• The Internet is dead

    From Alfred Molon@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jul 9 10:59:24 2022
    I'm travelling to Indoenesia this August and posted a question about
    Sulawesi in the Tripadvisor Indonesia forum. There was no response.

    Years ago this newsgroup was active and I might have asked here. Then it effectively died.

    The Lonely Planet Thorntree forum was a very good and active forum,
    where you could get lots of information, even from very off the beaten
    track places. But because of the Covid crisis it was closed.

    The Travelfish forums also seem to be getting no traffic. Same for Fodors.

    Finally I tried an Internet search for "Indonesia travel forum". There
    is practically no active forum left and it's even so that Bing list
    multiple times the Tripadvisor Indonesia forum, but this forum is 95-98%
    about Bali (practically no traffic in the Sulawesi section).

    One more thing, there used to be independent travellers sites. Probably
    these still exist, but the search engines primarily deliver in their
    search results pages of commercial operators, probably because these are "SEO-optimised".
    --
    Alfred Molon
    https://www.molon.de - Photos of Asia, Africa and Europe

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Chris in Makati@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Sun Jul 10 05:58:29 2022
    On Sat, 9 Jul 2022 10:59:24 +0200, Alfred Molon
    <[email protected]> wrote:

    I'm travelling to Indoenesia this August and posted a question about
    Sulawesi in the Tripadvisor Indonesia forum. There was no response.

    Years ago this newsgroup was active and I might have asked here. Then it >effectively died.

    The Lonely Planet Thorntree forum was a very good and active forum,
    where you could get lots of information, even from very off the beaten
    track places. But because of the Covid crisis it was closed.

    The Travelfish forums also seem to be getting no traffic. Same for Fodors.

    Finally I tried an Internet search for "Indonesia travel forum". There
    is practically no active forum left and it's even so that Bing list
    multiple times the Tripadvisor Indonesia forum, but this forum is 95-98% >about Bali (practically no traffic in the Sulawesi section).

    One more thing, there used to be independent travellers sites. Probably
    these still exist, but the search engines primarily deliver in their
    search results pages of commercial operators, probably because these are >"SEO-optimised".


    I find Tripadvisor Forums to be about the best for general travel
    discussion. I don't know which section of the Indonesia forum you
    posted in and I couldn't see anything from you there. There seem to be
    about 20 to 30 post a day in the Indonesia section, so it's still very
    much alive there.

    Another resource that can be useful is Facebook groups, if you can
    find one relevant to the area you're interested in. For example, I
    joined the Malta Expats group before I went there and got a lot of
    useful answers.

    Chris

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Alfred Molon@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jul 10 22:33:47 2022
    Am 09.07.2022 um 23:58 schrieb Chris in Makati:
    On Sat, 9 Jul 2022 10:59:24 +0200, Alfred Molon
    <[email protected]> wrote:

    I'm travelling to Indoenesia this August and posted a question about
    Sulawesi in the Tripadvisor Indonesia forum. There was no response.

    Years ago this newsgroup was active and I might have asked here. Then it
    effectively died.

    The Lonely Planet Thorntree forum was a very good and active forum,
    where you could get lots of information, even from very off the beaten
    track places. But because of the Covid crisis it was closed.

    The Travelfish forums also seem to be getting no traffic. Same for Fodors. >>
    Finally I tried an Internet search for "Indonesia travel forum". There
    is practically no active forum left and it's even so that Bing list
    multiple times the Tripadvisor Indonesia forum, but this forum is 95-98%
    about Bali (practically no traffic in the Sulawesi section).

    One more thing, there used to be independent travellers sites. Probably
    these still exist, but the search engines primarily deliver in their
    search results pages of commercial operators, probably because these are
    "SEO-optimised".


    I find Tripadvisor Forums to be about the best for general travel
    discussion. I don't know which section of the Indonesia forum you
    posted in and I couldn't see anything from you there. There seem to be
    about 20 to 30 post a day in the Indonesia section, so it's still very
    much alive there.

    Another resource that can be useful is Facebook groups, if you can
    find one relevant to the area you're interested in. For example, I
    joined the Malta Expats group before I went there and got a lot of
    useful answers.

    I wrote this post on Tripadvisor on July 2nd: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g297719-i9445-k14012511-Sulawesi_itinerary-Sulawesi.html

    and got no response.

    I've never been on Facebook and hopefully I won't have to create an FB
    account just to get information about Sulawesi.
    --
    Alfred Molon
    https://www.molon.de - Photos of Asia, Africa and Europe

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)