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[Strife26]

Anyone else remember the days back before anyone had avatars?

I hang around exclusively to keep people aware that it is possible to not have avatars 

But I want to throw my two cents here: We are getting old.

When I joined I was a teenager, and took all opportunities to check what was going on in the forums.
Now I forget it's existence entirely every few days. Maybe we are just becoming a little less focused on the old things.

Friggin time and entropic slope.

[Truean]

Please do not quote:

I still can't believe it's been 9 years.


Not sure what to believe really. Donations are up; I remember when the funds were well below $2K/month. That stated everybody has ripped off Dwarf Fortress, a lot, but at least most of the decent ones acknowledge it. Hopefully, this might steer people towards DF a bit.

I remember how the forms were, slightly insane, but also host to incredibly intellectual discussions. We had a lot of (socially and politically liberal) highly educated STEM people. I was talking to people from Stanford, and several universities, who were perusing different degrees. That said, O god we had trolls like you wouldn't believe, not funny ones, bad ones (occasionally one of them would be but yeah don't crash the place with the messed up pics please). It was amazingly tolerant in a time when there was practically NONE for some people. I'm not even talking about GLBT (that too though), or race, or whatever, I'm talking about the poor kid with 0 connections trying to escape enough to get through life. 

This was a place for the forgotten, before "the forgotten" somehow became a "mainstream" thing. They have Bogarted nerd culture, etc. I'm actually surprised we haven't seen a huge influx of hipsters in here, because this is probably one of the most retro things (with massive mathematical upgrade) ever. I mean, the graphics alone.... Ultimately, people don't want to read. That's fucking sad, and shows the decay of society. I personally, and nerd culture (which prized reading and intellectualism) don't exactly know how to adapt to a society in which jerks don't feel like reading more than a list, if that. The world is hard and you can only boil it down so far before you start loosing things. I get told I'm saying too much, so I boil it down, then it's "not what people want." That doesn't even touch the issue of tracking which is a whole 'nother thread (I've taught classes on how this bites people and institutions in the butt in ways they never understood or imagined). There have been several professionals that are better people for having visited these forms and the fact that they completely burned their posts to the ground. Several of them had incredibly controversial views, many of them incredibly anti gay for instance, until they actually got to know me.... One of them now has a high level job in a liberal area that would've held that view against them. Regardless of if they still hold that view, I'm glad they were provided a space without penalty to discuss said view.

Ultimately, the future of the forums is the future of the game and the future of our interactions with each other. As incredibly number focused idiots do things with the world and cut away at society (for "efficiency"), and track our every move ( google "internet of things") there's still no accounting for taste or happiness.

That said, what to do, based on a my limited value interpretation:

Attractions: Why do people come here? What works and what doesn't? More of those first ones.
a.) Teach good forum games
b.) Good writing, as opposed to the long winded slop the world has degraded into.
c.) Respectful, enlightened conversations, which we had on a couple threads until they got trollolololed to death and / or shut down.
d.) Awesomeness

I've tried. Honestly, I'm just bogged down in a job I'm accused of not doing despite 50+ hour weeks and no negatives for the areas I'm responsible for but obstructed from properly implementing (others keeping information and authorization I need to function so I'm non stop troubleshooting). Also, I've saved or am saving at least 3 other departments major headaches (not perfect, but damn better than the "nothing" we had before).

Please do not quote:

[SalmonGod]

I thought we would have similar feelings, Tru.  You were one of the people I thought about while writing my post a little further up.  I miss the difficult and trying, but very rewarding discussions we used to have around here.  Things got heated, but it takes some heat to forge bonds.  Remember our first encounter over abortion?  I still feel ridiculous looking back on it about how I over-reacted.  But I don't regret it, because I think that's when we first noticed and set on the path towards appreciating each other.  It's a good example of the type of atmosphere we had back then. 

It feels like that's changed, but it's hard to tell just how much of it is the forum and how much of my perception is due to my own participation changing.  If my life is ever not consumed by work again, maybe I'll find out.

[Inarius]

I've noticed this huge drop of everything in the forum stats, too, although i'm on DF for less long than most of you, i suppose (2012), it's still a bit worrying.
But, the most important is that DF has enough money and players to continue, and...it seems that it's working quite well on this level.

So what ? Perhaps the age of "forums" has passed, and that people now do less "forum postings" than before ?
Or perhaps the "old" generation of DF players, who came first, finally left or became tired, and that new players are just less involved ?

It would be interesting to have the download stats of each version, to see if there is a link with attendance.

(sorry for bad english)

[Truean]

Please do not quote:

Still complaining about writing; they don't wanna read it, or write to read or at all. It's awful, so it'll be staying a while, probably has reservations. Now it's being elected somewhere. Meh.

You've better English than many. Forums are still useful for the not stupid; that's a small population so we could absorb them easily. I knew back in the day that "cloud storage" was just this. It's simply a matter of popular usage trends and how people perceive the.... We're screwed.

But yeah, forums still have uses, lots of them.

I do remember that and I actually didn't have to look it up. I will never be able to truthfully say that about anything ever again and will die from forgetfulness somehow.

But yeah, I was actually thinking of you as well, in a good way. I tried to introduce order into the chaos of the internet. It went as expected, except I survived, kinda. The jury is still out and may have run away.... Yup.

The passion was the world we tried creating along with our lives, both DF as well as the real world to the extent we could. Ultimately, we couldn't control either, not really. That's still there for the younger ones if they see it to appreciate it. It's still there for us but instead of creating we're improving whatever it is we have. We were the pioneers (see also, everyone copied DF) in a new digital age, before it went mad. Free from material restrictions, unbound by geography, we shared some small, but relatively distant and safe measure of ourselves. Some of us took this and other teachings, refined, applied and used it.

Sadly, our teachings have been twisted. We confronted the "post truth," world where people attempted to hide they were creating their own bullcrap version of reality for ill, years ago. We knew their ways, for they were just like ours, but wrong. We fought it; we failed everyone.

Ultimately, it's what we can make of this, but 12 bay is one of the few places we can make anything of it. All is not lost, including the worth of this place.

[RedKing]

Now is the End of All Things. Or not.

[Truean]

Please do not quote:

Speaking of awesomeness from before, hi Redking.

No, but it goes right to the point doesn't it? The forum of words and (electronic) creativity declines along with all else. These things can go in cycles. Hopefully the upswing can carry us a bit more in a useful direction. Yes, there's a definite downturn. No, that doesn't mean it will continue forever or that things are shit. It is what we make of it; let's make better of it.

What once was can be again.

Please do not quote:

[Urist McScoopbeard]

[nostalgic revisionism intensifies]

[wierd]

*niggles about how just because something has been mentioned ad infinitum since the earliest dawnings of recorded history, and the world did not end, does not defacto mean that all such mentioning is pointless hot air. 

There is a balance between declinism, "Looking Elsewhere", etc-- and being aware that culture is not a static thing, and much like speculation on stock performance, prior performance is not a guarantee of future performance. (and that blandly dismissing calls to attention on the matter is how you end up with a 'crashed economy')

The greek assertion was that the introduction of writing would make people mentally lazy, and that they would stop being able to remember oral histories that were hours and hours long in their recitation.  In many respects, they were right. However, the written version is superior because it does not forget, and has a life expectancy far longer than that of its author.  However, the basic argument is corroborated by modern neural science, in the more modern form of "Cellphone exposure" and its impact on memory, attention, and focus. 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5403814/

Were the greek philosophers just blowing so much hot air, or were they just lacking good objective tools with which to properly gauge and predict an observed trend in the cognition of their students?

That society adapted rather than imploded is a testament to the resiliency of the human social instinct, but again, "Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance." 

Just be careful with blanket statements like these, m'kay?

[thvaz]

I'm worried about the trends.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=dwarf%20fortress

So it is not only the forum. The trends indicate less people are interested in Dwarf Fortress. The release in november barely made a difference in the downward trend. Currently there is no impact in donations, but for how long?

[birdy51]

Most things tend to work in cycles. There is growth and decay, and right now we might be in a decaying phase. My only suggestion would be to keep the seat warm for anyone who might want to come back or to keep welcoming new members of the community with the same enthusiasm that has made me stick around this forum for an ungodly time.

Which is now almost... Five years? Yeesh. ^.^

[Inarius]

I'm worried about the trends.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=dwarf%20fortress

So it is not only the forum. The trends indicate less people are interested in Dwarf Fortress. The release in november barely made a difference in the downward trend. Currently there is no impact in donations, but for how long?

If you make some stats on this, you see that the "trend" is downward since 2011.
Look at the stats carefully (I did that for you)

Interest   Donation      Don/Int 2004   1       2005   0       2006   57       2007   214         19 052           89 2008   337         32 318           96 2009   428         32 516           76 2010   729         54 501           75 2011   767         42 294           55 2012   752         57 855           77 2013   663         48 999           74 2014   553         66 765           121 2015   391         60 603           155 2016   387         89 423           231 2017   319         83 491           262

So, interest trend has been falling for 6 years (most than half of the project life), and, at the same time, it has generating 5 times more money than it used to make.
Therefore, I don't think an hypothesis of a huge drop of donation will follow this drop of attendance.

[monkey]

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I'd also like to point out that without even ATTEMPTING to identify "the problem" these statistics are pretty useless. And take that sentence itself with a grain of salt because as far as I can see, there is no problem, there is simply a cultural shift. Much like how MUDs are complete trash compared to modern day games, traditional forums have become somewhat cumbersome and unwieldy in comparison to social media.

God forbid we translate Bay12 into a twitter following lol, but there is something to be said for how sites like Reddit and Imgur organize posts, content, and interesting groupings in general. The appeal of DF is in part it's refusal to rely on visual clarity, apparent via endless upon endless tirades about menus, and graphics, and visualizers, but if you take a huge step back and really be objective about it, these forums look pretty early 2000s.

Though search query volume is something to be concerned about, it doesn't necessarily mean that interest in the game is fading, it could simply mean that interest is not growing as quick as it once was, and with famously long periods between releases that is bound to happen in an increasingly ADHD social media environment.

To go back to the MUD analogy, if you've ever played a MUD, you'll usually find a grizzled, ugly group of core players that has been playing for 30+ years, and likewise you'll find another group of spritely, young curiousos who are very much interested in the game, but can't really fit in with the now-ancient veterans, whose decades of in-jokes, house rules, and tastes fly over the heads of the youngsters. The same thing very much happens in any community, business, or other social grouping and certainly could be happening to this one. I think, in part, we have actually lost a surprisingly high number of core Bay12ers (RIP Girlinhat, the OG Bay12er that everyone knew) which, exacerbated by a high volume of more recent bans, has left the community feeling a little devoid. Some new members came in to fill the void, but were quickly rejected by Bay12 at large (See: Neonivek) -- and I'm not saying that it was wrong for that to happen, but we are now at a place where the most iconic members of an older generation are gone and the new generation has very few iconic members.

Heck, I remember when I was essentially the Neonivek of the community (I think) but lo and behold Bay12 has generally shifted much more towards my brand of humor/argument/general attitude. I've changed as well of course, probably becoming a little more aligned with how things were originally done around here.

The point is this: Bay12 is shifting culturally--as it always has, as we always are, and as most humans do in general--and though it has become more modern in its "site personality" it is still perhaps an artifact from a different time. It's really hard to predict what will happen to Bay12, The Forum, in the coming years. I think it IS safe to say Dwarf Fortress is no longer quite as famous as it once was, the articles have been written, the interviews given--what more is there to tell, until people feel it is time for such a gem to be rediscovered? If there is a major, major update then perhaps bay12 will be on the up and up again--after all, it seems most people discover the forums through the game--but perhaps it will simply slide into decay until someone wonders what ever happened to it all? And I think without reinventing ourselves, which carries it's own diverse range of positives and negatives--some quite extreme--we are mostly at the mercy of public curiosity.

There is no problem with this really, it's just life, and whatever happens most Bay12ers will always be able to say that the forums had a lasting impact on them, that this whole thing was a part of their life, and that the memories made here are for forever. Such is the way of things, and if you are a connoisseur of internet history, you may already know that such a thing has happened many times before to sits more famous than this one, and that it will probably still be happening after we are all long-dead.

[nenjin]

TLDR;



No, seriously, that's why I still read forums, because people write and you have to read. Imgur, Twitter, Facebook....I don't read half of what people write there due to the format. When the platform is geared toward one to two liners and photos, reading becomes a burden.

As opposed to a forum where reading comes first, and most of that other shit second.

Also, let me say...Reddit has by far the worst and most hard to follow layout of anything I've read, ever. It's the single biggest reason why I've never felt inclined to become a regular Reddit user. (Followed in a close second by "It's Reddit and that's why I don't read it.")