I've been active in another fandom as both, newbie, moderator and later forum owner and admin. That was in the late nineties, up until 2003. Now I maintain/moderate a HP-related community on lj.
Forums are fun as long as they are small and you know everyone who comes there and discusses frequently. I always liked the possibility to structure a forum, to offer different sections for canon discussion, off topic, fun stuff, fanfic, you name it. But maintaining a forum costs both, a lot of money and a lot of work, and if you see that people either feel entitled to direct the way your forum goes because they donated for its upkeep, or leave because people aren't nice enough/are too sappy... it's not such fun any longer. All forums have to deal with trolls sooner or later, and if you're not careful and react too paranoid, you'll soon have a very restrictive structure which may attract the opposite type of people you actually want to have there. Mods who seem to see the moderator job as a way to enhance their self-worth and start acting up as mini-dictators don't make things smoother either.
Blogs are different. Everyone gets their own journal, has their own friends. Even if you're active on communities, write meta, fanfics: you don't really need them to have a voice. If you disagree with my moderating and bitching about the way you post, you go to your own journal and post it there, complain, and get replies and sympathy. If the stupid archive x doesn't accept your fanfic, you go to your own journal and post it there. You'll have the say, you have a voice and are seemingly independent. It doesn't even cost money, and you get a decent look and functionality for free, or with the plus account, too. I think that felt independence, together with easy use, keeps people moving from forums to blogs. The lj kerfuffles from last year show us the limits of how independent we are, though. It's much easier to maintain a forum or archive than writing your own blogging software, so you're stuck with the ones who do, and they usually want to make money with it, something fandom forum owners seldom want. At least in the sleepy little fandom corner I used to hang out.
Surfed in through newsletters
Forums are fun as long as they are small and you know everyone who comes there and discusses frequently. I always liked the possibility to structure a forum, to offer different sections for canon discussion, off topic, fun stuff, fanfic, you name it. But maintaining a forum costs both, a lot of money and a lot of work, and if you see that people either feel entitled to direct the way your forum goes because they donated for its upkeep, or leave because people aren't nice enough/are too sappy... it's not such fun any longer. All forums have to deal with trolls sooner or later, and if you're not careful and react too paranoid, you'll soon have a very restrictive structure which may attract the opposite type of people you actually want to have there. Mods who seem to see the moderator job as a way to enhance their self-worth and start acting up as mini-dictators don't make things smoother either.
Blogs are different. Everyone gets their own journal, has their own friends. Even if you're active on communities, write meta, fanfics: you don't really need them to have a voice. If you disagree with my moderating and bitching about the way you post, you go to your own journal and post it there, complain, and get replies and sympathy. If the stupid archive x doesn't accept your fanfic, you go to your own journal and post it there. You'll have the say, you have a voice and are seemingly independent. It doesn't even cost money, and you get a decent look and functionality for free, or with the plus account, too. I think that felt independence, together with easy use, keeps people moving from forums to blogs. The lj kerfuffles from last year show us the limits of how independent we are, though. It's much easier to maintain a forum or archive than writing your own blogging software, so you're stuck with the ones who do, and they usually want to make money with it, something fandom forum owners seldom want. At least in the sleepy little fandom corner I used to hang out.