internet). But, it's a simple fact that we have to use them — after all, Ubuntu Forums itself is a type of social media because it allows for extended and even off-topic discussions.

Hell, I grew up without a telephone at home! And it was great!

Yes, lots of people may well be using Reddit, and lots of people may well be using 'social media' generally. So what? That doesn't mean we all have to blindly follow them like dumb sheep and do the same. 'Social media' are among the biggest privacy violators there are, and I'm not stupid enough to play that game. Besides, 'social media' are generally more filled with bovine manure and other brown stuff than anything sensible or of genuine interest. No, I don't give a stuff what a friend might be having for dinner, etc. etc. etc. Granted, Reddit may well not fall into this category, but all the same, I'm not going there. I wouldn't use Reddit any more than any other 'social media', not even with all the excellent privacy and security measures I have in place here, and not even with a 'fake' ID and an anonymous email address. I do value my privacy (and my time) far too much. And in any case, a true substitute for a real forum Reddit certainly is not.

It's like refusing to use the underground in a city like London because it's horrible; you actually don't have a reasonable choice. Or, if you've created a brilliant program and want to make money off it, you can't refuse to support Windows just because you dislike it; you cut off a major part of the market. Or, refusing to use email or a telephone. It's simply undoable in today's world.

I haven't used the tube in a couple of decades. Too much hassle. Too dodgy. I have a choice. I only use email with other parties who also use compatible encryption. I only use end-to-end encrypted open source messaging. I have a choice. There are lots of - mainly but not exclusively - elderly people who don't have and don't want any digital device. All in today's world. Nothing is undoable.

If you look at the subreddits for Linux (r/linux, r/linux4noobs, r/linuxquestions and r/Ubuntu), you'll see what I mean. Reddit is a powerhouse, whether for good or bad, whether we like it or not, and refusing to use it because we don't like social media does nothing but cut options.

Rejecting Reddit because we don't like it will merely exclude a massive number of people, possibly the vast majority, and will do nothing to revive Ubuntu Forums. Using Reddit will revive it, because that's where people go these days.

I know that you don't like this, and nor do I, but we have to look at reality as it is, not as we wish it were.

Well, that's reality as you see it, and it's all well and good, and correct. But it's not merely a case of 'not liking' social media. As I already pointed out, I will not surrender to the privacy bandits. (And increasing numbers of people are becoming concerned about their online privacy and want to do what they can to preserve it.) And I can't recall many folks here suggesting Reddit as an alternative to UF. Sure, UF has leached users compared to even say ten years ago, but there are still enough users left to keep it viable, useful, and relevant.

[wildmanne39]

Please keep the CoC in mind before posting:

https://ubuntuforums.org/misc.php?do=showrules

We ... want this to be a place where community can develop and we can enjoy one another's company. To achieve this, we strive to maintain an atmosphere that can be enjoyed by all and we ask all members of the community to be respectful at all times. This means please use etiquette and politeness. Treat people with respect.

Please stay on topic and do not criticize other members posts, the platform the forum switches to is not a reason to be rude or impolite and hopefully an admin will know and post for sure which platform the forum will switch to soon, this has been a good and polite discussion please keep it that way.

Thanks to everyone for the polite and insightful discussion so far.

[dragonfly41]

This is evolution. Dying species replaced by new species.


Edsger Wybe Dijstra (1930--2002) advocated the principle that a working operating system (or in this case UbuntuForums - or we might point to the jaded history of DOS evolving into Windows) can be replaced by higher levels of functionality. In other words we chuck away the underpinning working foundation (in this case the bulletin board) but build upon the working interface (templates) and rich content accrued over the years.


Might I suggest one thread of thought.
We build our own open source custom forum using existing forum as blueprint. Dijstra style.


https://laracasts.com/series/build-a-forum-with-laravel
I for one am focussing on Laravel as one solid foundation stone for my own dev purposes. And I will need to build a custom forum for my own plans.


On the matter of archiving, I wrote earlier about the Wayback Machine. See post #113. Or search this discussion for “Wayback”. But Wayback is a bit slow to access. It can be very useful.


Within UbuntuForums we can go to top bar > Quick Links > Find all my threads | Find all my posts. Then Save As to local archive. At least each user can save archives of personal interest into desktop archives to be searched. I use desktop Recoll for such indexing and searching.


Reference to Dijstra
https://www.cwi.nl/en/about/history/...d-opinionated/
Edsger Wybe Dijstra (1930--2002): a portrait of a genius