<story><title>The Rise and Fall of Internet Art Communities</title><url>https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-rise-fall-internet-art-communities</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>skilled</author><text>As soon as you introduce any kind of an algorithm that favors activity, it&amp;#x27;s no longer a community. It&amp;#x27;s a dopamine cash cow waiting for people to naturally fall off because they lose interest. There might be other factors, but this is definitely high on the list.&lt;p&gt;The same goes for many other modern &amp;quot;communities&amp;quot;. Everything is robotized. Configured to feed you with stuff rather than incentivize discovery and a sense of curiosity.&lt;p&gt;Of course, it&amp;#x27;s sad that old school forums are literally non-existent. vBulletin, phpBB, IPB -- these are the real internet forums. These days, people want flashy colors, but most importantly, everything handed to them on a golden platter. Albeit, this is likely an issue with concentration and attention span.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;A vicious cycle.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cheschire</author><text>Old school forums are far from non-existent. They are simply not money makers, and typically focused on specialized topics. They still exist in large numbers.&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest shifts that has hurt the visibility of forums these days is not in everything becoming gamified with internet points, or &amp;quot;robotized&amp;quot; with preference-oriented content.&lt;p&gt;IMO it&amp;#x27;s actually our societal inability to pay attention to one topic for more than a few minutes at a time. We&amp;#x27;ve become so well trained by the constant drip feed of randomized content, and the chase-the-rabbit research methodology of wikipedia, that when you encounter a forum in your search results, you probably didn&amp;#x27;t even consciously realize it because you skimmed it for the content you were looking for and moved on.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Rise and Fall of Internet Art Communities</title><url>https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-rise-fall-internet-art-communities</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>skilled</author><text>As soon as you introduce any kind of an algorithm that favors activity, it&amp;#x27;s no longer a community. It&amp;#x27;s a dopamine cash cow waiting for people to naturally fall off because they lose interest. There might be other factors, but this is definitely high on the list.&lt;p&gt;The same goes for many other modern &amp;quot;communities&amp;quot;. Everything is robotized. Configured to feed you with stuff rather than incentivize discovery and a sense of curiosity.&lt;p&gt;Of course, it&amp;#x27;s sad that old school forums are literally non-existent. vBulletin, phpBB, IPB -- these are the real internet forums. These days, people want flashy colors, but most importantly, everything handed to them on a golden platter. Albeit, this is likely an issue with concentration and attention span.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;A vicious cycle.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>deanclatworthy</author><text>Agree, although there are still many incredibly active forums around, but I do feel the golden age of them has passed. I started my career on forums, modifying them, moving eventually on to more general web work. It makes me a little sad to think this is pretty much the only &amp;quot;forum&amp;quot; I post in, but even HN is algorithmically-biased :)</text></comment>