Official GW forums?

[Lord_Ikka]

The only possible alternative would be the Reddit format, but that's a horrific cesspool.

I've actually had fairly good interactions on the Warhammer 40k subreddit, their mod team is pretty decent, but it is so busy that unless your thread takes off right away it will be buried in an hour and no one will respond. At least in a traditional forum it is fairly easy to navigate ilder threads and posts.

[Philip S]

I'm old school, and I love forums because you can hear people, and have a conversation. It's not all about your media impact, and how popular you are, but about what you say. I like that.

 

I too think that forums are disappearing, I've seen many disappear over the years, like Anargo (but the ghost is still there, a treasure trove of ideas, but most disappear without being preserved) I'm still angry that BL and BI shut down their forums, and that's more than ten years ago! I wish I knew back then how to archive the whole site, because I would have.

 

In the future, the few forums that are left will work well, have a good community, and be carefully conserved and handled. I think B&C will be one of those communities. At least I hope.

[Angry Banana]

I do remember the old GW forum from donkeys years ago, and it got all a bit toxic.

Add to this the amount of resource needed to police an official forum properly and the GDPR and privacy directives now, which is what caused the demise of so many forums in the last couple of years due to their platform upgrade being an unsustainable proposition and you have something that quite frankly many companies like GW don't see value in.   Easier to let someone like the established social media hubs do the donkey work, and you just feed content and not have to worry about it.

 

I agree with Philip S above - the forums that do well are the ones where their community make them, and that in turn, if it has the right vibe then the likes of GW will in the background look in and feel the pulse therein - much like TGA for age of sigmar, who as it happens was where the recommendation came to join B&C.

 

Having GW looking in on somewhere like this is also great for them as a forum like this will tell them more than a survey ever could, especially if all the comments are constructive and helpful.

Sure say that this or that is a load of balls, but offer a solution or a theoretical remedy or solution as to how it can change and they'll eventually listen - even if its never acknowledged or acted upon.

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

I think that we also need to recognize the impact that the wikis have had in making information available and reducing the need for lore-based questions.

Yeah the wikis have had impact, but I think they're a bit different. They give a lot of basic information but I think most lore discussions are more "what if" based or very specific. So I don't know if they really lower the forum population.

[MegaVolt87]

Forums are great for the discussion/ yarn on hobby specifics. Places like reddit are more instant gratification in what you are after. I often doom scroll the 40k/30k reddit subs, nothing like an endless reel of great miniatures to inspire you/ give you ideas. BUT with reddit, the OP I find is less responsive on the how, unlike on here where they are happy to give you a TED talk on weathering for example. 

[lightinfa]

I remember the old GW forums, loved it during the black crusade event but understand why they shut it down but still a shame.

 

For me there is only the B&C, don't do Facebook, Instagram or any other social media type quick fix.

 

B&C always has been and will be home for me.

 

I remember what must have been their last gasp during the Medusa V campaign - the flaming, trolling, and utterly bizarre alliances (Tau + Chaos was a thing for like a week?) was hysterical but it was completely toxic and un-constructive for learning, collaborating, or feedback.  

[RWJP]

I definitely agree that there will always be a place for both forums like B&C and other social media platforms like Reddit.

 

I am essentially running the Warhammer40k subreddit at the moment and while it is great in many ways, there are some things that forums just do better.

 

The big thing for me is longevity. As a platform, Reddit does not really support long running discussions, or finding old content easily. Any discussion peaks for a while and then fairly rapidly drops off down the rankings into obscurity. Forums on the other hand allow for more longevity and ease of discovery of older content.

Edited May 17, 2021 by RWJP

[Wulf Vengis]

I remember the critical hit forums which were cool when i found them in late 2001 but almost instantly devolved into a toxic cesspool and was shut down by the beginning of 03 i think. Iirc there were moderation issues, in the form of heavy handed punishments like locking down threads and suspending users simply for mentioning the similarities between modern religions and the overall fluff, all the way down to lack of punishments when individuals would curse or use derogatory statements. I remember there being one thread at the very end that was just a "i hate such and such user" and it was all one user just horribly ragging on another user whom they didn't particularly like which lead to all sorts of awful things being said about whole swathes of that community by the op and others. This thread had like 38 pages or something and was just left to get worse and worse.

And it's been my experience since then that too many forums are just trash holes waiting to be filled in (regardless of their topic).

 

Bottom line is that B&C is a godsend for being an upstanding community. Love my little internet home.

[Lexington]

You kids and your new-fangled “forums,” I remember the real glory days of the 40K internets, back on the Igcom mailing list! :p

[Kastor Krieg]

You kids and your new-fangled “forums,” I remember the real glory days of the 40K internets, back on the Igcom mailing list!

Terminals and BBS or git offa me lawn, kiddo.