Let's talk about FORUMS!

[Kolo]

I spent a lot of time on small Pokemon forums (and chatrooms) when I was younger. The biggest one that I can think of is GPX+, and it's kind of unreal to me that it's still limping along. There were other forums I went onto but I don't recall them as clearly/can't give a name. A lot of the time I wouldn't post much regardless...

A good chunk of the rest of my forum activity has been on various petsites I've joined. I remember posting a bit (I think?) on Goatlings, but it took me a bit to warm up to posting onto Flight Rising's when I joined back late 2014. There's been bits and pieces of random other petsites, too, like Novilar (rip) and I'm sure a whole ton I'm just not remembering. I used to post more on Toyhou.se's forums and still sometimes make threads there but the atmosphere there is always a little tense so I don't speak out of fear.

Uhm, and I joined Pixel Cat's End semi-recently and have been fun posting in their forum because they have cute little cat emotes that encourage me to make smaller posts just to use them hahaaha. That site is very small, though, and a lot of the forums are slower than this one.

It's sort of become a thing for some petsites to try to have a forum, and also an official discord server, and there's a lot of grumble around users about how it's a bad thing because it takes away from the forum. I definitely agree, and it's strange to see that shift over time because my experience with petsites is always with a forum attached. Coming to mind is Lorwolf; there's quite a few upset threads there lamenting how slow the forums became after launch with natural player bleed & the presence of an official server. Notably, Flight Rising and Pixel Cat's End don't have official servers (though they have heaps of unofficial ones, and I do know a ton of Flight Rising's population is in those servers).

Obviously I like forums, or else I wouldn't be posting here. It just feels more like a space that makes room for people, even if a lot of particular discussion isn't happening. It's nice. I hope they continue to flourish in niche little communities like this and petsites.

[wygolvillage]

I remember when I was really really young I was like, scared of forums... I remember I was on the virtual horse site Horseland and I would look over the forums kind of intrigued by them but I also thought it seemed more "mature" than what I had been used to using the internet for lol, which is kind of silly looking back since I imagine Horseland was full of other young players. So for a few years I used to lurk forums a lot.

When I was a little older I used to post on the WolfQuest forums pretty frequently (since you used to need a forum account to play the multiplayer game mode it was a little inevitable), and I have fond memories of that. WolfQuest does have a pretty large discord now so the forum is a little less active... I was in the server for a little while but found it impossible to keep up with everything or have time to contribute thoughtfully to conversation. Discords are great for talking with all your friends in one place, but at a certain point they're just too big to talk in, especially when trying to discuss hints or gameplay tips!

Also lol at the mention of Scratch, I used to be obsessed with that site and the forums as well. I still find myself gravitating to the forum style of communication, I like how each topic is given its own place to breathe rather than all being part of one giant stream of consciousness chat. I like how much better they serve as an archive as well, and I like the more laid back pace and thoughtful replies. 

[konamiesque]

Hmm...... I never really got into forums as a kid, but right now I'm here on Melonland (obviously), The Castlevania Dungeon, and I even have my own little forum that I run!!

I really love forums and the sort of come-as-you-please conversation that they tend to cultivate. It's my hope that as social media slowly declines, these sorts of casual, user-ran spaces will start popping up again.

[Grimlock]

i've never been on sites are are specifically for forum communities until i joined melonland! i mainly used discord then (and now) so whenever i wanted to be in a community for a thing i liked i'd just join a discord server for it and chat with the people there. it was fun, but the wildest stuff happens in public fandom servers sometimes. forums definitely feel more like i can contribute to a conversation, where in discord servers for the longest time if a topic passed you'd have to like specifically say you were commenting on an older thing. you kind of have to BE there in servers, y'know?

I'm mostly familiar with them because they're an extremely common feature on virtual petsites. it never felt weird, but maybe that's because i had experience with them very early in my internet fledgling years

[Numberedpaws]

My earliest forum memories were occasional posts on the Deviantart Forums, then the Chicken Smoothie Forums, and my most active use was definitely the RPnation forums. I recall doing a lot of sonic and FNAF related roleplay haha.

Besides those I do recall being on multiple MLP forums, some posts on the scratch forums, a furry teen forum, the official scholastic forums for warriors and wings of fire, and various herping forums. That was all during middleschool though and I didn't really use forums much after finding Discord.

I wonder, does Google+ groups count as forums? I used to use those so much for Animal Jam and other fandom things. I definitely shouldn't have been on some of these sites so young but I wasn't very good at finding friends outside the web, so I relied a lot on the net.

[zawieja]

I didn't engage with a lot of forum sites back in the day (mostly cause I was extremely young during the height of their popularity), but a site I visited frequently when I was twelve is Warrior Cats RPG. It goes by Feral Front now and all the threads are archived and that honestly makes me so sad. For real though, I was honestly way too young to be on that site. Whenever I tried to roleplay with anyone, I only used one or two brief sentences while everyone else was writing paragraphs upon paragraphs. I think I'd be better at online roleplays now that I'm an experienced writer.

Nice to see that someone out there had literally the same experience as I did  Despite being like, 10 years old, I was quick to catch on though and learned to write pretty well because of thewarrior cats rpgs I joined. I tried all the other PBFs of different kind later about dragons, lion king, wizards, it was a great time and I miss it.
Not only it was fun but as someone here already said, time on forums just flows differently, and I miss the ability to search for things on them quickly. A lot of things I look for I still find on old abandoned thematic forum threads and there is something sad about it. Discord is definitely not the same.

[thecreechur]

Oh man the only forum I ever spent any amount of time on was called 'Clan of the Lost Souls', back in the early-mid 00s. It was a goth rp (?) forum that my parents were on and I begged my mum to let me join at the ripe old age of about 7, which she did (and I figure the other forum members were cool with it), under the condition that I do not explore the rest of the forum and stay within my thread (which I did because I was a good goth child), which was in my mum's part of the forum.

Sadly none of it seems to be archived on wayback which is both a blessing and a curse for me, since it means my inane 8 y/o ramblings about how Jack Skellington (and then Victor from Corpse Bride, and then Willy Wonka) is my boyfriend are forever lost to time haha

(I still never got that blinkie I kept begging the other forum members for either!!!! )

[bingus_baby]

I used to post more on Toyhou.se's forums and still sometimes make threads there but the atmosphere there is always a little tense so I don't speak out of fear.

God, I know what you mean. Toyhouse was my first forum, and looking back it was a weird introduction to the medium lmao, the vibes were so weird around there. I know it was one of those "you get what you put in" sites and it's supposedly easy to avoid the drama but I can't help but think the overall landscape was more hostile than other forums I've been on. I had to leave after being there for years since I got sick of watching the users tear each other apart ;_;
(And not to mention I posted embarrassing cringe in my early days there, looking back on my old art and writing is so ewwwwwww, at least my time on there helped me improve a lot!)

[myleszey]

I used to go to a forum called "Cloud's Forum", which was dedicated largely to SMBX content, and I loved it there. People would post their levels, and even the occasional episode, there. They'd post graphics, music, works-in-progress, and just casual posts whenever they felt like. It had a chatbox- and I love chatboxes, man, because they integrate real-time interaction with the forum itself. I'm browsing the forum? Let's check the chatbox and see who's online! It was a great way to get in touch with people, especially before the days of Discord. I've had a good chat with a lot of people over it, talking about recent events and what's up with everyone and all!

I don't know if it's exactly SMBX but I have memories that mirror that experience of a community centered around a (flash?) game(s) like that... Specifically, a similar Mario Bros. flash game hosted on pouetpu-games.net? Every user had a custom profile, and some would have chatboxes where you could spend hours talking to people in the tiny community formed therein while the music player autoplayed Don't Stop Believin' forever.

More in the vein of forums, Everybody Edits had (has?) a huge community, based on the flash game where you place down tiles and create art or platforming puzzles. The forums were likely active up until the end of Flash.

One last forum (these seem to follow a theme of 'games with level editors') was Distractionware, where Terry Cavanagh's games were discussed. He developed Super Hexagon (which is the subject of the ongoing MelonLand tournament, or at least a derivative work) and VVVVVV, and was a place I met a lot of super neat folks who were just getting into the game-development scene (though I haven't followed much of their later work).

As an aside - Vivian, it seems like I can't properly quote your posts with the quote buttons, at least if they aren't on the latest page...

[Swiftpaw]

God, I know what you mean. Toyhouse was my first forum, and looking back it was a weird introduction to the medium lmao, the vibes were so weird around there. I know it was one of those "you get what you put in" sites and it's supposedly easy to avoid the drama but I can't help but think the overall landscape was more hostile than other forums I've been on. I had to leave after being there for years since I got sick of watching the users tear each other apart ;_;
(And not to mention I posted embarrassing cringe in my early days there, looking back on my old art and writing is so ewwwwwww, at least my time on there helped me improve a lot!)

I haven't checked out the Toyhouse forums too much, but I understand what you mean by just using the site. I like to browse it for character ideas but every time I click on one the warning popup almost always has something like "DNI if you're XYZ" and half of it feels either like something that should be common sense or just 2016-era petty Tumblr drama.

I had a similar experience with the Dappervolk forums where everyone was so negative and hostile and I had to leave. A lot of petsites have a similar problem, even if the forum does a good job of handling drama, sometimes people will go around it and create drama in Discord servers or Tumblr confession blogs.

I suppose drama's always been around on the internet, but some forums and communities are differently more drama-filled than others.

[wangobangy]

I missed out on using forums when I was younger. My family was late to internet and my mom hated when I would talk to other people online to begin with. Her paranoia made me scared to use forums when I got older.
Now that I am in my 20s, and using this forum site, I am pretty sad I missed out on it.
I don't really know where I can find forums with how cluttered search engines can be, as well as just a general lack of forums for my interests.
I do generally prefer how forums are over social media even though this is the only forum I am active on, or even have an account for.
I would love it if there was a site that had a list of active forums so I could hope to find one that I would be able to use.
If that does already exist, I would love a link to it. Or even some advice on how to find forums.

[myleszey]

I would love it if there was a site that had a list of active forums so I could hope to find one that I would be able to use.
If that does already exist, I would love a link to it. Or even some advice on how to find forums.

I did a quick search and found Find a Forum.Net, ProBoards Forum Directory, Neoseeker Forum Directory (for specific video games), and Feedspot Forums Directory. I have no idea how you'd figure out which of these thousands of forums have an active userbase, but they make it easier to narrow down the search terms. Some of these sites have forum rankings based on recent activity and overall post count.

Of course, there are plenty that aren't going to be found here, mostly simplemachines forums. Lots of communities that would have had forums have been supplanted by Reddit unfortunately.

[wangobangy]

I did a quick search and found Find a Forum.Net, ProBoards Forum Directory, Neoseeker Forum Directory (for specific video games), and Feedspot Forums Directory.

Thank you so much! I will be sure to browse these when I have the time. Hopefully I will find an some that are active that share my interests.

[BlazingCobaltX]

I love forums! It's so fun to read away at conversations (and juicy fights) others have. My journey started on this Dutch forum for Pokémon and anime, where I learned all the forum etiquette basics.

With my growing interest in anime, in particular one show, I had a short stop at this forum for one specific ship and then made my way to NarutoForums (now FanVerse). Frankly, I had the time of my life there. I made friends and enemies alike, and saw all of the big forum events happening in real time. Nothing like the hype for a new chapter overflowing and the whole forum crashing as a result. It was extremely fun to be part of it, until the manga ended it in a deeply underwhelming way for many that I knew. I stayed for a short bit, but left the site behind definitively in 2015.

Ever since then I've always craved for a new online living room of sorts, but nothing ever hit the same. In 2017 I joined the PokéCommunity Forums. I felt quite at home, until there was a mass exodus when it was revealed that the owner had a very specific charge on his criminal record. After that I went to OneHallyu, where I mostly watched from the sidelines as others argued about kpop. That site, too, had a meltdown when the owner was revealed to be a racist and homophobe.

It's been me lurking Reddit since then, to feel some semblance of forum-like conversations, but it was never the same. I'm very happy to have returned to my forum dweller nature since my accidental discovery of Melonland.

[creaturefeature]

I haven't checked out the Toyhouse forums too much, but I understand what you mean by just using the site. I like to browse it for character ideas but every time I click on one the warning popup almost always has something like "DNI if you're XYZ" and half of it feels either like something that should be common sense or just 2016-era petty Tumblr drama.

I had a similar experience with the Dappervolk forums where everyone was so negative and hostile and I had to leave. A lot of petsites have a similar problem, even if the forum does a good job of handling drama, sometimes people will go around it and create drama in Discord servers or Tumblr confession blogs.

I suppose drama's always been around on the internet, but some forums and communities are differently more drama-filled than others.

That probably why the chickensmoothie forums ended up banning DNI lists there, which I applaud them for it even though im not that much active there anymore except for the ocasional event. It was a huge source of drama.

As for forums, I grew up mostly as a lurker but there were exceptions. I didnt exactly go to a forum specific site, but more like that site had forum section attached to it. I remember back when with the official harry potter site had a forum, and neopets. I also got really into roleplay in the now defunct Foopets site, imagine that.

However early 2010s is where i got into forum sites,when I revived my tamagtochi phase i ended up on tamagotchi palace. Then like two or three years ago I got into creature caves forums mostly cause i found about the creatures games series for the first time. Im thinking of going back there