Lack of users?

Everybody always thinks the forum's best days are behind them though, that was the same with all the big users when I was using the forum a lot... then they were replaced by others who now probably think their "good ole days" are over. It's just a human phenomenon really and it applies to more than just forums. Get a large group of people in one place and the line between love and hate is always very thin.

I've told a lot of users here that the best thing to always do is remember that it's just a forum. It's not a big deal. It's definitely not worth any stress but that's just people I guess.

 

chris, what post(s) are you talking about? was not a mod or admin that banned you a little while ago as i asked who did it so we'll just leave that alone, agreed?

 

dvdback is not admin but staff. wasn't it this thread i asked you about what sars is?

 

i'm INNOCENT!!!!!

 

We had guys here back in 2003 who were asking the same thing -- "why did the good old times end / forum sucks now". And by now, I think none of you in this thread even remember their nicknames People come and go, but more importantly the changes in forum _post_ activity happen due:

1) Changes in technology. Currently there isn't a single big tech issue (esp. in AfterDawn's specialty field, like video) that would drive masses to seek answers to their questions. Back in 2003 - 2005 the DVD backup used to be "the thing", but as nowadays torrents are so widely available and backing up your own average DVD requires skills of a 5yr old, the topic isn't attracting traffic anymore (look at the popularity -- or lack of it -- of our old rivals back from those days. They didn't expand their coverage beyond digital video and now very few of them have the kind of traffic they used to have 5 years ago, while our _traffic_ - not necessarily number of posts - has kept up all these years..).

2) Competition. Back in 2005, only handful of sites reported about topics we did or had forums aimed for the topics we have. If back then you had 5 medium-sized digital video sites, there must be 150,000 of them now.

3) Changes in culture. Discussion forum culture changes all the time. Some more active posters might have gone behind closed doors, like Facebook, and prefer to discuss among with their friends only. The rise of blogs and blog culture made "masses" to avoid registrations -- you can post to virtually all of the blogs without registration, while discussion forums still require registration. Thus, people are much more hesitant to join and post nowadays.

4) "Get the answer _NOW_" culture. People Google their questions and seek the answers ASAP rather than post a forum post and wait until someone answers. This can happen as the Net has grown -- dramatically. 5 years ago you had to ask the question. Now, it is likely that your question has already been asked and answered, somewhere in the Internet. This is evident based on our traffic logs: traffic itself hasn't faded, actually it has risen quite nicely over these years, but the number of people who come from Google to read _one page_ and leave has gone through the roof.

We've run our site for 11 years now and have had discussion forums up for almost a decade, so changes in traffic, posts, etc have happened also in the past. The change in layout has actually managed to convert more "one page and off" people to people who actually post something. And we expect that trend to grow in future -- and will also monitor the ratio of people vs posts quite closely and make changes/tests accordingly.