Changes on Digital Spy forums

[Lencoboy]

Yesterday, Digital Spy announced major changes to their forums over the coming week, with many sections including 'General Discussion' being discontinued in their existing formats and will be available for archive viewing only and no longer available for new threads and posts.

I have mixed emotions over this.

One half of me kind of thinks 'good riddance' as some of the threads on there can get quite heated and venomous at times, plus they have their fair share of highly opinionated WUMs, whilst the other half of me feels like it's a rather poignant 'end of an era', especially as 'GD' is the original section of the DS forums and first went live online around early 2001, so had lasted over 20 years now, and a lot of significant events have occured during the time that has since elapsed, starting in 2001 with the Foot and Mouth crisis, 9/11, the second Iraq war, the July 2005 terrorist attacks in central London, the Global Financial Crisis in 2008-11, the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009, New Labour being given the heave-ho in May 2010, the August 2011 city riots, the rise of ISIS and at the same time hard-right extremism from around 2013 onwards, the vote for Brexit and the election of Trump in 2016, the England terrorist attacks and the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017, the knife crime epidemic in 2018-19, and finally the Covid pandemic in 2020-present.

On a more positive note, I found certain threads and posts quite amusing and entertaining, and I shall miss those, but I shall not miss the more aggressive and hostile side of said forums.

What does anyone on here think?
Any memories, good and not-so-good?

[ankietyjoe]

I think it's possible to spend way, way too much time on news sites and forums.

[Lencoboy]

I think it's possible to spend way, way too much time on news sites and forums.

Correct, as they can be very addictive at times.

I guess many of their FMs will just move to other forums elsewhere on the Web.

Although the DS forums aren't completely going away, their 'General Discussion' section, which was one of the original parts of their forums has certainly been an online institution for the past 20 years, through all the good and the not-so-good.

I reckon they probably had eventually become too big for their own boots!

[pulisa]

I've never been on DS. Is this down to trolling and arguments?

[WiredIncorrectly]

digital .... spy .... I'm out

[Scissel]

Yeah, I'm only on 1 tech forum now because they mostly turn political these days and they tend to cause me unnecessary paranoia - after enough reading on those forums, I'm looking for a microwave large enough to hide in. Wait .. they're reading my thoughts too ... LMAO

And this is now the only mental health (type) forum I'm on; as well - I Likely won't even look for another such as this and stick to my venting forum and private blog and here.

[Lencoboy]

Yeah, I'm only on 1 tech forum now because they mostly turn political these days and they tend to cause me unnecessary paranoia - after enough reading on those forums, I'm looking for a microwave large enough to hide in. Wait .. they're reading my thoughts too ... LMAO

And this is now the only mental health (type) forum I'm on; as well - I Likely won't even look for another such as this and stick to my venting forum and private blog and here.

You're right, Scissel. Far too many egotistical know-it-alls these days who often end up having hissy fits when their (often false) views and opinions are challenged.

They're probably mostly the ones with silly agendas who get kicks from spreading fake news/misinformation.

[Pamplemousse]

I used to be a mod on a technical forum.

We had a simple policy; get political, expect your post to be removed - and if you persisted/moaned about it, the whole thread got removed. Moan about that and you got banned.

Simple, really.

From what I've seen of DS over the years it has long lost its way and just seems to want to be a gossip magazine.

Perhaps this is why in the near-absence of Usenet, Reddit seems to be growing.

[WiredIncorrectly]

I have a Usenet account. It's one of the only sources of good information and discussion, and downloadable goodies

[Lencoboy]

I visited the DS forum homepage today and all it said was 'No categories found'.

I know it gave certain elements the heave-ho in the early spring of 2021, as I already covered in my opening post of this thread, but today, apart from the main menus at the top of the page, nada.

I wonder if the DS forum has now completely gone the way of the dodo forever more, or might it just be going through a downtime ATM, e.g, due to possible technical issues, etc?

Just curious.