I saw an interesting thread on Twitter recently. The Ghost community shut down their Slack instance in favor of a forum. Yes, those mainstays of mid-aughts online socialization seem to be making a comeback. And I get it. As much as I appreciate Slack for work chat, it’s kind of a pain to use socially when you have a lot of groups.

I’ve written before about the downsides of Slack for communities. But in that, I was thinking more of the individual perspective. John’s thread brings the group perspective to mind.

As communities grow, it’s harder for people to feel a sense of belonging. Slack’s fast pace and emphasis on the moment make it hard to step away. Indeed, in a large community using the free version, you lose history pretty quickly. This is true of other group instant messaging, too, of course. But there’s a reason you don’t see a lot of thousand-person chat rooms (or dozen-person group texts). Many-to-many communication gets noisy quickly.

If a community’s messages are largely of the question-and-answer variety, forums make a lot of sense. Keeping the answers near the questions makes it easier for future visitors. Both the questions and answers become easier to find. Of course fora have their own issues. You have to remember to go to the website and check for new messages (or else get a barrage of emails that you’ll ignore anyway). But it goes to show that technology is cyclical. And even good products can fade as the newness wears off.