D&D 5E Trevor Kidd tweets on the closing of the Wizards forums

[DEFCON 1]

It's like me owning a restaurant, never cleaning it, and then closing it because people stopped coming with my excuse that people don't really eat out anymore.

But if you are fine with your decision to close the restaurant, what exactly is the problem? If you don't want to run your restaurant, you're more within your rights to close it. Especially since (to continue this stretched-thin metaphor) you still deliver take-out to people. Customers just can't come in to sit down and eat anymore is all.

Yeah, the customers who enjoyed coming in to eat are irritated with the sit-down part of the restaurant closing and don't really care about your take-out business... but since there are plenty of other restaurants in the area, why should you be beholden to keep your restaurant open if you don't want to bother with it?

 

[Mistwell]

Social Networks killing Online Forums has been a known, widespread phenomenon since at least 2011. The New York Times had a piece on it, followed by a lot of bloggers saying the same thing that year. Yahoo killed all their message boards, including very popular sports message boards, back in 2013. ESPN did the same thing that year. CNN had a story last year on how comment forums are being phased out. Look at virtually any message board, and you will see a thread at some point about this very topic - because they are noticing declining membership over the years. This isn't just Wizards - it's all message boards feeling the impact of social networks.

 

[Morrus]

Though there is an exception -- if you can be the last man standing in a niche subject, a messageboard can grow.

 

[Ahrimon]

Though there is an exception -- if you can be the last man standing in a niche subject, a messageboard can grow.

ENWorld forever!!

I'm not happy about their choice to close the forums. But I understand it's their choice and why they did it and I'm glad they gave us warning so that the content could be saved.

I hope MerricB's scripting comes through in time to save large sections of the content.

 

[Eis]

Though there is an exception -- if you can be the last man standing in a niche subject, a messageboard can grow.

good plan, Morrus....lets all take a break and get a cup of coffee

 

[I'm A Banana]

The Wizards boards weren't good because they let it fall asunder.

Sure! Much better to leave the boards to the experts ( [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] does a pretty bang-up job).

Social media maybe good for getting the one sided message out, but when trying to discuss it, not god because it gets buried very quickly and it's very difficult to keep certain categories in separate sections.

ENWorld is better for discussion than the WotC boards were in general. I mean, I'm probably biased, but....

It's actually funny the excuses we are getting. All they had to do was coordinate the forums, twitter, and Facebook to act together where Facebook and Twitter was to get the message out while the forums were a place where people can have discussions and hang out. The fact is they are limited in employees and therefore don't have enough people to keep it going, nor the funds to invest in a better forum. Has nothing to do with forums being a thing of the past or social media is somehow better.

Social media is better for getting the news out, and ENWorld is better for discussions, leaving WotC to either try to make a better message board than ENWorld, a better social media platform than Twitter, or to just use the tools that others already provide!

I wouldn't call that an excuse. It's just choosing where to put your limited dollars. Message boards cost money to run well. Better to let some Brit with a Time Lord fixation handle that if he wants to.

 

[Umbran]

Social media is better for getting the news out, and ENWorld is better for discussions, leaving WotC to either try to make a better message board than ENWorld, a better social media platform than Twitter, or to just use the tools that others already provide!

Provide... at no cost to WotC, at that! Really, it is a no-brainer. Healthy discussion is good for D&D, and gaming in general. But, it does not matter where that discussion takes place for us to have the benefits.

Over at WotC, they had boards, sure. But over here we have Morrus, who is *really* invested in making the best boards he can, as he makes his living at it. Are not we all better served by taking the burden of running boards off WotC, and allowing it to turn into extra traffic for this site? WotC divests of a cost, and continues to gain the advantages. Morrus does the work he's always been doing, but has a more active site for it.

Who, precisely, is losing here? I mean, other than the work and bother of moving stuff over (which might well be solved by one or two interested EN Worlders with some coding expertise (*fingers crossed*))?

 

[Miladoon]

I only joined the forum when they announced the Next Playtest. Since the playtest ended, I poked around on it, but found very little worth while.

 

[Shasarak]

Provide... at no cost to WotC, at that!

The cost is that WotC can no longer control or even direct discussion of their IP and have to instead rely on the whims and foibles of random hosts on the internet.

 

[Umbran]

The cost is that WotC can no longer control or even direct discussion of their IP and have to instead rely on the whims and foibles of random hosts on the internet.

Were they really successfully doing so anyway? If not, then no big loss.