i started using the internet in the late 2000’s and still remember when you search for something most of the times it would return with a forum post … now its just random websites … if you ever need real and concise answer you have to add site:reddit.com at every search and since discord or twitter are not crawlable by these search crawlers they are not mentioned . Where did all those forums went…are there still active forums ?
I’m a member of a couple of hobby-specific forums that are still doing okay and I think there is still some life left for them. The nice part is they tend to attract subject matter experts who will answer questions from newbies without the nastiness you see on StackExchange. The small number of users and the lack of public visibility keeps a lot of trolls away. But there aren’t many left. Lots of them moved to groups on Facebook or other venues where the owner no longer has to manage their own server. When they do that sometimes their archives get lost, which sucks since who knows how long social media sites will keep things or whether they’ll surrender the data for someone else to archive.