Green Building Forum closing down in 2024

[SporranMcDonald]

Some here will have experience of this forum (GBF) :-
https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/

It has a lot of worthwhile expertise and a relatively low posting rate.

Various established users are proposing to "take it on" ( as_is, I suppose ). Others suggest migrating to a new forum.

Anyhow, before I put my huge, clumsy, lead-booted foot in it, and suggest - on GBF - that they could sign-up here. I thought I had better check with Galahad & the powers that be, here.

[Joeboy]

Kind of you to ask, nicely done. They are more than welcome to join. Door is open, grow the borg mind.

Another option who very kindly helped us as a rally point when last place imploded.

https://www.thegreenlivingforum.net/forum/index.php

Nice people there. Sorry to hear of another RE forum in trouble. Happy to help.

[Stinsy]

I think we do need some like-minded fresh-blood!

The fun on these forums comes around the design/build of a project. And a lot of us are pretty settled with reliable systems so only minor fettling.

[dan_b]

Forums do need to have a regular influx of new members to keep things fresh, interesting and relevant or can unfortunately end up with a few boring old veterans slowly going insane by talking to each other on the same thing over and over again!

[Stinsy]

Forums do need to have a regular influx of new members to keep things fresh, interesting and relevant or can unfortunately end up with a few boring old veterans slowly going insane by talking to each other on the same thing over and over again!

And it is something we’ve struggled with. We get the odd one-post-wonders from time to time. Which is fine, I don’t mind helping people who have a specific question but who aren’t interested in joining our community. But we could do with new blood and to broaden our church.

I’m very interested in self build. Not going to happen for me unless something unexpected happens. But we don’t have many self-builders on here. I’d certainly be interested in more users from that community.

I wonder why the other forums are dying?

[Joeboy]

Forums do need to have a regular influx of new members to keep things fresh, interesting and relevant or can unfortunately end up with a few boring old veterans slowly going insane by talking to each other on the same thing over and over again!

And it is something we’ve struggled with. We get the odd one-post-wonders from time to time. Which is fine, I don’t mind helping people who have a specific question but who aren’t interested in joining our community. But we could do with new blood and to broaden our church.

I’m very interested in self build. Not going to happen for me unless something unexpected happens. But we don’t have many self-builders on here. I’d certainly be interested in more users from that community.

I wonder why the other forums are dying?

Maybe the driver is that they (other forums) were set up with business in mind and that's not cutting it anymore? Or maybe its the platform itself as there is so much competition from other styles.

I went on GBF this morning to register and post up a hello. I was surprised to see £24 per year membership and book advertising etc across their front page. No criticism, just unexpected. If any of you guys are members there, could you maybe post this for me/us? It would be nice to help them out. It was sad to see someone doing a webscrape etc to preserve. Reminded me of our turn in the barrel. I'll grab a link and post up in building section.

"Morning Lads & lassies, I am a part of Camelot RE forum. One of our members mentioned that the Green Building Forum is shutting in 2024. Sorry to hear that as we went through similar when Navitron abruptly closed their doors.

We learned then that it's not great to have an umbrella business over the forum so we set up as private funded. No financial drivers, just doing it for the craick and helping others/sharing experience in RE and associated.

We are in year three of our forum and would be happy to see you guys & gals join in. All the best in 2024 where ever ye go. Cheers, Joeboy

https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/index.php "

[HML]

I wonder why the other forums are dying?

The self build forum (https://forum.buildhub.org.uk//) seems to be thriving, it has a bit of an eco friendly bias, lots of discussion about heat pumps.

I think forums as a breed are dying. Peopl seem to want to use social media (X, reddit etc) rather than forums. Of course most people seem to use their phones for everything nowadays and forums don't tend to work very well on a postage stamp.

[openspaceman]

I wonder why the other forums are dying?

I think forums as a breed are dying. Peopl seem to want to use social media (X, reddit etc) rather than forums. Of course most people seem to use their phones for everything nowadays and forums don't tend to work very well on a postage stamp.

First it was e-mail lists then usenet until the noughties now you are saying forums are on the wane, they will have to see me out as facebook, twitter, instagram etc. are beyond me

[Kommando]

I have tried posting on help groups in Facebook, its just not set up properly for getting to the most helpful answer. You never get to see all the answers unless you select 'All comments' and even them most answers are either wrong or nothing about what the original question subject. So I have left all the help groups and just use it for companies who only use Facebook. My profile is very basic and set to private.

[HML]

I agree about social media. When I've looked at Facebook it seems to be a disorganised stream of consciousness mess with no usable search function (that I've found) so those pearls of wisdom disappear in a couple of days. X is run by a sociopath.

I like forums, they're organised and searchable and text based. The good ones are well moderated and have a reasonably polite and helpful community, but they need someone to give the time and effort to maintain them. That seems to be the issue with the GBF; the owner doesn't want to maintain it anymore. Of course, that's another disadvantage of forums, the owner can close them at will with no notice. That happened to the predecessor of the self build forum (not to mention the predecessor of this forum.)