As someone who grew up on that old web, I am grateful that the board game hobbyist community is still using Board Game Geek. That site is just a reskin of a pile of PHPbb forums.

The older ways of webrings, forums, and personal websites, are still as present as ever. I don’t know if there are more or fewer of these, but I would guess more than ever before.

This, but it does depend on the subject matter. Certain message boards and forum communities are still very active and are the best places for like minded people to go to. Whereas other niche forums took a hit and those subjects tend to be discussed more on places like Reddit or Facebook groups.

Web-rings aren't really a thing anymore. Sure, some websites might still have them at the bottom of the page but comon, when was the last time you used one?

I'd say the private community forums are shrinking but there are still a few areas where they thrive (not going to give away my hobbies on here but there are a few relevant subjects that have their own active message boards...many were communities on Yahoo groups that migrated to other systems.)

The replacement sites and their "communities" are flooded with bots and people from India (not necessarily a bad thing but they aren't always the best participants. They often seem to be their for negative reasons or don't really contribute much other than engagement for the metrics.) Reddit and Facebook are the noteworthy examples of this.