I will never understand “forums are best”. I’ve tried, but they are worse in just about every aspect compared to any other communication system I’ve seen.
The good thing about forums is that, once a problem is addressed, the solution remains there and is indexed by search engines for everyone to see. You can say anything about forums, but I doubt you never fixed some issue by looking at some old forum thread, without even having to bother anyone.
I have definitely solved the odd issue from forums… but only because forums were the only thing available. Reading through them is still a chore and a half. Especially when 90% of the posts are “has anyone found a solution for this yet” ad nauseum that you still have to scroll through to eventually (maybe) find the page with the post you actually need.
I may just be bad at forums, but that’s been my experience with them for the last 20+ years.
If you want to learn from a number of car enthusiasts how to address one specific error code with one specific model of car, is there anything better than finding a five page long forum thread and reading a few dozen posts about it from the last few years?
So like… “Forums are a good communication technology for modern use” and “have you ever found a solution in a forum” are different things.
As a counterexample, I’ve had more luck finding weird ass computer hardware issue solutions by appending ‘reddit’ to a search string than just about anything else. On the other hand I’ve wasted hours and hours on forum threads that go nowhere, with a million dead ends, and terminates in “see this other thread for the actual answer” and then that thread is archived or otherwise inaccessible.
I will never understand “forums are best”. I’ve tried, but they are worse in just about every aspect compared to any other communication system I’ve seen.
People just like what they like, I guess.
The good thing about forums is that, once a problem is addressed, the solution remains there and is indexed by search engines for everyone to see. You can say anything about forums, but I doubt you never fixed some issue by looking at some old forum thread, without even having to bother anyone.
I have definitely solved the odd issue from forums… but only because forums were the only thing available. Reading through them is still a chore and a half. Especially when 90% of the posts are “has anyone found a solution for this yet” ad nauseum that you still have to scroll through to eventually (maybe) find the page with the post you actually need.
I may just be bad at forums, but that’s been my experience with them for the last 20+ years.
Definitely use case specific.
If you want to learn from a number of car enthusiasts how to address one specific error code with one specific model of car, is there anything better than finding a five page long forum thread and reading a few dozen posts about it from the last few years?
So like… “Forums are a good communication technology for modern use” and “have you ever found a solution in a forum” are different things.
As a counterexample, I’ve had more luck finding weird ass computer hardware issue solutions by appending ‘reddit’ to a search string than just about anything else. On the other hand I’ve wasted hours and hours on forum threads that go nowhere, with a million dead ends, and terminates in “see this other thread for the actual answer” and then that thread is archived or otherwise inaccessible.