On the Changing Role of Online Forums?

RighteousRaven asks: "I am doing a study on online forums and their place in a changing Internet environment. For the purpose of this study, I am considering that a forum has two roles: a social hub for people with some commonality, and a repository of information related to that commonality. Previously, forums were the best sources of information on the internet, from motorcycle maintenance to videogame modding, you could learn a lot from a forum. However, with Wikis dominating the internet as dense and highly-searchable information repositories, forums are becoming purely social with no utility beyond personal expression or companionship. Can forums exist on a purely social level? What shortcomings endanger the forum's future, and what characteristics have allowed it to survive so far? Why do we need forums in the first place?"

Nonsense yourself

[Freaky Spook]

And without wikis, forums slowly lose their potency under a mountain of repeated questions and discussions.

Thats not true, Slashdot doesn't have a wiki and I still laugh when I see repeated jokes about

• goatse

• sharkes with laserbeams

• in soviet russia

• Microsoft

• Vista

• Profit

• chairthrowing

• welcoming overloards

• Microsoft

• Duke Nukem Forever

Re:Nonsense yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot Microsoft.

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum...

[Slashdot is dead]

I decided to use a wiki instead.

Re:Nonsense yourself

[kevlarman]

-does it run linux -imagine a beowulf cluster -microsoft -any reference to girlfriends -all your base