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Author Topic: MiA Round Table #1: Facebook versus Forums  (Read 8283 times)

Gimpalong

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MiA Round Table #1: Facebook versus Forums
« on: September 01, 2015, 12:57:00 PM »
Welcome MiA members to the first MiA Round Table!

The purpose of the Round Table is to generate discussion about the latest airsoft news, trends and other "hot" topics. Ultimately, our goal is get forum members engaged and contributing in order to build a better MiA community.

Each week we will post a MiA Round Table thread with a series of discussion questions or statements. We invite MiA members to get involved and have their say!


This week's discussion

Facebook versus Forums

Which do you guys use more, airsoft forums (MiA, ASF, ASR, AS, Arnie's, etc) or Facebook to talk about airsoft related stuff? Do you prefer one to the other? Has the shift of people moving from forums to FB-airsoft groups been a positive one for the hobby? If you're more a fan of FB, what would it take to bring you back to a forum environment? Better content? More sales and commerce? Aside from MiA, what other FB groups or forum communities are you a part of?
« Last Edit: September 08, 2015, 09:01:16 AM by Gimpalong »

Gimpalong

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Re: MiA Round Table #1: Facebook versus Forums
« Reply #1 on: September 08, 2015, 09:02:11 AM »
Bumping this post to the top for visibility.

Zzan

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Re: MiA Round Table #1: Facebook versus Forums
« Reply #2 on: September 08, 2015, 10:13:52 AM »
I prefer the forums.  Facebook does not do it for me.  I like the medium and I don't think it does well for true discussions or ability to search/find old conversations.  Plus I cannot access it anywhere but my phone at work and I despise typing long messages on the phones keyboard.

For me, the forums are easy to use and it is very easy to find what I am looking for quickly.

Combat Junkies Airsoft

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Re: MiA Round Table #1: Facebook versus Forums
« Reply #3 on: September 08, 2015, 10:24:16 AM »
Forums , YouTube and Instagram. My regular three forums are MIA, DevTsix and My team forum. Occasionally I will peek in on airsoftohio, airsoftretreat, Gearsoc and Canada's airsoft forum. I've never cared for Facebook. ( too much high school style drama)

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Re: MiA Round Table #1: Facebook versus Forums
« Reply #4 on: September 08, 2015, 11:22:51 AM »
Personally, I like both. Still being somewhat new to the sport (1 year) I use forums for reviews, guides, or answers to more in depth questions. If I'm looking for an answer to a question that's not terribly complicated I'll hit up FB groups. Sales are a little easier on FB as well. Just an easier format to post pictures and wide selection usually.

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luke213

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Re: MiA Round Table #1: Facebook versus Forums
« Reply #5 on: September 08, 2015, 12:32:09 PM »
Well my 2 cents I prefer forums for most things. I was a slow adopter of Facebook I honestly held out for a long time but around the time I started my business I more less had to have a Facebook account and run that side of things. But it all comes down to what does what best. Facebook I think is great for keeping up with people and friends that I don't get to see often. I think it's about the worst platform possible when it comes to finding old information. I would compare it to fishing, if what your looking for is going by at the moment, great. If not good luck searching or finding it after the fact. That's my biggest complaint, just too dang hard to index after the fact which leads to repeating information more often than forums. The second biggest complaint is no categories or way to create them. For instance if I go on the MIA Facebook I have to weed through sale posts and everything else just to find actual questions or information. I can't just browse one topic, I'm browsing the entire group of possible topics which if I don't have allot of time to invest makes for a frustrating experience. Casual questions and chat like interactions I think is where Facebook excels, it's quick and easy for that sort of thing. It's very good cross platforms compared to forums, even with Tapatalk forums are more difficult to navigate(latest updates to Tapatalk interface have made this worse in my opinion as well). So I'm not knocking Facebook, it is what it is, but their expansion into groups and whatnot I think is not working to it's advantages at best, and at worst it's working within another walled garden where they could shut things down in an instant with no recourse. IE just like what we left behind with Proboards, if tomorrow Facebook decided that replica firearms violate their TOS then there goes all of those groups. It's happened on other platforms and will likely continue because we're related to firearms and that is a hot button topic among allot of people, particularly people from the west coast where most of these companies operate from.

So forums to me give more freedom, much better indexing especially when able to use google to index like most forums allow. I can't tell you how many times I'm doing domain based google searches looking for some old piece of information. Proboards worked with that, but I'll say I believe something was screwy in their way they allowed indexing as well. I had trouble in the past getting google to pull results that I knew existed. But I use that function on a ton of forums related to non-airsoft topics as well. So overall I think forums are a better platform for a hobby like airsoft to keep the information in one place that is easy to pull information back as needed from the backlog of history. The one thing I don't care for with forums is the speed of access and the method used for posting. It's much slower and more deliberate than Facebook in the sense that you need to put the post in a specific area, as well as name the topic. It's less lazy, maybe that's a good thing it could be argued either way. But overall I prefer the semi formality of the forum based system, along with the organization and indexing.

I'm a part of a holster maker group on Facebook which also has a forum which honestly hasn't really taken off. But we have a ton of great information on making holsters, tons of useful info. Allot of it is lost to the Facebook system. I've seen time and time again guys ask the same questions because they flat out can't find the older information. I've gone looking several times for things I know were posted say a year ago, can't find it. Once in a while I get lucky but often I come up without anything. To the point that I will search my email for a notification on a topic from a year ago, use the link to pull the URL on Facebook because it's faster. That sucks.

I know allot of guys particularly it seems younger guys really seem to like the way Facebook handles information for me it's a chore often times despite how much time I spend on there. So I think they both have their own niche benefits but forums are much more functional. If I could only pick one or the other it would be forums all day long.

Luke

EDIT: I forgot to mention I'm on just about all of the airsoft related forums and have been for years. Some of them I only lurk on, actually I'd say most. Like Arnies, I read there often but seldom post. Airsoft Sniper Forum, I read allot and post once in a while when it's something I've got input on. Some of the newer forums like Airsoft Forum, I read but don't post, Airsoft Mechanics is about the same. More less I search and index all of them but seldom post. MIA, and ASF are the two I spend the most time reading and posting on. But I'm also involved in several firearms and holster forums some of which I sponsor which take up allot more of my reading and time.
« Last Edit: September 08, 2015, 12:39:21 PM by luke213 »
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Gimpalong

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Re: MiA Round Table #1: Facebook versus Forums
« Reply #6 on: September 08, 2015, 04:48:38 PM »
My experience is that the shift to Facebook has really negatively impacted airsoft forums in general. FB offers significantly more real time content than forums ever could. For example, a normal forum might get, at best, 10-25 new posts a day. If you're part of multiple FB groups then you're experiencing 25-100+ posts a day easily. A lot of the content is buy/sell/trade related and I think this attracts a lot of people. Unfortunately, B/S/T isn't really a solid basis for creating and maintaining a community. People in B/S/T groups aren't posting new information as much as they're trying to flog their old junk... which, of course, is the purpose of B/S/T groups. And because people can create groups for anything on FB, you get very specific sub-communities developing (MARSOC impressions, CAG impressions, teching, Polarstar, Tippmann, etc). So unlike say ASF or Arnie's where there's a lot of very general AND very specific information, you get these communities of specialists. So what used to be contained under a big tent via forums is now scattered all over the place in these specialty groups.

That's not to say that I don't enjoy the specialized nature of these groups, it's just that there's not really a sense of community there because I don't see that one guy who is really knowledgeable about MARSOC stuff also posting about tech stuff like I would on a traditional forum.

I also think that forums generally held people to a higher level of discourse than social media. I tend to see a lot of random memes and other juvenile posting on FB simply because it's judged to be sort of informal. People just whip out their phones and tap some chat speak rather than needing to compose their thoughts and ideas. I guess I'm just an old man like that.

One of the themes that I've noticed over the last few years on various forums is the fracturing of the airsoft community. On the one hand, I actually feel more in the fold as far as MiA because I know a lot of the guys who post here on social media. So they're not just some random internet handle, but a real person with a face and a name. This has definitely helped when going out to games by myself. That said, I also think that forums used to comprise a sort of common ground for people to circulate through and interact and I think that's being lost as more and more people come to rely on FB.

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Re: MiA Round Table #1: Facebook versus Forums
« Reply #7 on: September 08, 2015, 11:47:11 PM »
^ I think I was just reading a similar post by you on ASF. I personally don't do anything airsoft related on FB, and I'm definitely in the "pro forum" camp (that doesn't mean I'm anti Facebook though— it's a different communication platform with a different purpose for me). I don't go on the forums much anymore; MiA has always been my home forum and it just isn't very active usually. Once I got an account on ASF, I was a little overwhelmed because it's such a big forum relative to ours (it has a great commerce section though). I don't spend enough time posting to really make a name for myself, but I still think the forums are a better community. Airsoftmechanics is also a good one, although it can be intimidating to post there as a new member.

As a side note, I think the Round Table is a great idea, because it will help keep actual forum discussion alive. The majority of posts nowadays seem to be in commerce and event related threads.