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Forums are so dead

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Tuffty
Jan
fmod Member
2003

Tuffty

Forum Moderator Posts: 152,160 Ruby Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
For someone who has 143,907 posts within these forums over the years (Me) if I honestly thought they were dead I wouldn't be here really. I would have gone elsewhere.

I don't see the forums as dead far from it. Yes it has quiet times as do all of us.

We the Community have asked for a Forum Update for a while well years really. We still have hope that 1 is coming and it will be of great help to the Community who use the forums daily. I would love tos ee a nice shiny new forums as would others. Sad thing is other things come first with the Dev team. So hopefully in the next year or so we have a new forum.

Disclaimer here.

I only use the Forums I refuse to use Social Media as it's crap. :P

To make these forums active and useful then use them while they are here and make good quality threads and posts. It's not hard to add a post to a topic you like. It's not hard to make a whole thread. So fill your boots. ;) Enjoy the forum. Comprehensive Account Security
What do snowmen have for breakfast? Snowflakes! :P

11-Nov-2020 11:01:41

Iceberg
Sep Member 2008

Iceberg

Posts: 20,587 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
This is a topic that tends to crop up every now and then, and people generally have mixed feelings on the topic.

Are the forums dead? No.
Do the forums see less traffic than they used to? Yes.

Back when forums generally were a popular platform, social media sites were in their early stages of growth - prior to the surge in organisations using these sites as marketing tools. Is the advent of social media the reason for the forums decline in activity over the years? I think partly, though there's multiple reasons for this beyond social media taking a more pivotal role, such as younger age groups not being engaged with the forum concept, changes in the playerbase, etc..

Instant messaging platforms I think are playing a larger role here. Take Discord for instance. A few years ago most had never heard of Discord. Now it's insanely popular. The RuneScape 3 and Old School Discord servers each see between 10,000 to 20,000-ish messages per day, with the Old School server currently the most popular of the two. The nature of instant messaging is (or should be) a key component in Jagex's communication strategy, as it allows them to gather feedback faster than ever before. Take for instance the macOS fixes coming later this month to RS - a channel was made to collect feedback and within a month there's a whole load of fixes coming because of that channel. The instant messaging allowed for Jagex to communicate with its players very quickly.

Could this sort of thing have been done on the forums? Of course.
Would it have been as fast? No.

And that's why you generally don't see things happening on the forums. Time is money. The forums don't allow for instant conversations. Heck even Facebook & Twitter are much slower for holding these conversations than Discord and wouldn't have been as effective.
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11-Nov-2020 12:09:42

Iceberg
Sep Member 2008

Iceberg

Posts: 20,587 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
So is there any use in Jagex modernizing the forums?

Not until they've identified an area where the forums out-performs. At the moment, in terms of a feedback / communication element, the forums are simply not a viable enough concept for a business to use when greater alternatives are available.

Does everybody have an account here and thereby have access to the forums? Yes.
Does everybody have a Facebook/Twitter/Discord account? No.
Is that a good enough reason to increase J-Mod engagement here? No.

I completely get the sentiment in wanting to encourage Jagex to use their own officially-made platforms more often, but truthfully they're just not as viable Comms-wise.

So while the forums certainly aren't dead, I don't think we're going to see an increase in activity any time soon through new initiatives. Not unless somebody can discover a way in which the forums can be used to a greater degree than that of other platforms like social media or instant messaging. Heck, there are bots on Discord that are replacing the functionality that even the Marketplace forums serve to a degree.

The forums do have a purpose, but ultimately other platforms serve a greater purpose for Jagex given their advantages, hence why we probably won't see any real increase in traffic over the coming years.

Edit: Consider back in, let's say, 2008, before the commercial push to social media platforms. The forums never really had any competition. But now Jagex cater to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Discord, Youtube, Twitch, etc.. Now information is available in a lot of places, with each providing different functionality that helps Jagex speak with its stakeholders more effectively.
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11-Nov-2020 12:18:29 - Last edited on 11-Nov-2020 12:20:33 by Iceberg

Pepsi River

Pepsi River

Posts: 216 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Amascutian said :
In other words, forums in general is an outdated thing.



I agree with that, however I do think it's partially the structure of these forums that leads to inactivity, well it's both, the rise of social media and other apps, as well as the rs forums not being as much of a social platform to begin with. I think there are some still forums with a decent amount of activity on the internet.

Iceberg said :
At the moment, in terms of a feedback / communication element, the forums are simply not a viable enough concept for a business to use when greater alternatives are available.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing when forums have no communication stuff, on these forums it doesn't really seem to have much of a place and might be viewed as odd.
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Rs forums are a good tool for sharing ideas, though it's unfortunate that suggestions seem to be glossed over or not given much thought, as a user mentioned. I feel as though that's happened to some of my suggestions too, and considering there aren't that many new posts all the time, it seems like it'd be easier for the mods to keep up with checking the suggestions, but maybe not, for some reason.

I may be wrong, about there being forums with more activity.. Or it could be pretty rare.
Rs forums still have a decent amount of activity sometimes, new posts everyday, so maybe this is somewhere around the max of consistent activity for any forum activity now a days? It's hard to say honestly.

Tuffty said :
So hopefully in the next year or so we have a new forum
Yeah, I do think these forums need updated, "modernized" is maybe not the right word, they could just be a little more user friendly. Having thread notifications would be a good start if nothing else.

Also, I apologize for my brash attitude towards this topic initially.
Thanks to the Jmod who unlocked the thread. Convenient links
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11-Nov-2020 12:54:12 - Last edited on 11-Nov-2020 13:17:27 by Pepsi River

Tranq
Nov
fmod Member
2007

Tranq

Forum Moderator Posts: 61,815 Emerald Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
The key problem with our forums is Jagex likes to keep everything in house. From a proprietary standpoint it sounds like a good idea. However in the forums of implementation and upgrades it's sorely lacking.

Reasoning behind this is any changes to our fine forums require developer time. So which project are they going to put on hold to give us some niceties. People play the game, they may or may not use the forums. So it becomes a quandary, annoy those that use the forums and not give them quality of life updates, or annoy the player base by not rolling out updates more frequently. He who shouts the loudest typically wins the argument.

This is one of those cases that the vocal minority no matter how loud we shout will remain the vocal minority sadly.

As to the comment of "I once saw zero active" the forum counter has been broken since inception. It only counts the people that have posted in the last 5 minutes. So it doesn't show the "lurkers" like me. Who may be logged in and reading threads just not posting to them. As long as I click on a thread at least once an hour I'm not forced to logout until the 6 hour mark.

So if I don't feel my input adds to the conversation typically I just meander on to the next thread.
When the day becomes the night and the sky becomes the sea, when the clock strikes heavy and there’s no time for tea; and in our darkest hour, before my final rhyme, she will come back home to Wonderland and turn back the hands of time.

11-Nov-2020 17:23:26

Wolfblue42

Wolfblue42

Posts: 3,962 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Jagex never post casually. Last Jmod to post normally was someone cleaning up General after a spam attack. They said something like you can find me on Twitter there's cat pics!!! It's like why are you leaving staaaaaay.

Last actual feedback post I remember was Mod Kelpie asking people about renovating the Grand Exchange. That musta been 2 years ago I think.

The problem with the other places reddit,twitter, is they became mutually exclusive. They will only use those never the forums.

So why use the forums when you get 10x the info and participation from jmods elsewhere? That's why the forums are in a downhill spiral.

11-Nov-2020 20:28:09

Pepsi River

Pepsi River

Posts: 216 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
SushiCombo said :
They give incentives to use Amazon prime for their rewards, they could do something similar with forum users.

Yeah, I'm not sure how something like that would work though.
An incentive would be prone to just cause spam, unless someone had a really good idea for it. It couldn't be a reward for post count or anything. Convenient links
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12-Nov-2020 09:08:08

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