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[Imic]

I 'v been scared to say this for a while now, for fear of backlash or something, but I might as well state it peoperly now. We need to face something. The forum is dying. The post count has halved since last year, and it doesn't seem to be stopping. I love these forums. I love to watch the sociopaths and mad scientists of the world discussing unicorn farms over a game of dwarf fortress, but I don't want to see it dry up. I'm making this thread to discuss it, since it hasn't been a proper topic recently. I hope I don't need to lock this thread. Let the games begin.

[Frumple]

... I'unno, I haven't really noticed much slowdown in GD and OG, which is mostly where I've loitered over the years. Little quieter, but part of that was losing some of the more energetic folks or others chilling for one reason or another. Maybe more in line with some of the slower years, but last year was pretty eventful, pretty sure both with new DF releases and... otherwise. Part of that's probably because I don't really notice that kind of thing to begin with unless it's hella' overt, but...

Anyway, entirely too lazy to check, but is the reduced post count you're seeing coming disproportionately from any particular part of the forum? If it's primarily some portion of FG&RP, ferex, it might not necessarily mean much regarding the rest of the forum. Also totally possible for a post-release slump to be settling in, which iirc is fairly common (as is a spike when a big new one happens).

[~Neri]

I've migrated to Sufficient Velocity/Spacebattles for quest/forum game based stuff and to Discord for the majority of rp. I suspect that is the same for many. Bay doesn't have the tier of robustness in its UI I have come to expect for places I run stuff on. I only pop in when I get notifications.

[NullForceOmega]

Imic has a bit of a point, there has been substantial slowdown since 2014, with a huge dropoff in new members, topics created, and overall posts.  That said, it still hasn't dropped to below 2008 levels, so I think this is more of a stabilization than anything.

[Imic]

Imic has a bit of a point, there has been substantial slowdown since 2014, with a huge dropoff in new members, topics created, and overall posts.  That said, it still hasn't dropped to below 2009 levels, so I think this is more of a stabilization than anything.

I hope you're right about it stabilizing.

[nenjin]

Consider also when the ban list was started and who has been banned. I'm guessing enough bans from the endless wars of the Ameripol thread would have an impact on forum stats.

Personally, I'm not worried. Post count != post quality.

[Telgin]

You can see some of the stats here: stats.  It doesn't give monthly breakdowns by forum unless I missed something, so it's not immediately clear where the falloff is.

Anecdotally, it does appear that there's less activity in the community games and in the DF related boards in general.  Could be a lot of reasons why, but for me at least that's because I got burned out on community games.  As a result, I also don't play DF very much anymore, which means I'm not really qualified to answer questions in those forums these days.  Accordingly, I don't post there unless I happen to stumble into a rare topic that nobody has replied to yet which I also definitively know the answer to.

My inclination would be to say that not as many people play DF now, and that its heyday appeared to be around the DF2012 era, but I don't have any real proof of that.  Donations haven't dropped off, but then maybe many donations come from people like me who support the project even if they don't play the game much these days.

[NullForceOmega]

I think it says something that two bans in particular account for a pretty hefty decrease in new topics and posts (three if you extend back to 2013.)  Bay 12 owes a lot of its activity to a few very invested members of the community generating a large amount of conversation (both positive and negative).  So I don't think we're really in much danger.

[Doomblade187]

Anecdotally, I feel that FG&R was slower than a year ago, but this could be due to the emergence of discord.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Panic threads about the future of the forum, it's just like old times.

[Wolfhunter107]

Panic threads about the future of the forum, it's just like old times.

Were those a thing back in the Olden Days?

[Teneb]

Bay12 might as well be 3 different forums, with a bit of overlap between them. The Upper and Lower Boards don't interact much, and FG&RP is its own thing. Other Games is sort of a neutral area, but I tend to see Lower Boards folk in it more often than not.

[Teneb]

Also, a few of the top posters were banned/were on hiatus, so it's no surprise post counts are down.

There were also quite a few "discussion-starter" posters, like Neonivek, that also got banned.

Looking at the banlist, I'm actually surprised we've gone almost 6 months without a non-troll/spammer ban.

[nenjin]

Also, a few of the top posters were banned/were on hiatus, so it's no surprise post counts are down.

There were also quite a few "discussion-starter" posters, like Neonivek, that also got banned.

Looking at the banlist, I'm actually surprised we've gone almost 6 months without a non-troll/spammer ban.

At the risk of picking at a forum scab, I think Neo's ban was kind of a wake up call to everyone. You don't necessarily have to be racist/trolling/flaming to get banned. You just need to generate enough reports that Toady gets tired of hearing about you.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't see how anybody can still believe that Neonivek wasn't trolling. It's plainly obvious from that perspective, where as every other perspective comes out as pure confusion.