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Forums vs Chats


zoop

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I'm one to enjoy forums , I haven't yet tried chats like skype but (very) occasionally use the chat at bottom of page

and I my self feel and agree with what's in your post @zoop

 

Edit :- was just thinking maybe you won't get many chat people reply as the question wasn't asked on chat :P

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I suppose it depends for me...

 

Forums really run deep with me since I have been frequenting them since I was about 13 years old (now being 25). I have some close friends I met through forum communities much like this, that I still talk to even today- we did move to instant messaging after some point in time, but for many years talked via email, PM, and forum discussion before hand.

 

I am not huge on social media. I prefer more intimate discussion. But I'd have to say that overall, I prefer forums and PM, and then chat. It mostly depends on my moods. Some days I just fancy getting into a chat and being idiotic. xD Other days I want to have in depth conversations.

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As much as I hate to admit it I've come to prefer Twitter over almost everything else despite being one of those "ew twitter" people when it first got super popular. It's a nice inbetween, it has the sometimes fast moving timeline and DMs for something longer and more structured.

 

And that's soomething I like. Chat rooms (and this is including IMs and VOIP servers) are good for fast, fun, usually stupid chat. Forums are good for something that's a bit more engaging and requiring a bit more thought and structure. Like this for instance, the question is something you can either give a short response to that doesn't fully explain your side or you can write something long out that gives readers insight to the topic. Had I been asked this over discord my response would be much shorter and less satisfying both to write and read. It's what's so great about both forms of communication. Were someone to write out something huge on an IM people would either ignore it or mock the length. In voice something like that is especially uncommon.

 

What OP said about topics as well, I'm similar in that in IMs unless there is one topic I'm interested in or I'm talking to a couple people one on one about dumb things I'm usually in the background reading it quietly. Forums are much easier to seek out and discuss specific topics you're interested in. Not there? Make a new thread. Maybe people will reply, maybe they won't. Either way the discussion is out there and who knows maybe a month or two down the line someone pops up and replies. Definitely can't do that in an IM.

 

tl,dr: I like Twitter.

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Edit :- was just thinking maybe you won't get many chat people reply as the question wasn't asked on chat :P

 

Oh, I already knew that responses would probably carry an 'either' or 'forum' bias for that reason, though given that there's a Discord server associated with the forum I thought there might be a chatty sort or two that pop in from time to time that could make a pro-chat response. WAITING ON Y'ALL, COME ON, DON'T BE SHY.

 

Goodness, @zoop . Add a TLDR on that one. lol jk.

 

I will destroy you.

 

I suppose it depends for me...

 

Forums really run deep with me since I have been frequenting them since I was about 13 years old (now being 25). I have some close friends I met through forum communities much like this, that I still talk to even today- we did move to instant messaging after some point in time, but for many years talked via email, PM, and forum discussion before hand.

 

I am not huge on social media. I prefer more intimate discussion. But I'd have to say that overall, I prefer forums and PM, and then chat. It mostly depends on my moods. Some days I just fancy getting into a chat and being idiotic. xD Other days I want to have in depth conversations.

 

I'm in a very similar boat. I got my start in relatively forum-like things around 1998 at the same age. Since then I've usually been a member of some community or another, often smaller ones that don't have eleventy zillion members and posts per day*. The technology has improved by ridiculous leaps and bounds, to say the absolute least!

 

And yeah, I have nothing against chats or such, and do keep up with friends via IM, I just don't tend to look toward it for community stuff.

 

As for social media... eh... I somewhat grudgingly use Facebook to keep up the folks I know that don't really do other forms of internet communication, though I'm blisteringly selective about who I add to my friends list there... I cannot count the number of cousins (plus one aunt) who's friend requests I've blocked with zero hesitation, for example.

 

tl,dr: I like Twitter.

 

Somehow missed this in my response. Dammit.

 

I don't have anything against Twitter, though having used it in the past I can't really say that it was for me - keeping myself from being long winded is a bit difficult, so the character limit really kills me on it. :D

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Somehow missed this in my response. Dammit.

 

I don't have anything against Twitter, though having used it in the past I can't really say that it was for me - keeping myself from being long winded is a bit difficult, so the character limit really kills me on it. :D

 

I felt the same way when I first started using it but once you get used to the inconvenience of having to break your very long rant into 140 characters it's not too bad as a whole. Although while I do prefer it over everything else I think it's best used *with* a forum or blog. If writing things on the internet is your hobby having just a microblog isn't going to be very satisfying. You can't really write a 5 page essay on why Clannad is the greatest anime of all time on Twitter, even with breaking it down to 140 character sentences.

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My experience with chats has been, unfavorable to say the least. Most forums that I've been to have chat options, but they were never managed well. MSN was often glitchy or unresponsive and by the time they got it figured it out, no one I knew was using it anymore. Then there was Facebook, oh that Facebook was the worst of them all. It rarely worked, it often didn't show messages or allow you to reply to them, and one time, it very likely caused someone I was interested in to get mad at me because it messed up when it seemed like they were going to try and talk to me about a relationship, and they were clearly upset with me, and even distanced themselves from me after the fact.

 

Forums go down from time to time due to maintenance or this or that, but unless they close, they always come back. Also, when something does happen, it's usually mentioned somewhere so you know about it. Also, it rarely ever to late to reply to something on a forum, because it can sit there as long as need be, where as chats have this stigma like texting does now, you need to reply quickly or you're being a bad friend/person etc. So yeah, forums for me, always. I've pretty much sworn off chats.

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(...)Although while I do prefer it over everything else I think it's best used *with* a forum or blog. If writing things on the internet is your hobby having just a microblog isn't going to be very satisfying. You can't really write a 5 page essay on why Clannad is the greatest anime of all time on Twitter, even with breaking it down to 140 character sentences.

 

Yeah, that's basically my experience and the main reason I found it to be a little tiresome. A five page essay on why Clannad is the greatest thing of all time should definitely be a thing, as an aside.

 

at least you get acknowledged tho that has to be a bonus

MAYBE IT'S A WAY OF EXPRESSING LOVE?!

 

< 3

 

where as chats have this stigma like texting does now, you need to reply quickly or you're being a bad friend/person etc.

 

Oh God, I've ran into this so many times that it drives me completely and utterly insane to even think about - this was especially prevalent during my relatively brief stint in the MLP fandom. Eeeerk.

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Overall i prefer to use forums just because i like the way they work and stuff and its all organised. Don't really like chats due to things such as spam and having multiple conversations in the one chat.

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I haven't really thought about it till now. Buuuut both works for me swell.

 

But on a side note, I think the persons I prefer to talk to in chatrooms or private convos like in messenger or skype and the likes are persons I wanna keep in touch with :) Because if ever I can't come to the forums I can always contact them outside the forums. I guess that's how it works for me :)

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I like both for different reasons.

 

I enjoy forums especially for the anime/manga discussions. I love reading everyone's opinion and posting my own.

 

I also like chat for memes and spam. I enjoy the chatroom like chaos from time to time as well. xD

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  • 3 months later...

It depends. Typically, I use forums and chats for completely different things.

 

I tend to prefer chats when I have a group that is spread out across multiple time zones and in need of working on something together where time may or may not be sensitive. In the past, I've used chats for development groups and other things like that, where I need to be able to check in, quickly, ask a question and get a response. For things like that, a forum is way too much to bother with, and a wiki or some other collaborative tool would make a better accompaniment.

 

For personal stuff, I tend to prefer forums. I have never managed to actually "make friends and meet people" in a chat room that isn't narrowly focused on a specific (not-for-fun) project. Quite frankly, I don't think that the short, choppy chat style of communication is particularly good for those that don't totally dominate a conversation. In a "for fun" chat room, I usually end up reading a lot more than writing, as a consequence, I usually end up getting painfully ignored and never really being able to jump into a conversation.

 

In addition to that, chats are really, really susceptible to clique formation, a thing that is typically the death knell in a friendly community. Basically, because you have a few people talking back and forth to each other, it's really easy for familiarity to form among just a few people that happen to be online at the same time and agree with each other on most points. Since I'm a weirdo and a bit of a loner, that just means that people like me end up out in the cold. I hate chats for non-businessy stuff.

 

Forums are different. They have nice and neatly grouped categories, topics within each category, and posts within every topic. Typically, there's some way to search, and it is possible to pull up content by member. With all of this chitter chatter, it's a lot easier to find people that you want to be friends with, and it's easier for them to find you. In addition to this, the large selection of topics can prevent the "echo chamber" effect that can take place in a chat room.

 

I have made most of my current friends through forums. Heck, I even met and MARRIED one of them, so it's fair to say that forums are winning for me, overall. :angel:

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Either which is fine for me, but I do tend to prefer forums. Chats can be kinda intense. They're real-time, so you don't have as much time to type out your replies as you would a forum reply. I mean, I remember conversations in chats with multiple people where I replied to an older comment, but that comment was already overshadowed by other comments that were jumping onto a new topic. It's hard to catch up sometimes.

 

With this forum, it's not as much of a problem because of a lack of people, but I do still remember times when I just browse away to other parts of the forum, giving up on a conversation that I couldn't follow. :P

 

Also, chats have a certain way to suck me in for long hours. With forums, I feel like I have much more control over when I could stop replying to the next topic, etc. But in chats, you have a real person talking to you on the other end, pressuring you to reply in the next moment or risk leaving an awkward silence behind. I just couldn't stand the thought of that. If you and I are talking offline, and we get one of those awkward silences, you know I will talk about anything trivial just to ensure that silence is voided. It's a frustrating habit some people don't have a problem of, lucky them. Some people could just spend a quiet moment with another individual, not talking or feeling anxious.

 

And besides, you get all these cool "ratings" you can tag people's posts with! Winner! Like! Dislike... the one tag I've rarely seen people use, unsurprisingly. :D

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I guess I prefer forum style because then you can talk about more then one discussion in a chat room if you start a conversation there isn't room for other people to have there own discussion on other topics and if they did it would get confusing for most people...

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Forums for me. Personally I cannot stand chatrooms. It's much too personal and isolated for my liking.

Besides that, everyone wants you to do voice calls every now and then. That doesn't really sit well with me.

Given in the past, folks have tried making me talk on there, which is bloody annoying and not to mention disrespectful.

 

At least with forums there is an aura of freedom to be had.

Chatrooms you don't really get that acquired freedom.

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I tend to to prefer forums, though this is partially due to me rarely encountering chat rooms I'd like to use. Plus, there's my time zone and limits to my internet access. It's hard to make a chatroom experience worthwhile if no one's there chatting when you're there.

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I tend to to prefer forums, though this is partially due to me rarely encountering chat rooms I'd like to use. Plus, there's my time zone and limits to my internet access. It's hard to make a chatroom experience worthwhile if no one's there chatting when you're there.

I am thankful for this. But I happen to have a good mate from America, who stays up at 'odd hours'.

Basically when everyone is asleep, he is still thriving about.

 

He makes conversations fun, as much as our talks are repetitious.

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