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Across the board is the vintage computer enthusiasm and Forum interest waning?

VERAULT

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 30, 2012
Messages
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Location
Connecticut, USA
I consider Vcfed.org my main forum posting ground although I am a member of many other boards.

This could be me but it seems the enthusiasm, traffic, and usage across the board in regards to vintage computing seems to be waning. This is of course my observation alone. I just wanted to get other users take on this.

Is vintage computing fever climaxing in general? With the Pandemic I always assumed it would be at a height we havent seen before but thats clearly not the case. Has this "hobby" started to revert back to the die-hard fans?
 
I consider Vcfed.org my main forum posting ground although I am a member of many other boards.

This could be me but it seems the enthusiasm, traffic, and usage across the board in regards to vintage computing seems to be waning. This is of course my observation alone. I just wanted to get other users take on this.

Is vintage computing fever climaxing in general? With the Pandemic I always assumed it would be at a height we havent seen before but thats clearly not the case. Has this "hobby" started to revert back to the die-hard fans?

You aren't alone in your observations. Interest does seem to be dwindling and I think the Covid thing has something to do with it, but this platform has people shying away. A good gauge to the state of the vintage hobby is the eBay prices.
 
You aren't alone in your observations. Interest does seem to be dwindling and I think the Covid thing has something to do with it, but this platform has people shying away. A good gauge to the state of the vintage hobby is the eBay prices.

Yeah, The site has been inaccessible to me for minutes at time all morning long. I think eBay prices will remain high even after prices drop across the board (if such thing could or would happen) just because of stupid sellers.

Its a shame really. I will remain in this because I love it. But I guess its been a passing fad to some individuals in the past few years. Maybe thats the case for folks who didnt have nostalgia for those items at an early age. Its hard to care about an apple II if your first computer was a pentium 3 Dell...
 
The current UX here is horrible, but we all know that.

You all know I am in complete agreement but as I stated in the first thread it seems interest and participation across the whole board is way down. Not just here. I meant EVERYWHERE.
 
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From my observation, not the interest is waning but the way people talk about it changed. Most communities switched to Discord. A trend I personally hate very much.
 
Could very well be the case. But Forums have been around for decades and really are the best way to have people build up a reputation and contribute. Rather than the new style of anonymous crap that leads more often than not to all the posts being " have you tried another cable?" "You should recap it."
Same with Facebook. I guess I give older folks too much credit. They seem to follow the trends of younger people like stupid sheep these days. Have your guys heard what kind of music they play at weddings now a days? And I'm talking about couples getting married in their 30's and 40's...

If I haven't said it before... I'm done.. I'm just done........
 
That's why I hate the trend of using Discord and the like. It's a "quick and dirty" way to talk. Stuff you post disappears quickly, you can hardly build up a database of knowledge, and you can post every shit. But that's what people like to use these days. Nothing can beat a forum when it comes to preserve knowledge.
 
There was a popular vintage computing group on Facebook. I say was because it got overrun with bots and spammers, and the owner of the group refused to do anything about it, causing two of the moderators to resign in protest.

And sky-high eBay prices may be causing everyone except a small group of wealthy collectors to shy away from the hobby, as they are finding it prohibitively expensive.
 
I don't see a lot of people making copies of forum databases.

It's not easy to do. EMail is simple, even if the resulting archives are "ok" UX wise, but at least they exist.

This forum has over 640,000 posts. That's, um, a LOT.

Hands, who would like to mirror these posts? Anyone?

Note, that even the RSS feed is just topics and the first post. It doesn't show the threads.
 
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Speaking for myself personally, I don't get a lot out of this or other forums. Frankly there are too many tedious folks under the misapprehension that this (or whatever other) group is their preserve, going on and on at length about very little. I don't include newbies in this; everybody's got to start somewhere. I read maybe one in fifty threads here, and this thread is a reasonable example of one kind of nonsense I'm not interested in.

But my interest in vintage computers isn't decreasing.
 
Speaking for myself personally, I don't get a lot out of this or other forums. Frankly there are too many tedious folks under the misapprehension that this (or whatever other) group is their preserve, going on and on at length about very little. I don't include newbies in this; everybody's got to start somewhere. I read maybe one in fifty threads here, and this thread is a reasonable example of one kind of nonsense I'm not interested in.

But my interest in vintage computers isn't decreasing.

I dont really know what you just said to be honest but hey thanks for shiting on this forum... Good job.
 
Let me translate for you: I think bear said the signal to noise ratio is very low.
 
That's why I hate the trend of using Discord and the like. It's a "quick and dirty" way to talk. The stuff you post disappears quickly, you can hardly build up a database of knowledge, and you can post every shit. But that's what people like to use these days. Nothing can beat a forum when it comes to preserving knowledge.

I will agree to a degree, but on discord. where you can cam(era) your work while other joins in the vocal chat or type live while you are trying to sort a problem out, producing quicker results in the end. Also, many discord vintage group organize "night of gaming" where people choose a platform and game and all play at the same time while chatting/voice channel and among other things as conversation vary a great deal from debates about the game itself to trick to gain on it to anything in between also we compare scores, generating not a "this is a wise man" but a more natural camaraderie between people present which with the pandemic we all have missed from the pub or club or gatherings.

Vintage computers forums are great., but often if you have to wait for 3 days for 1 answer when you can get 10 people in a ful-on conversation with schematics popping out and someone helping you out troubleshoot the problem, discord has a head above the water in a matter of speaking over forums. and that is why they have become more popular especially among the younger hobbyist wanting to dip toes in the water and not have to wait days to get some support/answer to their often easy problems.

As for "keeping documentation and records" that is what a website is for, not a forum, discord keeps the history of all messages in the various "channels/forums" where conversations have been had, and are easily searchable. so there isn't an "instant lost of information", you just have to search for it.

Sorry mates I love forums and I have been on precursors to them during the hay days of bulletin boards systems, but even at the age of 55, I learn to adapt and balance my visits accordingly. I have made great friends on discord vintage channels, and I met "wise men" on forums.
 
Let me translate for you: I think bear said the signal to noise ratio is very low.

I know what he said Mike. He is entitled to his own opinion but I wasnt going to let his unwarranted snark fall without comment.

Because if this "Is not his thing.." why comment??
 
​ I don't think there's a waning interest in vintage computers per se...
  • By my observation, the amount of retrocomputing content on YouTube has really shot up over the course of the pandemic; there are also lots of podcasts as well.
  • Cross-over with the maker and electronics hobby scenes also seems pretty robust, depending on the platform --- there seems to be a raging contest these days over who can cram the fastest FPGA 68k replacement into an Amiga, for example, and I think just about everyone has fired up kicad or eagle and made one or two hard drive emulators at this point ;-) It's really great to see all the things people come up with.
  • The pandemic has kept me away from the various retrocomputing festivals, but I have the impression that those are getting big and staying big for now.
  • There's a lot more materials and resources online and more seems to turn up all the time (thanks Al and others).
So what does that mean for vcfed? Well, it could be the UI to some extent, but there could also be other factors:
  • The ten-post junior member trial stage may be necessary, but maybe it turns people away, too.
  • Could it be, well, the company? Is the vcfed forum community kind to people when they don't know something or get something wrong, or disagree, or seem different, or do something in a different way? Do people argue a lot? All this can affect new and less prominent users quite a bit --- this is a hobby, it's supposed to be fun.
I'm not making any kind of accusation in the last point; it's just a good thing to think about and a problem I've seen in other places.
 
I have been collecting a long time (20 years about) and the forums I actually frequent and contribute too and fewer and fewer. Its not that I got bored of the hobby or anything, but seeing the same old stuff posted over and over does get old.

Prices have been going up quite a bit so its not that cheap to get new stuff to play with (not that I have room for it anyway) so my questions are few, mostly on fixing stuff.

Before forums we had newsgroups and email lists (both deadish), now we have dozens of Facebook pages and Youtube sites taking up peoples time and attention.

VCF seems to be a place other forums send people to buy stuff or sell stuff.

There seem to be enough people to go around, and I would suspect most people viewing articles here are not members, just people looking for information and hit a link from Google. Switching forum software is more of a pain in the ass for long time cranky old members then for people looking for info.
 
I don't see a lot of people making copies of forum databases. The rot of old links here is a demonstration that this comms method isn't perfect either.
Who said anything about copying databases???

First, every public forum is crawled by archive.org. You can browse copies there, unless robots.txt on the server blocked it.

Second, the point I made was that Discord and similar stuff are chat-like. What you post there doesn't stay. You don't have threads or any other means to find info that was posted 10 years ago. With a forum, you have.
 
First, every public forum is crawled by archive.org.

archive.org is an opportunistic archive. It's not complete, it's not guaranteed at all, and the UX is spotty at best. All a matter of what luck it managed to capture on a particular day.

Perhaps better than nothing, but it's no panacea.
 
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