So suppose that stand alone forums in general are dying. Is that irrelevant to stand alone techie or Apple oriented forums? What's the evidence that it is relevant?
The evidence I have is anecdotal. I belong to several Mac-related tech forums, and I've seen the traffic slumping on all of them lately. I haven't done any sort of statistically significant controlled sampling of tech forums in general, but I'd be very surprised to learn that this is not affecting all of us.
What we at FTM ought to be interested in is whether Apple oriented stand alone forums are dying or in bad health. And, of course, some will be for particular reasons. And some have died in the past. And FTM is, though not dying, now in bad health in one respect -- in lacking users.
Indeed. And it's users who make any forum; we can't long survive if the downward trend continues.
But one must not generalize from stand alone forums in general to computer/techie, or more particularly, Apple oriented forums. Different stand alone forums deal with different subject matters and have users of different degrees of interest/commitment. Generalization across such differences is dubious generalization.
That's true. But technological changes do tend to affect everyone; it happened with the old dial-up BBS systems and again with USENET, regardless of the nature of the specific BBSes or newsgroups involved.
Like I said, anecdotally, tech forums are experiencing the same decrease in usage that other forums are.
Key Issue: What are the stats at Apple's own forums -- where most Apple users go for help? Do we know that usage is recently down there?
For these purposes, I don't really know that I'd consider Apple's own forum a 'standalone forum,' as it has a significant patron willing to spend a great deal of time and energy on it that is also in a position to promote it as a resource (namely, Apple itself). I would not expect that Apple's Web site usage trends would necessarily reflect those of Apple-themed sites not affiliated with Apple itself...
