[GTO]

I'm a big believer in the power of communities. While I was always a fan of forums even before Team-BHP went live, the growth of Team-BHP & Reddit (huge follower of Reddit r/Cars & Reddit overall too) have only strengthened my belief in the magic of online communities. IMHO, good forums are indispensable in this world of biased media outlets & unmoderated social networks. There is simply no better way to share your own knowledge as an individual, and learn from that of others by engaging in a stimulating discussion. As a BHPian, you will have undoubtedly learnt a lot from this community, not just on cars, but even other stuff like Astrophotography, Philately, Fighter Jets & Bodybuilding!

Which is why it really, really upsets me to see other Indian web forums dying.

I was checking these forums in the afternoon. XBHP had merely 7 updated threads in 24 hours . Sucks for what was once a major motorcycle community:


TheAutomotiveIndia.com homepage takes 10 seconds to load on my 100 mbps internet connection, and sadly had just ~10 updated threads in 24 hours:


Gearheads went dead a couple of months ago:


BCMTouring (founded by a late BHPian - God bless his soul) has just 5 updated threads:


It's a similar story with the forums at autocarindia, zigwheels, carwale etc. All of them tried hard to get their forums some traction. Quora used to be awesome at one time, but it is a spam-fest today. I hardly visit it anymore.

There are a few definite reasons for once prosperous Indian forums dying out. Content is really king, and many forum owners either ran the show poorly or were distracted with other projects (e.g. XBHP magazine). Forums also have faced tough competition from social media; everyone has a fixed amount of time to spend online and a gadget enthusiast's 30 additional minutes on Instagram is 30 minutes less on your gadget forum. WhatsApp groups & Facebook communities? Sure, they have gotten extremely popular, but when was the last time you read a well-written review or travelogue or in-depth industry analysis on one of these? Also, good luck finding & searching content in such groups. They don't offer anywhere near the same knowledge experience as a web forum.

Please tell me there are more thriving communities in India, even if they are non-automotive. www.indianrealestateforum.com used to be hot at one time. Thankfully, there is still some activity going on over there, although its quality has fallen big time after Housing & Rahul Yadav bought them.

Tech Enclave & Pagalguy seem to be rather active too . More power to them!

P.S. Our forum activity levels have gone up by 25 - 30% in the last 2 years. We're growing, but we're an outlier among online communities. Team-BHP has hundreds of teenage members signing up too, clearly proving that youngsters serious about sharing & learning are attracted to forums.

[GTO]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line!

[Eddy]

I think HiFiVision.com is still doing ok.

PS: 280 people online there, at the time of posting this.

[akshay380]

Similar story with Bharat-Rashak forums. I learned so much there.

[ABHI_1512]

On the contrary, I think the slow death of other forums will spur the advent of some new offshoots. The rise of social media (or should I say unsocial media) and the perils of it are the prime reasons for the irrelevance of other forums these days.

It’s to the credit of Team-BHP and the moderators that the forum is clean and a certain decorum is maintained and that is why the forum is thriving despite the vicious atmosphere throughout the web.

The moment you allow some discussion to turn into a troll fest, that moment the viability of some online forum dies one notch. A thriving stimulating discussion is only possible when there is mutual respect between individuals even if there is disagreement and this is where Team-BHP stands out and other forums have failed.

I am hopeful though of seeing some vibrant online communities in near and immediate future.

[TrackDay]

Besides Team-Bhp, the only online forum I have frequented is TripAdvisor. Usually helpful in a kind of way when travelling someplace new and they seem to be doing fine.

With the advent of social media, folks moved onto Facebook and many online forums turned into ghost towns. But my greatest concern is that most of that data/discussions will go away one day, if Facebook follows the route of Orkut.

[knrn]

A very apt thought. I have been a lurker on team bhp since 2012, and joined in 2018. Over these years, the team bhp forum has grown or rather matured. The reason as stated previously is that forums tend to become a spam fest. And they lose their appeal. They allow such things to gain more members but this comes at the cost of quality. Degradation quickly ensues leading to decay of purpose and people lose interest.
All of us must have come across the phenomenon of coming across this- a new watsapp group is created. Soon the number grows. Then it's either personal sales, watch my vids, over smart comments, spam and fights and people end up leaving or muting it. Entropy or chaos is the law of nature- if a system is allowed to run unabated/unchecked.
Team bhp has a very strict quality control. The mods and admins ensure strict and moral policing. Plus I feel that over the years, this community has members that somehow have a like minded connection. Maintaining quality is the prime requisite for longevity of a brand and Team BHP has become a brand over the years. So as long as quality is maintained and people follow an orderly fashion, the flow will remain smooth.

[Axe77]

I think the concept is flourishing, its just that the mediums are dynamic.

I am a member of groups or forums in several areas of interest but other than Team BHP for my interest in cars, most of my other interest groups are very well served through Facebook groups and even WhatsApp to a great extent.

I am on multiple international groups dealing with fitness and triathlons, running community, world marathon majors, Triumph Tiger, my Brompton bicycle group, road travel etc, etc.

And these are all immensely rewarding both in terms of Q&A, buying and selling, troubleshooting and what not.

I think the success also lies in how tightly it is moderated. The better moderated and focused the group is the more likely I am to remain on it and actively participate. This is one area where several groups either make it through or fail and lead to their popularity and longevity.

[Rachit.K.Dogra]

I have been a regular only on 2 forums xBHP and TBHP. Always wanted to join BCMTouring as had heard very good things about the forum.

Some points that I can think of:
1) In the end, these forums needs to generate revenues for its costs and for some monetary reward for organizers and managers. Till the time there is some monetary angle there will always be lack of commitment, if not initially then after some time.

Tbhp is unique in this way that our moderators are not only very knowledgeable but also fully committed without any monetization.

Also, I think the way Tbhp manages its revenues is very unobtrusive and almost feels like its non-existent which helps its non-partial image as well.

2) Moderation is also a very crucial factor. Because of quality of content, there is a sense of accomplishment on posting something useful on TBHP which I didn't feel as much elsewhere. This motivates and encourages even knowledgeable people to share.

3) Community is one of the biggest factors. The quality of members here is simply world class. What is even more special is members take pain to post, share and help. We all know, none of us have time, yet members take time out to post in great detail which is one of the best aspects of this forum.

4) Social media channels have definitely affected engagement levels on many forums. Its always on the side in our hand nature makes it the first place where people engage now.

5) Presence of an official team, posting officially marked content makes Tbhp unique as well. There is this sense of organization with Tbhp as their is an official team who is invested on getting great (One of the best) content for members. There is also an efficient team whom you can reach out for support related tasks and the efficiency and elegance in which in most cases Tbhp works, makes it a great feeling to be a part of this community.

I almost feel proud to be a contributing member of this community. You feel like you are on a table with some very knowledgeable gentleman and you automatically get inspired to live up to the expectations of that table.


Rachit

[paragsachania]

Want information on tourist places? YouTube video loggers have all the details for you.

Want information on how are the latest road conditions? YouTube video loggers today record the entire bus journeys today, especially Bus fans.

Want information on issues in your car or troubleshooting techniques? YouTube has plethora of well experienced (and worshipped) Mechanics showing you the entire process end to end.

Want information on Painting and Denting? Most of the popular (and really popular ones) have their channel on YouTube where they even explain various denting, painting and detailing techniques with videos of the actual work being executed.

Want information on Phones, Gadgets or appliances? There are video loggers with all the information that you want.

Recommendation works...
And then, YouTube's recommendation algorithm works wonders and most certainly you won't miss something that you may be closely looking for or have been following.

Language no barrier
There are vLoggers in every language and anyone can follow that. Even when it comes to queen's language, there are the Shashi Tharoors and there are Deepak Chopras too.

Everything in one place:
Today, there are videos for small little things like Address change for Aadhar card, changing PIN for your Banking card, Paying Bills via App, unboxing and setting-up of devices, renewing insurance, etc.

I am bored to read, I want to see it happen in real:
Overall, there is a paradigm shift in the way internet users expect information being made available to them. The reality is, whether useful or not, whether partially right or fully wrong, whether hyped or sensible - Most today have started to watch videos and get whatever information they want rather than read it all.

Incidentally, I booked an appliance today after reading the home appliances section right here on Team-Bhp and I wanted to understand how few functions work and google merrily helped me with a YouTube video by a couple who have videos of unboxing appliances and providing all the required demo on every function!! I didn't have to go elsewhere for what I was looking for.

Hence, the real reasons for the decline or fall of these sites apart from upkeep issues is actually low participation from the members themselves.

[Abhineet Singh]

Not an Indian form but I have been a fan of https://www.straightdope.com/.

[Thermodynamics]

https://forum.xda-developers.com/
This one is quite active in the geeky world. It also has resemblance to our forum in terms of layout as well as brotherhood.

[Aaroah]

Not a car forum but I have been a longtime fan of ValuePickr which focuses on Equity Investments and Company Analysis. Have learned a lot of things from there

[greenhorn]

In my opinion, whatsapp and Facebook groups are where the action is today. One of the main challenges with public forums is that in the early days, the relative obscurity of the internet afforded some privacy which doesn't exist any more. Everything is publicly available and indexed. I cannot post pictures of all those booze fests and overspeeding videos without inviting risk to the forum hosts and to myself.

On the other hand, whatsapp and Facebook groups have much better privacy, and more importantly, a priority seat in your attention queues, and use push for grabbing your attention vs web forums which rely on pull. Plus the world is a lot more polarized these days, and on a public forum, you'll never know when you'll trigger someone with some post on a (for them) sensitive topic. This leads to self censorship which really kills adoption and usage, while private groups let you create your own Bubble/echo chambers which tend to have an amplifying and self sustaining effect

Note: the vagueness is intentional. None of the examples I want to post can be posted on a public forum

[v12]

More thans dying, I would say these forums did not live long enough.

Xbhp was one of the first or the first motorcycle forums in India. I found it good initially but slowly slowly the website started getting flooded with a lot of Spam and unmoderated threads and posts. Combine that with an over the top crowded website - i wouldn't know where to go. I remember their most popular section was 2-Stroke Junkies, where there was a lot of active discussion on the Yamaha RX's and RD's - probably more than RDDreams (does that forum still exist). I stopped visiting the site when I started noticing that most of the responses to the threads were like "Wow", "Nice motorcycle", "I wish I had that" etc.
No wonder it's dying a very slow death.
The travelogue and meets ups sections probably doing good.

Indiacar.com had an amazing forum. If I remember right, it was the first automotive forum in India. If contained a lot of good threads and useful information.

Autocar India was one of the first auto magazines to start a forum. I believe most of us ( Rush or GTO or M5, Dippy, Rehaan/R, Rohin, Shantanu etc) got to know each other from this forum. How many of You remember the fake 355 claims by one member "D".
The only problem with Autocar India's forum was that it had no security / you could have multiple users cwith the same name. There was no moderation. It did do well When they revamped their forum - but only for a limited time.

Other publications like overdrive, BSmotoring also ventured in auto forum's but they all failed.

And I know the reason Why?
All of the forums Started by automobile publications failed because an automobile forum was not their forte. Their main business was their magazine and sales and advertisement. . Their moderator's or editor's would definitely be biased towards certain products or manufacturer's.
As an automotive publication, they obviously would not provide you with detailed reviews and long term reports on their forum. If they did it for free, who would buy their magazines?

Imagine a portal like Autocar India, overdrive, BSMotoring - having access to all the Scoop news, test drives, information on new launches - and not sharing it. What then is a point of such a forum?

Imagine alI these portals having access to all the senior management of all the auto manufacturer's - would they approach or help their member's if they were facing any issues?
would they allow members to vent out their anger and sorrow and their bitter experiences onto their portal? DEFINITELY NOT!


Thats where I love Team-BHP. The major flaws I listed above are the very strengths of Team-BHP. There is no biasness towards a product or manufacturer. You raise an issue with your vehicle and it will be addressed - the mods do not get bullied even by global manufacturer's (case in point the Skoda issue). You get latest new's, scoops, in-depth reviews (which I have not ever seen anyone provide) _ this and much more for FREE.

Agreed we are a bit strict on our rules around language and formats - but that's the reason why Team-BHP is what it is today. The Best Automotive Forum ...... IN THE WORLD.