My forum is more than 30 years old and about a quite niche activity.
It has steady activity and engagement, but I think the members grow older and “retiring” users are not completely replaced by new folks. I might see a decrease in several years, but who knows 
I’m not sure AI has a real impact on my forum health, but I guess it depends from a forum to another.
I sure hope that in the future forums will spark again the same interest in people as they did in 2005-2010 
I think it’s always interesting to share this curve: from 2001 to 2026 (pre-2001 data was non-existent), 15 years of activity. Sharp spike in mid-2020 was migration to Discourse… 
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I would not have tought about that, but that happens to me too. For many questions, AI has unfortunately been way faster and reliable than communities to answer 
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I wonder what could be done for a hobbyists[1] forum to be more attractive and more appealing. More than AI; additionally to more than social media.
meaning “non-commercial” ↩︎