Dying off for some things, irreplaceable for others. I drive a car old enough that I'm unwilling to pay somebody else to work on it (not antique, just old). The forum for said make and model has gotten me out of a couple of jams diagnosing and fixing it.
My stationary power tools are also on the older side, and there's a thriving community dedicated to keeping the old iron running well.
The advantage of forums is that you can search them for years to come and learn from somebody who had the same problem 15 years ago and the dozen people who helped them solve it. Good luck doing that on Facebook. Their focus on shallow and short term "engagement" means useful stuff disappears forever and experts get tired of answering the same questions repeatedly.
And no, I don't consider stackoverflow/stackexchange a replacement. It does a poor job of handling long threads where people refine their hypothesis based on new data and questions the OP answers.
My stationary power tools are also on the older side, and there's a thriving community dedicated to keeping the old iron running well.
The advantage of forums is that you can search them for years to come and learn from somebody who had the same problem 15 years ago and the dozen people who helped them solve it. Good luck doing that on Facebook. Their focus on shallow and short term "engagement" means useful stuff disappears forever and experts get tired of answering the same questions repeatedly.
And no, I don't consider stackoverflow/stackexchange a replacement. It does a poor job of handling long threads where people refine their hypothesis based on new data and questions the OP answers.