Where are the forums heading to ?

Since a few weeks, I feel the content of the forums is less and less interesting.

Probably 80% (not to say 90%) of the posts are about complains about review process, a serious question for those who have a problem but questions on which other developers can do absolutely nothing even if they bothered.

Forum is becoming a wailing wall.

With such a trend (but what to do to change it ?), forums will soon be of no interest at all, which is really unfortunate for the developers community.

Yeah. Pretty obvious. There's been a dramatic drop off in a number of social media sites. I've noticed a similar trend on the Apple Support Communities. Stack Overflow has a Data Explorer that you can use to chart its own demise.

At least these forums are still getting some engagement, even if it's pointless.

I agree. Many topics are now either

  • the review process is taking longer than the usual time frame.
  • there's no response after I applied for a developer account.

I don't even go to Stack Overflow any more, either. Hopefully, they will cease to exist within a few years.

Yeah, or some bot accounts asking about ASO.

Perhaps complaints about review length or developer account issues should be syphoned off into a separate section?

Maybe Apple could add a section above in the new post screen that says if they have an issue with their account to "click here" and go to some other place where actual Apple staff will have to respond?

As a developer I don't really care about review length or someone else being unable to find a button in their Developer Account settings. I've helped people and never gotten a response from them, so I tend not to bother helping now.

I've used these forums a lot in the past, and I enjoy them, but they have definitely recently gone downhill. Right now they're "just good enough". Apple should step in and make them better.

@darkpaw,

I do agree. Those type of posts should go into a specific section and not clutter any other, including "allPosts".

I will file a bug report about it, I think many of us should do it before the forums are totally spoiled.

PS: I also think (or fear) that many developers now rely on ChatGPT or Claude to get help and don't mind to interact with other developers. Our world will insane, but that's a fact.

Where are the forums heading to ?
 
 
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