Hmm, I'm trying to think of how to organize my thoughts. I was pretty heavily involved with both fandom and non-fandom messageboarding back in the day, but I haven't frequented them in several years. I basically used message boards for two different reasons: to read fic and to discuss stuff (or to lurk and listen to others, more often).
As far as reading fic goes, almost any format is better than message boards; the colors were usually unappealing, you were forced to scroll through feedback to get to the next chapter, and often if a thread went un-updated for too long, it'd disappear and the fic would disappear with it. These things aren't problems on LJ; thanks to the magic of ?style=mine I can read posts in any format I want, and while fic can be taken down, it has to actually be deleted by someone; it doesn't just disappear with the passage of time.
I think there are a lot of discussion forums still around, but the thing with discussion is that you have to have something to discuss :) HP isn't an open canon anymore, at least not officially, and a lot of the things we used to wonder about have been definitively resolved in canon. But I think things might be different in other fandoms that are still open. I do know of several rather active fandom and non-fandom forums, though since I'm not really into that kind of thing right now, I don't know if they're more active or less active than similar boards in the past. You have to remember also that a lot of the bigger blogs essentially function as message boards with extreme restrictions on new threads (well, and no post count, I guess XD), so there's probably a lot of overlap there, at least in non-fandom circles.
To the extent that there is a decline, I think the reason is probably that nowadays more people are comfortable with opening their own websites and setting up their own forums. In Roswell, which was my first fandom and fairly popular back in the day, there was one major discussion forum and two or three fanfic message boards that I knew of; it was easy to keep up. But nowadays, forums are much more common, and so unless your site draws people in another way, you simply can't build membership.
For one example, I read manga that's been translated by people online--we call it scanlations, because the English text is edited into the pages. (Sorry if I'm telling you stuff you already know.) And most of these scanlation site have a forum attached. Now, the groups that do quick scanlations of popular series', or are the only translators of a popular series, will get a lot of traffic, and because of that they're able to build membership. But the forums on less popular or less active sites are usually ghost towns; there are only so many times you can say 'YAY X', after all, and without five or six people interested in hardcore discussion, things peter out rather quickly.
As people have gotten more used to the Internet and now have the ability to open all these different sites/blogs/LJs/message boards/whatevers, you also get a lot more balkanization, IMHO, and that's one place where LJ (and blogs, for many non-fandom areas) is way superior to message boards. If you're not forced to rub elbows with people you disagree with, you're less likely to have a lot of discussion. This isn't a big deal on an LJ community, because as long as people have it friended they'll be able to see any new posts without going to any effort. But on a message board it's the kiss of death, because without new content, people are just going to stop visiting the site.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 12:18 am (UTC)As far as reading fic goes, almost any format is better than message boards; the colors were usually unappealing, you were forced to scroll through feedback to get to the next chapter, and often if a thread went un-updated for too long, it'd disappear and the fic would disappear with it. These things aren't problems on LJ; thanks to the magic of ?style=mine I can read posts in any format I want, and while fic can be taken down, it has to actually be deleted by someone; it doesn't just disappear with the passage of time.
I think there are a lot of discussion forums still around, but the thing with discussion is that you have to have something to discuss :) HP isn't an open canon anymore, at least not officially, and a lot of the things we used to wonder about have been definitively resolved in canon. But I think things might be different in other fandoms that are still open. I do know of several rather active fandom and non-fandom forums, though since I'm not really into that kind of thing right now, I don't know if they're more active or less active than similar boards in the past. You have to remember also that a lot of the bigger blogs essentially function as message boards with extreme restrictions on new threads (well, and no post count, I guess XD), so there's probably a lot of overlap there, at least in non-fandom circles.
To the extent that there is a decline, I think the reason is probably that nowadays more people are comfortable with opening their own websites and setting up their own forums. In Roswell, which was my first fandom and fairly popular back in the day, there was one major discussion forum and two or three fanfic message boards that I knew of; it was easy to keep up. But nowadays, forums are much more common, and so unless your site draws people in another way, you simply can't build membership.
For one example, I read manga that's been translated by people online--we call it scanlations, because the English text is edited into the pages. (Sorry if I'm telling you stuff you already know.) And most of these scanlation site have a forum attached. Now, the groups that do quick scanlations of popular series', or are the only translators of a popular series, will get a lot of traffic, and because of that they're able to build membership. But the forums on less popular or less active sites are usually ghost towns; there are only so many times you can say 'YAY X', after all, and without five or six people interested in hardcore discussion, things peter out rather quickly.
As people have gotten more used to the Internet and now have the ability to open all these different sites/blogs/LJs/message boards/whatevers, you also get a lot more balkanization, IMHO, and that's one place where LJ (and blogs, for many non-fandom areas) is way superior to message boards. If you're not forced to rub elbows with people you disagree with, you're less likely to have a lot of discussion. This isn't a big deal on an LJ community, because as long as people have it friended they'll be able to see any new posts without going to any effort. But on a message board it's the kiss of death, because without new content, people are just going to stop visiting the site.