Is the time of message boards dead?

I know we usually have a drop of traffic during the summer months and inactivity in the music scene.  However, we have dropped off to almost no traffic and our regular posters are active almost daily on Facebook and probably other social media.

With there being so many available pages on Facebook about the music we all hold dear, is there a need anymore for message boards?  like the dinosaur, cassettes, and now CDs, are message boards dying off to the point they are unnessary?

I just want to hear what everyone thinks!

It is starting to look like the message boards are going the way of the dodo.
I keep getting invited to discord pages... but have only joined a few and they are just as slow (or something I'm not interested enough to check regularly).

Even the once mighty CMR seems like a shadow of it's former self.

Staybrite wrote:

It is starting to look like the message boards are going the way of the dodo.
I keep getting invited to discord pages... but have only joined a few and they are just as slow (or something I'm not interested enough to check regularly).

Even the once mighty CMR seems like a shadow of it's former self.

It does have more life, though, simply because there are more people who are members.  Despite there being less posters active overall, it had more to start with and lives because there are active members.

Is there something we can do to draw people here, or do we truly need to go the way of the dodo and just plug into social media?  Except for prayer requests where we can express ourselves without the people in our lives knowing what is going on with us if we don't feel like we are ready to tell them, do we have a need to exist anymore?  Does the lack of engagement answer that question?

If anyone has thoughts about this, I would love to hear them.

I don't even post on Facebook that much any more.  I just don't have anything interesting to say.

I don't use any social media of any kind. I have been using message boards/forums since around 1983!! Back when I had a Commodore 64 I was active on those boards and forums. 

I took feel people are moving away from them. Unfortunate. But I'll be on them until I expire.

We used to have about 20 members here every day, and it stayed that way for a long time.  Now we have about 10 members popping in every day.  So, I can see this continuing to go downhill, but I still think it is worth keeping going.  Yes, others things have taken over, but I'm only on facebook, CHM and CMR and that's all.  CHM feels more like family than anything else, and whilst it's not a place to get all the music news, it still feels like a place for friends to share their thoughts, prayer requests AND cool music info.

Everything has its day, but I still think message boards have a bit of fight left in them.

CHM is still a place where we can talk about things.
I post here things I never would post on FB.
It's because I feel comfortable to share what's going on here. the hard things, the stuggle, the grief there still is.
I still feel a member of the CHM family.

I agree with the sentiments about CHM feeling much more like a family than any other social media.
I occasionally ask for prayer from my bothers and sisters here.  That's something I would probably never do on bookface.

Well that's weird...I had a nice long response typed up and somehow it vanished after I hit send. 
So here is another one..

Anyway, I came back here because I missed the comradery.

I love the fact that with message boards everything is compartmentalized into its own thread, and it soooo much easier to keep track of the discussion. It is also extremely easy to go back and look at older threads. Facebook comments are a mess because you have people commenting to the main post as well as directly to other people's comments, and you don't see it all unless you keep hitting expand/show comments under each person's comment. Facebook is also VERY inconsistent with how new posts are displayed / ordered, and I miss stuff quite often.

I am not sure how to get the forum back. There are other forums that still flourish (Bluray.com, Toho Kingdom, etc etc) so part of the problem is simply the topic here, which is mostly centered on Christian music and leaning towards 80's style.

Obviously, a lot of us fans of that era are now in our 50s or 60s and our numbers have dwindled as many have either passed away, don't have the ability to partake here anymore due to various restraints in their life (time, health, etc etc), are no longer Christian (which happens a lot) or simply no longer like the style.

While there was a couple of revivals of the 80's bands over the past 10 years or so, the amount of new converts can't keep up with the numbers dropping off.

alldatndensum wrote:

Is there something we can do to draw people here, or do we truly need to go the way of the dodo and just plug into social media?  ...
If anyone has thoughts about this, I would love to hear them.

Yes, you need to have a cook out. And maybe a classic car show.

deathisgain wrote:

alldatndensum wrote:

Is there something we can do to draw people here, or do we truly need to go the way of the dodo and just plug into social media?  ...
If anyone has thoughts about this, I would love to hear them.

Yes, you need to have a cook out. And maybe a classic car show.

I drive a 2017 Nissan Frontier that isn't electric.  Is that classic enough? 

Hello all, I've been lurking here on and off for a couple weeks now. This thread struck a nerve with me and I decided it was time to log in. 

I love message boards. I don't use them. That's obviously a bit contradictory but my love for them is really rooted in nostalgia at this point. I love the memories I have of them. When I was in high school the first thing I did every day after school was check first the Barnabas fan page forum (The Manifest) and then the CMR. Both were very active at the time and to me it was addicting. Being a part of the Barnabas forum allowed me to talk with the band members themselves and it actually eventually resulted in me getting to have several phone calls with with one of their guitarists who had been previously elusive and never before heard recordings surfaced as a result of those conversations. The interconnectivity that the internet promised seemed fully realized.

The CMR exposed me to many underground (and even major) bands that I don't know how I would have found through other means. Special interest communities (or subcultures) like this offer or at least offered people the chance to actually build culture around an interest. Being able to extol the virtues of of a band like Saint, for example, with others who are as intimately familiar with their music as you are adds a kind of fulfillment to the love you have for that band or in other words it is kind of the reward you get for being a fan.

Then came social media. Specifically facebook. I had had a myspace account which I enjoyed using but did not really pull me away from message boards. Facebook came on the scene with a stronger method of hooking you in. Over time my attention was increasingly pulled that direction. 

Additionally around the same time that facebook was at the peak of its popularity, The Manifest was shutdown and some kind of hack or something took down the CMR and everything was lost.

I still cared enough to make an account when it was restarted but the damage was done, I imagine there were many people who never came back and those that did were either slow to come back or silent when they did and I got tired of checking it and seeing no updates.

I like many others became more and more consumed with facebook. It wasn't even really about what my friends were doing either. Half the time I spent on the platform was reading random articles or watching videos that people had linked to or posted. And half the time I spent on those was on things I didn't even care about before seeing the link but the link was there to click and so I had to click.

Thankfully I was eventually able to come to my senses and these days I only use social media on rare occasions. 

All that rambling aside, even the message board's organizational structure is far superior to that of any social media platform I've seen. Social media feels transient and I think that is intentional. Of course, they aren't going to forget anything you've ever posted because that is something they can monetize. But they don't really want you, the user, to be able to go back in time and view old posts etc. At least not what is outside of their curated 'memories'. Message boards encourage anonymity, the highest virtue of the old internet while social media encourages oversharing. 

Every now and then these days I think of my time with forums and feel the desire to return to them but I will lurk for a while and decide not to post. I usually don't feel like I have anything to add to the conversation. But forums are, however anonymous, communities nonetheless and part of it is that posting as an occasional or new user can feel a bit like stepping inside someone's home while they are having a dinner conversation and interjecting your opinions.

Part of that could simply be a mood/perspective shift on my part. Teenagers know everything and when I was a teenager I sought opportunities to share my opinions or sometimes even if I didn't have one, I'd come up with one just to be able to post. In some ways I'm happy that the old CMR is gone. I don't have to look back on my old posts and cringe.

My apathy about forums is not limited to those which I've already been a member either. There is a linux home studio forum that I've been intending to join but haven't done it and I'm not totally sure why. Time management I guess. As far as I can tell that is even a pretty active forum and given the nature of Linux nerds and their propensity for using niche software, that forum probably has a long life ahead of it yet.

When the internet was young message boards were once the cool thing to do and in the less corporate internet ranked higher in search results. I think now it's not so much about being uncool as it is about being unknown. Though maybe that is the same thing. 

Does that mean message boards are over? I don't know. Are people these days willing to move their conversations off of a single platform even if they knew that they existed? I don't know. Does any of this mean that forums no longer have value? I don't think so.

And people will show up if there is value. Probably never again will there be the numbers seen during the heyday of message boards but all that means is learning to reinterpret success metrics and metrics are not always able to convey value anyway.

So how many people have to be regulars here for it not to be dead?

If you want more users, market the value that is found here to people. If you have a social media account make a post about it. If you make youtube videos, mention it in a video, if you have a friend that enjoys this kind of music, tell them about it. Tell them why you post here instead of abandoning it for social media. If you make your case well, some people will be interested. Whether they make accounts or not is anyone's guess but some will be interested.

I would say that's my two cents but as long as I've gone on, I'm probably up to two dollars now. And for my own part, maybe I'm a hypocrite because I probably will not be posting here much myself but this thread brought back so many memories for me that it had great personal value. Other threads will have value for other people.

One last thing, remember that lurkers and random people who get here by a chance google search are a part of the ecosystem as well. Though I'm sure their input would be welcome here, you never know what joy your discussions have brought to people who may never even log in.

alldatndensum wrote:

deathisgain wrote:

alldatndensum wrote:

Is there something we can do to draw people here, or do we truly need to go the way of the dodo and just plug into social media?  ...
If anyone has thoughts about this, I would love to hear them.

Yes, you need to have a cook out. And maybe a classic car show.

I drive a 2017 Nissan Frontier that isn't electric.  Is that classic enough? 

It's getting there! It's hard to believe that a classic car is considered 20-25 years old. That puts us in the late 90s and early 2000's. Weird.

lifemetal wrote:

....

I would say that's my two cents but as long as I've gone on, I'm probably up to two dollars now. And for my own part, maybe I'm a hypocrite because I probably will not be posting here much myself but this thread brought back so many memories for me that it had great personal value. Other threads will have value for other people.

One last thing, remember that lurkers and random people who get here by a chance google search are a part of the ecosystem as well. Though I'm sure their input would be welcome here, you never know what joy your discussions have brought to people who may never even log in.

Thanks for taking the time to chime in Lifemetal!  I agree that there are likely at least a dozen lurkers here that read quite a bit without posting.  That is pretty much my status at the CMR.  I read almost everything there that is new, but it is highly unlikely that I will post a response to anything more than once in a week (maybe not even that often).  

I have probably been a member of at least 8 or 9 message boards over the last 20 years, and this one (CHM) and CMR are the only two that seem to have much of any activity left in them.  I don't think a message board needs to be flooded with new content every day.  But when 3 or 4 days go by without anyone making a new post or even leaving a comment it seems like a slow place with no need to even visit it daily.

Staybrite wrote:

lifemetal wrote:

....

I would say that's my two cents but as long as I've gone on, I'm probably up to two dollars now. And for my own part, maybe I'm a hypocrite because I probably will not be posting here much myself but this thread brought back so many memories for me that it had great personal value. Other threads will have value for other people.

One last thing, remember that lurkers and random people who get here by a chance google search are a part of the ecosystem as well. Though I'm sure their input would be welcome here, you never know what joy your discussions have brought to people who may never even log in.

Thanks for taking the time to chime in Lifemetal!  I agree that there are likely at least a dozen lurkers here that read quite a bit without posting.  That is pretty much my status at the CMR.  I read almost everything there that is new, but it is highly unlikely that I will post a response to anything more than once in a week (maybe not even that often).  

I have probably been a member of at least 8 or 9 message boards over the last 20 years, and this one (CHM) and CMR are the only two that seem to have much of any activity left in them.  I don't think a message board needs to be flooded with new content every day.  But when 3 or 4 days go by without anyone making a new post or even leaving a comment it seems like a slow place with no need to even visit it daily.

I get that. I recently logged into the CMR for the first time in several years to ask a question and since I was on there, I read through several threads and some were pretty interesting but every time I tried to think of posting I just kept thinking, "what can I say except, 'that's cool, or I like that'?". There were a bunch of threads that were polls about the best song on fill in the blank album and mostly for albums where every song was great so posting, "I can't choose, they are all good" seemed like posting just to post which didn't seem appealing to me. Then again, maybe sometimes you just gotta do it because every post is one more breath it's taking.

lifemetal wrote:

Staybrite wrote:

lifemetal wrote:

....

I would say that's my two cents but as long as I've gone on, I'm probably up to two dollars now. And for my own part, maybe I'm a hypocrite because I probably will not be posting here much myself but this thread brought back so many memories for me that it had great personal value. Other threads will have value for other people.

One last thing, remember that lurkers and random people who get here by a chance google search are a part of the ecosystem as well. Though I'm sure their input would be welcome here, you never know what joy your discussions have brought to people who may never even log in.

Thanks for taking the time to chime in Lifemetal!  I agree that there are likely at least a dozen lurkers here that read quite a bit without posting.  That is pretty much my status at the CMR.  I read almost everything there that is new, but it is highly unlikely that I will post a response to anything more than once in a week (maybe not even that often).  

I have probably been a member of at least 8 or 9 message boards over the last 20 years, and this one (CHM) and CMR are the only two that seem to have much of any activity left in them.  I don't think a message board needs to be flooded with new content every day.  But when 3 or 4 days go by without anyone making a new post or even leaving a comment it seems like a slow place with no need to even visit it daily.

I get that. I recently logged into the CMR for the first time in several years to ask a question and since I was on there, I read through several threads and some were pretty interesting but every time I tried to think of posting I just kept thinking, "what can I say except, 'that's cool, or I like that'?". There were a bunch of threads that were polls about the best song on fill in the blank album and mostly for albums where every song was great so posting, "I can't choose, they are all good" seemed like posting just to post which didn't seem appealing to me. Then again, maybe sometimes you just gotta do it because every post is one more breath it's taking.

I think that last statement is what makes these boards work.  You chime in even if you are going along with the flow.  However, sometimes you may slip in something that someone else hasn't thought of.  Maybe you might be like, "It's the perfect album--expect for that ONE song."  Some will disagree and some will be happy someone pointed that out.  Maybe you would be thinking that the album would be perfect except for the guitar tone, or the backing vocals seem out of tune, or you didn't like someone's belly button ring showing in the album photos.

It is that  slightly different thought that keeps many of us going back, making friends, and continuing together in whatever way we can throughout the years.

alldatndensum wrote:

...or you didn't like someone's belly button ring showing in the album photos.

Speaking of which...

alldatndensum wrote:

Maybe you would be thinking that the album would be perfect except for the guitar tone, or the backing vocals seem out of tune, or you didn't like someone's belly button ring showing in the album photos.

Look, no need to call me out on a public forum. At the time I got that belly button ring it was cool. As well as the tramp stamp. Some things age poorly. At least I was able to remove the ring.

deathisgain wrote:

alldatndensum wrote:

Maybe you would be thinking that the album would be perfect except for the guitar tone, or the backing vocals seem out of tune, or you didn't like someone's belly button ring showing in the album photos.

Look, no need to call me out on a public forum. At the time I got that belly button ring it was cool. As well as the tramp stamp. Some things age poorly. At least I was able to remove the ring.

I do not prescribe to your Post Navel Piercingism.  It is clearly blasphemous!  



As far as the tramp stamp goes, I was hoping to one up you with a tramp stamp AND accompanying whale tale for my project!  Now that would be a site to see!!!   

I admit I don’t post very much but with life, I don’t spend nearly as much time online as I used to. Then again most of the forums I used to frequent are either gone or I have moved on from. Nowadays there are only two that I go to, and this is one of them.

While fb has its advantages, whatever they are, I still like forums for a close knit community of friends.

I'm with Hardkore, hardly ever online these days. Busy with other projects. I've gone from a prolific poster to a "Lurker". I occasionally peek in to see how my CHM family is doing, but rarely sign in or post anything. Just don't have anything of interest to post or to add to conversations I guess. I'm the same on FB, hardly ever post anything anymore. I do miss ya'all though, and need to hang out here more often

Guilty/Forgiven wrote:

I'm with Hardkore, hardly ever online these days. Busy with other projects. I've gone from a prolific poster to a "Lurker". I occasionally peek in to see how my CHM family is doing, but rarely sign in or post anything. Just don't have anything of interest to post or to add to conversations I guess. I'm the same on FB, hardly ever post anything anymore. I do miss ya'all though, and need to hang out here more often

Would those "projects" be your grandchildren?  I can definitely relate to being busy and not having time to chime in every day.  I try to check the forums daily, but I miss stuff.  I think that is the illusion that Facebook, Instagram, X, and other social media platforms paint that we have to be a part of the conversation every day in order to be social.  But, they do this so that we will be inundated with endless advertisements about things we don't want or need.

With message boards, I always felt like it was more about the conversations and the family.  Even with family, you have to connect from time to time, but you can go a while without seeing family and the relationship stays right where it always was.  There comes an emptiness, though, if you wait too long about reconnecting as you miss the input and time spent with those you care deeply about.  However, we all know that we don't have to talk every single day.  Message boards are the same, but the magic happens when we do take time to plug in, talk about something new or even the frustrations of the same ol' same ol', and let the family gather around us.

Jim, you have said multiple times over the years that you didn't want to drag others down by asking for prayer.  Shame on you!  We are your support team!  I would not have made it through some of the stressors in my life without you guys and a safe place to vent.  I have been prayed for by you all, and I have had people call me out on my lack of faith at times.  I needed those, and I couldn't get it from people in my immediate circle because I don't have that support system.  I thought it was bad as a youth pastor.  As a pastor of a small church, there is no support for me.  The association doesn't know I exist.  The congregation wants me to do everything and its all my fault if it doesn't happen.  Thus, I have no faith in them.  Without this board, I don't have that support.  I don't have to spend hours here discussing it, and I don't have to spend hours here to read through responses to know you all care even if we are spread around the globe.  If nothing else, that is the reason why we haven't pulled the plug here or worked to try to make it bigger.  We need the support of one another.

Quote :

Would those "projects" be your grandchildren?

Hmmm, I'd say a resounding "yep"! With my son's new job as a US postman he needs us to watch them more than ever. But I can't use them as an excuse for my absence. I really have no excuse for not being around much. I just get into a daily rut of the same things and don't spend much time online anymore. 
As for asking for too much prayer, I did feel that way when I was suffering with my health issues and depression. But I should now post an entire praise report thread about how God has brought a Dr into my life who has successfully diagnosed me and got me onto the perfect meds. After most of my life being misdiagnosed, I finally have relief from my health issues. I should say thank you to all who have prayed for me here and who've been there for me. I appreciate it now more than you know. 
It saddens me to hear that you, Aldat, still don't have the support you need as a small town pastor. But I am happy to know this board is a refuge for you, as it was for me for so many years. Yes, we do need this place. I plan to hang out more often and touch base with all you fine folks.

Good to see you, Jim!  I'm glad to hear you've got some relief.

Guilty/Forgiven wrote:

....
As for asking for too much prayer, I did feel that way when I was suffering with my health issues and depression. But I should now post an entire praise report thread about how God has brought a Dr into my life who has successfully diagnosed me and got me onto the perfect meds. After most of my life being misdiagnosed, I finally have relief from my health issues. I should say thank you to all who have prayed for me here and who've been there for me. I appreciate it now more than you know. 
...

Woah, now that is a fantastic praise report!!  Super cool!