Facebook Versus Forums

[nickwilliams]

'The ugly'.....

The 'old' forum could get feisty, but people said what they thought. The problems came about because some contributors got very upset with anyone with the audacity to disagree with their opinions and got all drama queenish.

Fast forward, and contributors (well, most of them) tone it down for fear of a spanking by PM. So you rarely see people's REAL thoughts.

Social media never was a place for delicate flowers.

Bollocks.

Mostly we saw ad hominem attacks with little or no real debate on the actual issues, coupled with considerable trolling. Much of what was said was posturing rather than any real representation of people's honest thoughts or positions.

I'm not missing any of it.

 

[Pegasus]

I agree with Nick.

 

[pwhole]

I've been using the internet on a daily basis since 1995, and so far still have zero interest in joining facebook, and it's unlikely to improve in prospects. Granted, it's easy, and seems 'free', but I can't see many other advantages to specialist audiences like this one. I suspect that if they start charging for access (even 1p a day), most of their user base would dry up overnight. It sounds snobby (because it is), but a programmer friend of mine last year said 'The internet's gone right downhill since they let the general public on', and I know exactly what he means, despite both of us (technically) being members of the general public ourselves.

Quite simply, documenting your life for the entertainment of others, unless you do something really fantastic all the time, is really boring, both for the poster and the reader. They may not think it's boring, but it's a long-term boring, and it can take months before you realise it, but by then you're committed, and may find it difficult to back out, such is peer pressure. I have a few horror stories of people posting or reading/believing inappropriate material that could backfire in all sorts of unexpected ways, none of which will make it here, but suffice to say that a read through Alvin Toffler's Future Shock (1970) will discuss many of the 'social confusion' issues we now face today:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock

There are some things however that should not be on the internet at all - at least not until any situation that might be created by its publication can be managed. I sail quite close to the wind sometimes in terms of my personal opinions, even on here, but I'm careful, in a caving context, to keep things off the net until such time as there won't be any trouble caused. That's why I don't post everything I do underground here, even though I'd like to. There's just so many numpties out there.

 

[NewStuff]

My first modem was 14.4K, 1992/3ish ( :tease: ) so I'm prehistoric in internet terms, and I'm certainly pre "web". I have to be very circumspect about what I post *anywhere*, as employers in certain sectors dislike certain things posted.

Both Forums and social media have a place. Forums are still, unbeatable for specific, detailed knowledge. For archives of aforementioned knowledge. For laying this out in both a logical and searchable manner. FB is great for organising meet's, trips, but I certainly wouldn't commit long-term archives to it, it's simply not designed to do that.

 

[droid]

Bollocks.

Mostly we saw ad hominem attacks with little or no real debate on the actual issues, coupled with considerable trolling. Much of what was said was posturing rather than any real representation of people's honest thoughts or positions.

I'm not missing any of it.

Bollocks.

Perfectly acceptable and valid points were made. Just some (not all) got overexcited when their 'opinions' weren't taken as 'fact', viz 'it'll be all right on the night'.

Yes, there was trolling, a lot of which was pisstaking of the self appointed 'experts'.

If you didn't take it too personally it was very funny.

 

[rhychydwr1]

[snip

"Just wanted to mention to all members that I will be very likely closing the forum down in about 6 months.
[snip]

I have just woken up.  Can Nick tell me what forum he is talking about?

 

[royfellows]

I agree completely in the main with whats being said, especially Mike and Nick who sum it up rather well.

Moving on, I cite an old American saying: "There is no such thing as a free lunch". A little research will show up what is going on behind the scenes on Facebook.

 

[cavemanmike]

"Funny" is in the eye of the beholder.
Personally I prefer the forum the way it is and I'm not afraid to say I don't miss graham and peters self-righteous argumentative attitude.goog riddance if you ask me 

 

[ZombieCake]

Roy,
See my earlier post and article link.  Facebook (and Google, Amazon & others) have some very good data mining and analysis capability.

 

[kay]

Both Forums and social media have a place. Forums are still, unbeatable for specific, detailed knowledge. For archives of aforementioned knowledge. For laying this out in both a logical and searchable manner. FB is great for organising meet's, trips, but I certainly wouldn't commit long-term archives to it, it's simply not designed to do that.

Absolutely!

Facebook is largely what you make of it. It's only full of babies, kittens and pictures of food if that's what you choose to see. I belong to some specialist groups, and my facebook feed is full of specimen close-ups and ids, and gems of information from people far more knowledgeable than me. I can put up a photo of a microscope slide with ease, and get my id confirmed in a couple of hours.

But for looking back at something posted even a few days ago, a forum wins hands down.

And for reference material - access information, rigging topos - you can't beat a website.

So yes, facebook can be a threat if both forum and facebook page/group are trying to do the same thing, But used intelligently they can complement and support each other.

 

[MJenkinson]

I use both; this place is good for advice, some cracking reports of late and general interest / tracking down info.

As far as caving goes on FB, it is what I use to organise 90% of my caving and diving, how I talk to mates using the messenger and also winding up our club warden with joking requests to install wifi at Bull Pot Farm (which I don't want anymore than the next man, but he REALLY doesn't want it).

 

[The Old Ruminator]

[snip

"Just wanted to mention to all members that I will be very likely closing the forum down in about 6 months.
[snip]

I have just woken up.  Can Nick tell me what forum he is talking about?

Yup wake up Mr O. Its a collector's forum for antique pot lids. Nothing to do with those seen under beds.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Well Photobucket will pretty much stuff the archival value of most forums as images disappear. One day we might well see the sense in returning to the written word as a long term resource. This is because nothing we see on the internet can be trusted  . Certainly with a view to long term archival stuff. In my dim and naive past I thought that forums were the answer to the dissemination of knowledge. Now ,sadly , that trust or belief has been seriously eroded .  Forums might well relapse into the place that the nomenclature suggests.  "A meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged." That's it just views and ideas with no research or project news. Potentially I have thousands of hours work to be lost. I should have put most of it in a book where it can be stored in The British Library ( potentially unread ) for generations. Let's face it we have a plastic, throwaway society where instant satisfaction or entertainment is the norm. There isn't really a battle for supremacy between Facebook and Forums its just an evolution. The internet itself will evolve in ways we can hardly envisage. Forums and Facebook will be dragged along with that. Ultimately the user of both might well have to pay for the privilege of using them. No issue with that as long as the costs are reasonable .

You can go back to sleep now Tony 

 

[Leclused]

Well Photobucket will pretty much stuff the archival value of most forums as images disappear. One day we might well see the sense in returning to the written word as a long term resource. This is because nothing we see on the internet can be trusted  . Certainly with a view to long term archival stuff. In my dim and naive past I thought that forums were the answer to the dissemination of knowledge. Now ,sadly , that trust or belief has been seriously eroded .  Forums might well relapse into the place that the nomenclature suggests.  "A meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged." That's it just views and ideas with no research or project news. Potentially I have thousands of hours work to be lost. I should have put most of it in a book where it can be stored in The British Library ( potentially unread ) for generations. Let's face it we have a plastic, throwaway society where instant satisfaction or entertainment is the norm. There isn't really a battle for supremacy between Facebook and Forums its just an evolution. The internet itself will evolve in ways we can hardly envisage. Forums and Facebook will be dragged along with that. Ultimately the user of both might well have to pay for the privilege of using them. No issue with that as long as the costs are reasonable .

You can go back to sleep now Tony 

A bit of a spin-off

It's true that you can't trust anything on the internet. To archive our reports on our club blog we make every year a compilation of it using a "blog to book" application.

I think we use the following https://www.blogbooker.com/ but there are other programs to.

 

[AR]

Unfortunately, forums can disappear too - I managed to grab some pages off Mine Explorer which had things of Derbyshire importance on it before it disappeared, but didn't get round to extracting things from the short-lived Derbyshire Lead Mines Project.

This is the one of the two fundamental weaknesses of digital format records ( the other is format obsolescence), which is why I still prefer to draw up surveys on drafting film and put the "official" version of my finds into hardcopy media.

 

[royfellows]

[snip

"Just wanted to mention to all members that I will be very likely closing the forum down in about 6 months.
[snip]

I have just woken up.  Can Nick tell me what forum he is talking about?

Yup wake up Mr O. Its a collector's forum for antique pot lids. Nothing to do with those seen under beds.

I didn't know about this but 'assumed' that it was some forum you run and not this one!

Out of general interest but off topic. One can have a web presence quite cheaply without running a forum.

I run several websites, some sub webs of others but with URL pointing.

Created and maintained on an old copy of Microsoft FrontPage, uploaded to ?25 a year Linux Servers using Microsoft Expression Web, a free download from MS.

MS will tell you it wont work, this is total ball cocks. But dont open any pages in Expression, just use it for uploading.

This is a sub web of my own which I hold for a certain person we all know and love:
www.grottage.co.uk

Cost him squat except the ?10 2 years domain.

Interesting thig about these kind of webs is that everything about me is on my websites and you would think that i would be deluged with junk emails and other issues. No.
This is because the pages are just ordinary HTML and nothing running behind them, so it would take a human element to mine the data, and this is just not done these days. Humans are obsolete in the world we are busily creating.

 

[cooleycr]

I got tricked into creating an FB account and after receiving a few email alerts from other users, can see how easy it is to get drawn into it, with layer upon layer of tempting morsels that actually turn out to be more like something from the Divine Comedy!
The only thing that i have found to be of any tangible use is the Messenger app, as one of my friends works in a building that has no mobile connectivity so we use his office WiFi to 'chat' which is, of course, at this time, free.
How to find subject matter? Good question.

And onto forums..
Being in the communications industry, we were, naturally, amongst the pioneers of the World-Wide-Web and of course used early chat apps and BBS so that is what I prefer to use now (old dog, new tricks and all that).

I love THIS forum, it is so full of 'stuff' and have a good read (alongside my own caving club (TSG)forum) most days, you are a fascinating, if sometimes odd, outspoken, introverted /extraverted, obsequious, arrogant etc. and yes, there is an element of 'trolling', but if that is how you get your kicks, I certainly don't let it bother me and my skin is so thin that I worry that it might break, but mostly simply people having fun...
Also I find that having a form of Dyslexia helps to make some of the responses more interesting 

Forums are a brilliant way to connect to others with a shared interest and can be a gold (or should that be lead/tin) mine of information.
When I had a problem with a car some years ago, I joined the owners' club forum and within less than 24 hours had several solutions, same when I had a query about a central heating controller, I posted on a forum and soon had the answer...


So PLEASE keep posting here, we need each other because, as most people tell me when I mention that I go caving, we are mad! 

 

[royfellows]

I had email alerts from Facebook telling me that people I had never heard of had 'unfriended' me.
I didn't sleep that night.

 

[cooleycr]

That doesn't bode well...

 

[royfellows]

People still speak to me.....