Facebook Groups vs. Forums

alexk243

KulAdventure
Has anyone else noticed that facebook groups are taking on a lot of the roles that forums use to? I am in a few groups on FB and I see more and more maintenance questions and build questions on there, which is fine and people are very quick to respond, but I find that there is a real lack of follow up or possible no response from the original poster.

For example, on here someone may ask about the best way to make a shower in a camper van and there will be a lot of responses and the person will continue to ask questions and hopefully they conclude with how the finished their project and what option they went with. On facebook I feel that someone will post something like "show me your best shower ideas for camper vans" and you will get a ton of people posting how they did their shower, but the original poster never responds, doesn't ask questions, and doesn't follow up with what they went with.

Lastly there isn't a great search function... On here if I want to research what insulation I want to use I can spend hours.. even days, reading other peoples post who have dealt with the same issue and learn almost everything there is to know about it, but on facebook every time someone wants to know about insulation a new post is made and everyone makes the same comments again.

Maybe I am just making all this up haha, but I wanted to see if anyone else noticed or felt that way. I really enjoy forums and don't want to see that traffic move to a closed group with a lack of information retention like facebook.
 

flman

Roadrunner, Genius of Birds ALWAYS WINS! NO FAILS!
I am not leaving forums for social media, until they pry my cold dead hands from the keyboard.
 

lindenengineering

Well-known member
Has anyone else noticed that facebook groups are taking on a lot of the roles that forums use to? I am in a few groups on FB and I see more and more maintenance questions and build questions on there, which is fine and people are very quick to respond, but I find that there is a real lack of follow up or possible no response from the original poster.

For example, on here someone may ask about the best way to make a shower in a camper van and there will be a lot of responses and the person will continue to ask questions and hopefully they conclude with how the finished their project and what option they went with. On facebook I feel that someone will post something like "show me your best shower ideas for camper vans" and you will get a ton of people posting how they did their shower, but the original poster never responds, doesn't ask questions, and doesn't follow up with what they went with.

Lastly there isn't a great search function... On here if I want to research what insulation I want to use I can spend hours.. even days, reading other peoples post who have dealt with the same issue and learn almost everything there is to know about it, but on facebook every time someone wants to know about insulation a new post is made and everyone makes the same comments again.

Maybe I am just making all this up haha, but I wanted to see if anyone else noticed or felt that way. I really enjoy forums and don't want to see that traffic move to a closed group with a lack of information retention like facebook.
To a certain extent I agree.
Its fairly clear that the younger generation use social media much more than other generation have done!
To date and indications are that its growing in all aspects including businesses what want to attract customers. & future recruitment, staffing, etc. though the multi platform nature of social media.
My own business(s) have used a company that tracks all medic activity over each quarter for several years now. Overall the cost has been well worth it, since it shows treads, on line activity feed back etc etc.
Traditional "on line" & phone activity has certainly been static and basically following seasonal trends. In fact it ("Facebook") has far exceeded Indeed and recruiting expectations.
The social media side has ballooned this year with astonishing figures.
I do have a daughter in the office that tracks all this and posts job positions amongst other things , some being autos social.
We are about to launch more content in that area of Hybrid and Electric cars, since that sector is becoming more prominent with more choices in the market place .
Strangely having used again traditional methods of recruitment I located a much better pool of potential young auto tech candidates than I would have expected.

So to sum up I thing it potentially has the "power" to reach more people than just a friends/family group chit chat platform. Certainly its good for those it would seem that don't care to contribute to social media and its content such as this one.
The whole world is going through some seismic shifts this is just one embrace it :thumbup:
Good post opening post/topic, well done!
Dennis
 

220629

Well-known member
...
The whole world is going through some seismic shifts this is just one embrace it :thumbup:
Good post opening post/topic, well done!
Dennis
:thumbup:

My children are around 40 years old and use social media a bunch. My grandchildren are teens and make them look like pikers.

I take the grand-kids out in the Sprinter for various things. I know that the phones are constantly alight in the seats behind me. After an outing I'll mention something to my wife about what we did. Most of the time she already knows what we did thanks to social media from the kids.

The phones get stowed when they sit down for a meal with Grandpa.

My grandchildren are not likely to participate in forums. They will figure out how to use social media to achieve a similar result.

So far I've not been sucked in by social media. I suppose that could change.

:cheers: vic
 

glasseye

Well-known member
I sometimes attend a FB page related to my Rad e-bike. It’s my only FB use.

Compared to any forum, let alone this one, it’s more or less useless. There are no topics, no retention of ideas, no threads, no “write-ups” and poor search.

There is, however, a lot of useless, vapid chatter. :idunno:
 

alexk243

KulAdventure
I sometimes attend a FB page related to my Rad e-bike. It’s my only FB use.

Compared to any forum, let alone this one, it’s more or less useless. There are no topics, no retention of ideas, no threads, no “write-ups” and poor search.

There is, however, a lot of useless, vapid chatter. :idunno:
This is exactly how I have felt...

I didn't want to make this an anti-social media argument, more about the groups on there vs forums and how it feels like there is a migration towards those. They do have much faster responses, but as you pointed out and I agree with, its a lot of chatter and no topic/retention/threads.

That being said I do participate in them and help out others on facebook groups when I can, but I feel like the help falls on deaf ears and there is no discussion. Glad to hear I am not the only one that feels that way.
 

OrioN

2008 2500 170" EXT
I sometimes attend a FB page related to my Rad e-bike. It’s my only FB use.

Compared to any forum, let alone this one, it’s more or less useless. There are no topics, no retention of ideas, no threads, no “write-ups” and poor search.

There is, however, a lot of useless, vapid chatter. :idunno:
I am an active member of the FB Sprinter group.

For me it's not which is better, or one or the other mentality. I see its merits, so that makes it worthy.

One of it's merits is that it is closely moderated and with tighter reigns. It is much more civil, and many of our infamous 'obnoxious' or 'flming' users here would fall under a 5 & 5 rule.... 5 days or 5 posts, which ever comes first, before they get banned.
 

flman

Roadrunner, Genius of Birds ALWAYS WINS! NO FAILS!
FB and Twitter, just that many more opinions.....
 

flman

Roadrunner, Genius of Birds ALWAYS WINS! NO FAILS!
I am an active member of the FB Sprinter group.

For me it's not which is better, or one or the other mentality. I see its merits, so that makes it worthy.

One of it's merits is that it is closely moderated and with tighter reigns. It is much more civil, and many of our infamous 'obnoxious' or 'flming' users here would fall under a 5 & 5 rule.... 5 days or 5 posts, which ever comes first, before they get banned.

Geez, the pot is calling the kettle black. Thank you for taking away our privilege to lock threads, by being a coward and taking cheap shots then locking the thread so no one could dispute your insult.


Thank OrioN that we can't lock our own threads any more. :clapping:
 

autostaretx

Erratic Member
Another problem with FB "forums" is that you don't necessarily see notifications of posts ... FB doesn't "push" all messages to all members.
There are differences between the distributions of "business" FB pages compared to "personal" pages, too ... and still not all of your friends/followers see all of the posts to the page.
As content ages it tends to disappear from your view as well.

As Yahoo is currently going through the throws of shutting down the web interface to their groups, many groups are migrating ... i'll say "most" are going to groups.io, but a number are going to FB ... with many members saying "no thanks".

--dick (microscule (1000x smaller than miniscule) presence on FB)
 

John E

Active member
While I've browsed this forum for a long time, I'm not all that active. However, I am very active on a boating forum. There are 4-5 FB groups for this particular brand, but they don't take the place of the dedicated forum, IMO. Just today someone brought back a thread from 2007, and the question was valid. FB page doesn't serve the same purpose. I'm all for the FB pages, and join some, but they don't hold a candle to the enthusiast forums.
 
D

Deleted member 50714

Guest
I am an active member of the FB Sprinter group.

For me it's not which is better, or one or the other mentality. I see its merits, so that makes it worthy.

One of it's merits is that it is closely moderated and with tighter reigns. It is much more civil, and many of our infamous 'obnoxious' or 'flming' users here would fall under a 5 & 5 rule.... 5 days or 5 posts, which ever comes first, before they get banned.
Facebook is for frustrated little girls.
 
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flman

Roadrunner, Genius of Birds ALWAYS WINS! NO FAILS!
I think OrioN should be banned for being a suck up.
 

HarryN

Well-known member
I am not on FB, but my wife did make an instagram account for us. ( wirlnet )

I find this forum substantially better for finding answers to technical questions and detailed approaches to fixing and fixing a van.

To me, a forum is more of an enthusiast oriented approach.

One problem that IG helped with is that I am really terrible at posting photos on forums, and IG made that easier. As an example, I have actually purchased craigslist adv for $5 just to post photos on it for a month and link to a forum. On IG, the photo upload process is very easy.

I know there is a better way, just have not had time to chase it down.

Remarkably, on both IG and this forum, I can have a link clearly labelled and identified, and people will still ask me how to get to the web site or similar that require just a "click". :idunno:

I have not been on IG long enough to really grasp how to use it well. At least the van related sections seem to be mostly focused on following someone who is living in a van and promoting products.

IG is very phone / table oriented, which for me is challenging. I like a real keyboard and don't want IG on my phone, so I have a cheap dedicated tablet just for that use. I had no idea that tablets were so incredibly slow compared to the average cell phone or computer.
 

Midwestdrifter

Engineer In Residence
FB has a declining participation among people under 30 in the USA. Pretty significant actually. FB and forums have different purposes. FB need to keep people coming back with fresh content from people they are interested in. Its generally quite shallow, and low context.

Forums main draw is the depth of their content. Its usually a very narrow subject, and the context is high.

There are always Trolls, that's just humanity. Some forums moderate more heavily than others. Humans have selected membership for various tribes/groups based on shared ideology or values since we developed language.

This forums "Danger Zone" is somewhat unique. It draws individuals who would generally not be regular participants in the constructive areas.

What is unfortunate is that the ease of access other social media (and forums are social media) means that fewer users collaborate or participate in forums. There will always be a place for forums like this one. As the breadth of human knowledge and experience grows, the amount a single person can obtain stays the same. This can make is challenge to interact with other enthusiasts locally. It also means, that when you need something deeper than a google search can provide, you need to find an expert. Calling on the "crowd" via the collective knowledge of forums is often the only approach available.
 

autostaretx

Erratic Member
I had no idea that tablets were so incredibly slow compared to the average cell phone or computer.
That's really a price/performance/hardware issue.
It's possible to get "fast" tablets, but usually some of the performance is spent on increased screen resolution, which takes more time to fill/refresh.

--dick
 

flman

Roadrunner, Genius of Birds ALWAYS WINS! NO FAILS!
What is so hard about?
CP>edit options>miscellaneous options>forums to exclude from view>save changes.
No more DZ!


OTOH, if you do go to the DZ and just want to complain about it, we can't help you.
 
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OrioN

2008 2500 170" EXT
That's really a price/performance/hardware issue.
It's possible to get "fast" tablets, but usually some of the performance is spent on increased screen resolution, which takes more time to fill/refresh.

--dick
I have an incredibly fast tablet with a 13" screen and a resolution of 3000px x 2000px. It is capable of working with all CAD apps and rendering 3D content. The only caveat is... it costs over $2500.






.
 
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marshroger@hotmail.com

2006,2500,118, Passenger
I find myself using Facebook more frequently and rarely visit this forum anymore. That said, I agree that when you really need detailed information or want to contribute something worthwhile, the forum is a superior medium. People using the forums seem to be more knowledgeable and I am constantly amazed at how helpful people are. Without this forum, a novice like myself would be very frustrated trying to deal with their sprinter :)
Facebook is quicker and easier to use (in my opinion), and I also seem to spend more time there because there are different subjects that I'm involved with.
With any luck, the forums won't die, regardless of the proliferation of social media.
 

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