Minecraft Forums

This is a far broader and probably difficult thing to answer than it might seem.

Discord is likely far from the key reason these forums aren't as active. Rather, it's a symptom of a broader cause, but not the cause itself.

Some history rambling for some context:

I was around on the web pretty actively in the 2000s, probably when forums where at their height. That was the age of Windows XP, Myspace, forums, and messenger clients (and maybe the final days of stuff like geocities and "personal websites"). Youtube was still a mere concept, and video streaming for movies and shows was a decade off or more. Anyone else who around on the internet back then will be able to attest that both tech and the web was different. Forums were one of the best ways to centralize back then (and even going back further, they were with "BBS"). "Social media" as we know it today wasn't yet in place. You didn't make Discord servers back then. You went to Invisionfree or phpBB, or maybe later MyBB, or something like that and made your own free forum. Or you searched the web for one on a subject you liked and joined one of those communities (maybe it was art and it had a whole website like in the case of devaiantart, or maybe it was a forum and you joined that). And then you loaded up your messenger client of choice and it ran in your tray/as a sidebar and you chatted with people on your friend list. AOL, Yahoo, or MSN/Windows Messenger. But for centralizing on a larger scale, forums were the big way to go. Like most things, that didn't last forever. I noticed even by the late 2000s or early 2010s (well before this forum or even Minecraft existed), that many forums (some of them large ones, even) were losing their steam, but through the 2010s it really became apparent.

There's a few key things that happened in this time. The web population blew up (no longer was it only well off middle class in first world nations or better that had PCs and internet access, as the barrier of entry became lower), and importantly with that, a shift occurred where the majority of it was trending towards mobile users, not PC users (which similarly had trended away from desktop users and more towards laptop users). Back in the early/mid 2000s, you'd most likely get online at a stationary desktop using dial up, or early cable/DSL if you were lucky. Now a mobile computer and the web was in the palm of your hand with wireless access and could be taken with you with ease. I hope I don't have to explain the obvious here, but the way people compute and use the web differs greatly in those two scenarios.

I cannot overstate that last point; the mobile shift was a major thing that had huge impacts on how the web changed, and how people used it. Now, people would check the web maybe more frequently, but in shorter, less concentrated sessions. Typing up lengthy posts on a forum you needed yet another unique account for wasn't an attractive idea for most of these mobile users (things like "sign in with your Google/Facebook/other account" grew big in this time). Starting to see why Discord rose, even though it's basically just just the chat rooms of old with new features? It works perfect for a large part of the modern web population. It wasn't Discord ITSELF that did anything. It was a larger cause (that cause being the tech/mobile/web shift), and Discord was a symptom OF that larger cause rather.

Forums still have a place, but they're not the big thing they used to be.

Let's keep in mind, Minecraft is also a bit over a decade old (I presume the forums are too), and not all things grow continually. Games that get updated that long, and other "live service" games are still (relatively) new, at least outside the MMO sphere. Another very big game in this space in coincidentally the same time span as Minecraft, League of Legends, closed its old forums, and then it's "new forums" (the boards) as well, many years ago now. It puts into perspective both how "well" these forums have done, but also how much it takes to keep a forum active in the modern web age. It wasn't going to grow forever. In strict terms, something is either growing, or dying. There's these harsh reality things in life called "saturation points" and these forums probably long ago reached theirs. Obviously, Minecraft sales have continued well, but those long ago shifted towards console, mobile, and bedrock versions, not the original Java version. And while this is only speculation, I'd make a wager that the majority of the community these days is more casual and less willing to interact at a high level on a forum in 2023, versus the more "hardcore" or "dedicated" or "PC enthused" or whatever you'd call it community from back then. What spurred the forums back then was the dedicated part of it during its huge blow up phase. That sort of projection was NEVER going to last indefinitely.

It's probably not helping that the old official Mojang and/or Minecraft website used to have a link here (I think?), as did the game client I believe, and that's not the case anymore as far as I'm aware. I've administered a forum that had a link to it from the website main page, and when it lost that, it was rather disastrous for new member growth.

As for why there's a lot of new users registered, but not much activity? Honestly, that part would stump me. I can only speculate, but I have very little in the way of guesses. A lot of the traffic is likely web crawlers (search engine bots), spam bots, or people finding a result through a general web search. I imagine fewer people probably come here from the onset with the intention of looking to engage with a Minecraft community, but rather are looking something up related to Minecraft, and since there's a decade and more of archives to pull from, this place will come up for a lot of them. There's the whole "1%" rule or whatever it's called, where like 99% of your users will be lurkers and 1% will be content creators (it might even be 99% lurk, 1% joins, and 1% of THAT 1% [so .0001% overall] are active content generators, I forget which).

These are just some speculative considerations on my part. I certainly don't know the history of these particular forums too well, but I am more than aware of the changes in the area of tech/devices/web in the last decade or two, and I can tell you it's not even a question that forums as a whole have just been long displaced in the limelight, so it's probably not one major thing this forum did (or didn't do), nor one particular other website or application, that led to it's loss of activity.

most rule changes will be taken advantage of by a big server, probably with more success than a small server ever could. I suggest a bump button and allow bumps daily. remove the ability for new posts to bump a thread. the button on your main post will need daily attention. this levels the playing field and opens up new strategy, such as targeting different time zones to attract players from around the world. not sure about behind the scenes stuff. like the fact that there would be way less posts in general, big servers would stop asking users to post to keep them at the top.

edit: this button would be programmed to have a countdown until next use. requires less moderation as well. button does nothing until the 24 hours has passed.

I feel that the server section should only allow the owners of the post to update them and allow one update every 7 days. That would help with the problem. Also making it a requirement to have an online server registration like a google doc for whitelisting will help as well. Removing all the servers in the forum will also create a new environment and left everyone have a fresh start.

Quote from Luvitus»

What're they going to do? Complain? This forum is on life support and barely saved itself from being archived. This isn't like a huge, active site banning a breadwinner.

Heres my theory -- the mods put up with greylist threads, despite them obviously breaking the rules of "No Soliciting users to bump your thread" for in game perks... they even know there are servers using this "strategy" openly and obviously, even to this day, to cement their position of being one of the top massive posts on the server list forums.

The mods allow this because these servers bring traffic to the site - even if, as you can tell by the users in these threads, these users only come to the site once to post for their in game perks, then never post again. (if these are even real users and not server owners making alt accounts)


Theres really no excuse cause these threads are easy as HELL to find - just look through some of the most massive threads with the most responses - Many of these will be full of brand new accounts saying "This is my account name, i love this server" - so that they can get their perks on the server.... these arent even on whitelist threads - some of them straight up just say "we use greylisting" - which is a big flag that basically means "hey mods we're breaking your forum rules".

Something that can be changed now and help with servers not getting overrun is offsite whitelist forms. Server owners could be required to make something like a google doc for their perspective players to use in order to get whitelisted.

Quote from journeymanmc»

I find this very interesting but it requires more research and analysis, so quick Robin... to the batcave!

No, I mean you should be able to control this with user-rights; when an admin for a server creates a new thread for his server, then only he/she will be able to post in that thread, that along with a set of rules that only allow announcements, updates and news to be posted. These rules and rights would be unique to a server-thread promotion-forum.

These are some of the reasons most other forums or server lists have bumping limits - If EVERYONE only can bump once a day, every other day, once a week, or however often - then it both stops servers who are desperate spamming "bump" when they have no news - and also stops scammy spammy greylist servers from owning your forums...

The old system seemed to punish the most legit server owners who work hard creating regular content/events that deserves to be shown -- as those posts just end up getting overrun by the greylist servers, then dogpiled on by mods who choose to go after active legit posters instead of the ""unstoppable"" greylist threads.

just only allow one post a day (or whatever chosen time period) to bring a server to the front of the forum page

Dont punish people for posting their work and content on this forums - We all want actual content and actual discussion on the server sections of the forums right?

Quote from tourmalinetitan»

Nothing can be done about those servers who ask players to post to bumping their advertising. Players will not forsake the rewards that come with bumping. If the staff took down a server that has 200,000 posts the ramifications would be huge, these servers have become more powerful than this site as they are allowed to exist even with they break the rules.

I find this very interesting but it requires more research and analysis, so quick Robin... to the batcave!

No, I mean you should be able to control this with user-rights; when an admin for a server creates a new thread for his server, then only he/she will be able to post in that thread, that along with a set of rules that only allow announcements, updates and news to be posted. These rules and rights would be unique to a server-thread promotion-forum.