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https://www.specialist-arms.com/forum/index.php?topic=17028.msg94037

I guess while some stuff will be saved, download anything you need before the end of the month?

With the rise of Facebook groups, various Discord servers...

As a former Discord user who witnessed his European friends "pass" the ID check last year, only to be banned after posting Jake Paul crypto pics...... can I talk to you for a second.....?

... I have lost a lot of the appetite for website hosting....

They should've at least passed it on to someone else... whatever. Hopefully, when a forum like Specialist Arms goes, another like it will enter.... unless they got a C&D from GW(lilely not what happened, but also not outside a realm of possibility)

Man, I have not been there in years.

Sad anyway, but I get losing the urge to web host.

Well damn, SpecArms was one of the last successors of the Specialist Games forums, never really thought about the possibility of it going away.

I'm glad they have a continuity plan for the resources (not that it's stopping me grabbing everything I can get my grubby mitts on just in case.)

While I agree that Discord is insanely useful and has supplanted most, if not all the functions of traditional forums, I can't help thinking it's unwise to invest so much reliance in another company. Hosting your own forum and site affords you a level of freedom that allowed SpecArms (and Dakka!) to survive beyond the lifetime of any single piece of software

Discord is just IRC with lots of extraneous bells and whistles. I don't see it as a replacement for a forum at all.

It's sad to me that all the good nerd stuff moved onto Facebook (which I refuse to use) and Discord (which I really dislike).

But I probably wasted too much of my life scrolling anyway, so maybe it's for the best.

Message board forums were once very popular but these days many people do not use them.

 Da Boss wrote:
Discord is just IRC with lots of extraneous bells and whistles. I don't see it as a replacement for a forum at all.

It's sad to me that all the good nerd stuff moved onto Facebook (which I refuse to use) and Discord (which I really dislike).

But I probably wasted too much of my life scrolling anyway, so maybe it's for the best.

It's gotten way harder to discover "amateur" hobby content (by which I mean, average people, not stuff that's done by someone with a Patreon following) and I'm sure it's made the on-ramp for new hobbyists harder.

Considering a chunk of those pages haven't had posts in over a decade, could the place even have been considered alive?

Billicus wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Discord is just IRC with lots of extraneous bells and whistles. I don't see it as a replacement for a forum at all.

It's sad to me that all the good nerd stuff moved onto Facebook (which I refuse to use) and Discord (which I really dislike).

But I probably wasted too much of my life scrolling anyway, so maybe it's for the best.

It's gotten way harder to discover "amateur" hobby content (by which I mean, average people, not stuff that's done by someone with a Patreon following) and I'm sure it's made the on-ramp for new hobbyists harder.

That and the prevalence of super high quality close up photographs. The best stuff floats to the top and it's all you end up seeing and it makes things seem unattainable. There is also a lot more tutorial stuff but the bar is definitely higher. And models are definitely designed to be viewed in super zoomed in pictures rather than at tabletop distance as a gaming token.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Considering a chunk of those pages haven't had posts in over a decade, could the place even have been considered alive?

This is the issue a lot of forum groups face. No one wants to see them die; but at the same time no one is going to them.
It's not like the late 90s-early 00s where a forum just had to exist. A lot of people use phones and apps now so they drift to app-ready sites and social media sites hoover up a huge amount of content. Throw on "doom scrolling" designs for eating up online time and people aren't engaging in hobby communities like they used too.


Thing is the internet isn't free and if your forum is seeing almost zero activity; no real buzz and community and just a handful of people dropping in now and then I can well see how both there's no desire to pass it on and also no desire to keep it going.

Damn shame. Their BFG rules were ace.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Damn shame. Their BFG rules were ace.

No fear! The Battlefleet Gothic rules hub I have been hosting at the forum has moved towards this website:

https://horizon-bfg.infinityfree.me/?i=1

that place, as many others, was already dead... they are just clearing things up...

And ... how in any dimension is Discord insanely useful? It's the worst medium I have ever seen.

SU-152 wrote:
that place, as many others, was already dead... they are just clearing things up...

And ... how in any dimension is Discord insanely useful? It's the worst medium I have ever seen.

Of course the old style forum has plentiful merits over the other media platforms but if those platforms start dying you need to find another place to gather. Quite easily. And since tabletop gaming is gaming the link to Discord is quickly made.
Main reason forums lost ground is mobile experience, which is just slower compared to other media.

As a platform has quite some good things going around like you can clearly name channels, thread options, pin files, good member management. Quick sharing of text and images. And speaking for the BFG one here: it is working. There is a structure where people can talk about all aspects of the hobby. And we still get things done like putting out a fanmagazine (yes yes warp rift still goes on).
Discord needs some active management. But that shouldn't be a problem.

Maybe it is a tad connected that the BFG resurgence and discord usage happened at the same moment. And since last year the BFG subreddit heavily picked up as well. Daily posts.

Where as on specialist forums nothing happened. And dakkadakka is also void of substantial BFG content last few years. Same as yaktribe which lasted a little longer than dakkadakka regarding that.

 horizon wrote:


Of course the old style forum has plentiful merits over the other media platforms but if those platforms start dying you need to find another place to gather. Quite easily. And since tabletop gaming is gaming the link to Discord is quickly made.
Main reason forums lost ground is mobile experience, which is just slower compared to other media.

As a platform has quite some good things going around like you can clearly name channels, thread options, pin files, good member management. Quick sharing of text and images. And speaking for the BFG one here: it is working. There is a structure where people can talk about all aspects of the hobby. And we still get things done like putting out a fanmagazine (yes yes warp rift still goes on).
Discord needs some active management. But that shouldn't be a problem.

Maybe it is a tad connected that the BFG resurgence and discord usage happened at the same moment. And since last year the BFG subreddit heavily picked up as well. Daily posts.

Where as on specialist forums nothing happened. And dakkadakka is also void of substantial BFG content last few years. Same as yaktribe which lasted a little longer than dakkadakka regarding that.

I want to believe it is just that: being at the right place at the right time.

Because all those features of Discord are already present in Telegram and WhatsApp, with a way lower memory consumption (for both computers and smartphones) and better search tools.

Not to mention a large amount of features are getting pushed behind a paywall every day.

With a server for a game series or even a local scene, pics are mostly posted for battle reports, painting advice, previews, etc. One update drastically shortened the size of pics for free users to 10 mb as an example; it sounds like I'm being selish in this regard but I don't want to pay to put up photos that end up past the limit, especially if they are all from a local tourney.