Interesting thread about old forums vs new chat rooms for storing niche information https://twitter.com/teemomvc/status/1386067820103016449

You could probably go back a few steps further for when the "problem" started tbh. A lot of early 2000s hobby communities went through the same cycle:
1. People start websites with money out of their own pocket https://twitter.com/aloehart199/status/1386089974714486787

2. Community picks one forum to consolidate around (first doom)
3. Huge influx of users, requiring moderators and increasing hosting costs
4. Owners get tired of day-to-day operation and step back without surrendering ownership (second doom)

5. To pay for cost of hosting and pay staff to maintain updates, website turns into an ad-fest
6. Suddenly everyone's arguing over how to split money for content (since communities are notoriously bad at rewarding the right person for content they like)

7. Social media shows up and offers individuals a way to create their own followings (which benefits social media companies first, a few lucky individuals second, and everyone else last)
8. Popular creators leave forums to start their own channels and discord servers (third doom)

9. Old forums slowly become ghost towns (if they haven't splintered into sub-communities already)
10. Info becomes way harder to find, since everyone talking about the same shit every day is way more valuable to social media companies than organized info that doesn't get reposted

Sadly i think the best solution to this mess might be youtube, even though they were one of the first to tear online communities apart by assimilating all content. When youtube showed up, you couldn't opt out. If you didn't upload your own content, some oblivious kid would.

And we all know there's no such thing as organized discussion on youtube.

But then youtube finally allowed monetizing video game content (couple years after i got burnt out on trying). Now there's a place for content creators to build an entire library of knowledge in a format that large audiences will absorb.

And content creators can actually get paid a large slice for their work on youtube, rather than content aggregation sites being the only ones rewarded (which was the case when i quit making content).

Btw take all this with a grain of salt. Just my view from the outside, since i haven't been part of the FGC content ecosystem for a while.

But if you want to do one thing to support oldschool content creators, remember to subscribe to high-quality channels that rarely upload content. The social media formula naturally rewards cheap, regular content much more so than rare, highly condensed content.