Decreasing number of forum users

[Lucius]

I also don't think the site's design has anything to do with it.  It's old, simple, yet very effective.

I agree with this, I do not believe that the new forum will attract more users just because of the new design and some new features. For me personally, the forum as it is now serves its purpose quite well, and I like it more than the new version.

I think the main reason for user decreasing is BTC price, but also fact that from 2017 until today, thousands of users get permanently banned. It's also not easy to create new high ranked accounts due to merit system. All this together is the reason that there are currently no more active users, but I'm sure the next big bull run will activate them again.

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[mersal]

Possibly account farmers also could be a reason why the total number of users decreased in the past year since when we got the merit system which is mandatory for an account to rank up.But agree with the fact we need some update and also have to control the drama around merit and trust in the main section and concentrate on building more stronger community than hate for each other.

[Jet Cash]

I think it all comes down to posting quality, and the knowledge and social skills of the members. I'm pretty bored with all the talk about merit,rank, trust and bounties. I's like to see a vibrant community of like minded people, and informed chats about Bitcoin and global economics.We are entering a period of massive economic, social and banking changes, and we should have some great discussions going here. We should have grown out of the Bitcoin will replace gold/fiat/banks/sex/cats or whatever.

A few usable selling boards would be useful as well. Not just for domain names, and crypto exchanges, but other business related products.

Changing the forum layout won't make much difference in my opinion. Well maybe disabling nested quotes and images in quotes would improve legibility.

[skarais]

I have opened the discussion thread some time ago related to the sustainability of the bitcointalk.org forum and its users on the Indonesia Local board. The thread can be found here.
My goal is to find out the cause of the decrease in the number of posts and active users in the Local section. Here are some responses from users that I gathered to answer questions from the OP.

• ICO, IEO, bounty, no longer attracts many investors and bounty hunters
• The account has received negative trust and then slept or inactive
• User has die
• Effects of merit systems.

• The forum is old
• Not many active multi accounts

• Busyness or busy outside the forum
• Mining is no longer profitable
• Bitcoin and altcoin prices have dropped
• And etc

Now I want to get a solution about how we can grow user interest in returning to forums, posting something useful, free of spam, junk and low-quality posts.

[gentlemand]

Its true in general that forums are becoming a thing of the past. A lot of users are moving onto more point based systems such as Reddit.

Is there anywhere else like Reddit with a similar set up?

I find it almost completely hateful. It's a bastard to read through and most stuff gets lost in the mists of time even on the same day. It's one of shittest set ups I've ever come across. If you invented it today and stated you wanted a lash up like that to be one of the world's largest sites you'd be laughed at and have your tits ripped off.

[TheYankeesWin!]

Its true in general that forums are becoming a thing of the past. A lot of users are moving onto more point based systems such as Reddit.

Is there anywhere else like Reddit with a similar set up?

I find it almost completely hateful. It's a bastard to read through and most stuff gets lost in the mists of time even on the same day. It's one of shittest set ups I've ever come across. If you invented it today and stated you wanted a lash up like that to be one of the world's largest sites you'd be laughed at and have your tits ripped off.

I hate reddit format unreal if you want to look back as little as a few weeks.

This forum  at least allows for research of older threads.

[CucakRowo]

Just asking. Is one of the factors that causing the decline of visitors numbers to this forum also affected by the number of banned accounts coz doing cheating on bounties and did plagiarism? If yes, is the impact so significant?
I asked that question because since last 2 months it has rarely appeared new projects on altcoin announcement board. So I think because of rarely announcements conditions on altcoin board are correlating with the decreasing visitor numbers on this forum. In short, the increasing of visitor numbers on previous years, one of the factors was also influenced by the new account numbers that created only to participate on some bounties.

[Jet Cash]

Forums grow because of good information exchanges between members, and useful help and advice. They can also provide good places to relax and make friends with like minded peers.

They die because of over moderation, petty bitching attacks, too many low grade badly worded posts and threads, too much spamming, and reduced legibility as a result of text formatting, over use of quotes, and the inclusion of large stupid images ( especially when the are included in quotes ).

[UserU]

If the data structure for the new forum-to-be is aligned with that of Bitcointalk, which it seems to be, then the logical move is to migrate the accounts (and posts/threads/etc.). I mean, the idea is to migrate to a new forum, not to create a new forum per-se, which would be a pointless move.

That does not mean that, in the process, some considerations may be made from a logical point of view (i.e. decide whether to migrate or not all nuked accounts, freeing-up those usernames in the process), and some technical ones (i.e., avatar may or may not be migratable, depending on the acceptable formats on the new platform – although I figure they will be).

Fingers crossed, most of our current status should be intact.

If we've to start over from scratch, there's gonna be a massive uproar.

[Upgrade00]

If we've to start over from scratch, there's gonna be a massive uproar.

BT has been the forum for bitcointalk discussions for the better part of 10 years, I highly doubt all the information here could be abandoned and a new forum be started over again. I expect it to be a merge, with all the information here, posts, accounts etcetera be migrated to the new forum software. Considering that there are users who have left the forum (like Satoshi), they wouldn't be active to start over but their contents should be readily available for reference.

[Thekool1s]

For the most part, I connect this fact that users are switching to much more modern, convenient and mobile platforms for communication and the Bitcointalk site needs urgent updating.

What makes you think its the "unresponsive" design of the forum rather than what @ThePharmasict mentioned? How are you connecting the dots? Do you have the data to back up your claim? Total impressions aren't a great way to connect the dots iyam. We haven't seen any other "Modern" Forum getting any traction for the mere reason of being "Responsive". There were several forums made to compete with Bitcointalk but none saw the success which Bitcointalk has experienced. Anyway, I have data which can prove otherwise...

I will be comparing forum.bitcoin.com^[1] with Bitcointalk.org ^[2]. One is "mobile" friendly while other is not. I will use SimilarWeb for comparison. Despite being "Unresponsive" and not being "Mobile Friendly". The Average Visit Duration time for Bitcointalk is almost 3 times more than forum.bitcoin.com This alone is enough to prove that being "Unresponsive" Design is not the reason for the decline in Traffic. Other metrics like Pages per visit only further confirm my position. These stats only further confirm what @ThePharmasict mentioned.



Sources:
[1] https://www.similarweb.com/website/forum.bitcoin.com
[2] https://www.similarweb.com/website/bitcointalk.org

[DooMAD]

*images*

Contrasting numbers aside, the key word there is definitely "Engagement".  

One the one hand, good topics are more engaging, so if the quality of discussion is higher here, people are more likely to take part in the conversation.  This is the forum with the greatest concentration of knowledge and expertise, so there are likely to be a larger number of engaging topics here.  The best forums are naturally the ones where the users make the best contributions.  Hence why most boards have specialist topics they're dedicated to.  It encourages the propagation of useful knowledge and insights.

On the other hand, the fact that we have a larger number of users is partly due to the financial incentive from bounties, which are the antithesis of engaging discussion.  That's why I don't mind seeing our user count drop, as long as it's the users who are contributing largely worthless posts that are leaving (or being forcibly removed, as is more likely the case).

[Lucius]

Just asking. Is one of the factors that causing the decline of visitors numbers to this forum also affected by the number of banned accounts coz doing cheating on bounties and did plagiarism? If yes, is the impact so significant?

Based on this Banned users there is 159302 banned users last edited 18 November 2019. But Coin-1 is posted this in same thread :

Total banned 200317 [+12271] users:

• 168 Legendaries (0.08%) [+13 users]
• 456 Hero Members (0.23%) [+38 users]
• 1254 Sr. Members (0.63%) [+93 users]
• 2733 Full Members (1.36%) [+217 users]
• 4401 Members (2.20%) [+420 users]
• 2370 Jr. Members (1.18%) [+388 users]
• 188935 Newbies (94.32%) [+11102 users]

From that we can see that high ranked accounts (Legendary, Hero, Senior) represent only 0.94 % of all banned users, and that 94.32 % of banned users are just Newbies. That less then 6% represents 11382 users with rank above Newbie, and I think this is still one representative figure which has the effect of reducing the number of visitors.

[UserU]

...

Well, the difference is like day and night. The first forum lacks activities and most threads have few to no replies.

No doubt why it lacks attentiveness, despite sporting a mobile-friendly theme. But I believe if Bitcointalk emerges with a new theme, the number of visitors will rise.

[Thekool1s]

@DooMAD I do agree with you regarding the shitposting part but these stats are for the past 6 months only, this is well after the merit system was introduced. An 8% drop is still pretty insignificant if you ask me. Despite all the banning which has been going on and ranking up has gone to virtually 0. The traffic is still there. Bitcointalk has only seen an 8% drop. This again just shows Bitcointalk's success isn't linked with monetary benefits, if it was the case we would have seen massive drops over the course of a mere few months but the stats show otherwise.

[libert19]

Forum desperately needs quote and user mention notifications (yeah, I'm aware of third party services, don't remind me again), however I doubt forum update has anything to do with decreasing user numbers, it's just Bitcoin/altcoin price has demotivated people. In 2017, we saw major influx of users just cause of price increase.

[mindrust]

For the most part, I connect this fact that users are switching to much more modern, convenient and mobile platforms for communication and the Bitcointalk site needs urgent updating.

What makes you think its the "unresponsive" design of the forum rather than what @ThePharmasict mentioned? How are you connecting the dots? Do you have the data to back up your claim? Total impressions aren't a great way to connect the dots iyam. We haven't seen any other "Modern" Forum getting any traction for the mere reason of being "Responsive". There were several forums made to compete with Bitcointalk but none saw the success which Bitcointalk has experienced. Anyway, I have data which can prove otherwise...

I will be comparing forum.bitcoin.com^[1] with Bitcointalk.org ^[2]. One is "mobile" friendly while other is not. I will use SimilarWeb for comparison. Despite being "Unresponsive" and not being "Mobile Friendly". The Average Visit Duration time for Bitcointalk is almost 3 times more than forum.bitcoin.com This alone is enough to prove that being "Unresponsive" Design is not the reason for the decline in Traffic. Other metrics like Pages per visit only further confirm my position. These stats only further confirm what @ThePharmasict mentioned.



Sources:
[1] https://www.similarweb.com/website/forum.bitcoin.com
[2] https://www.similarweb.com/website/bitcointalk.org

Roger's forum sucks. I am not saying this because I hate bcash. I just like the gray background color in forums. It is not too bright, it is not too dark, it just perfect. No unnecessary features, no crap here. Simple. Just like bitcoin itself. Same philosophy.

 I like this forum the way it is.

My only complaint is, sometimes it takes two tries to make a damn post.

[gentlemand]

Roger's forum sucks. I am not saying this because I hate bcash. I just like the gray background color in forums. It is not too bright, it is not too dark, it just perfect. No unnecessary features, no crap here. Simple. Just like bitcoin itself. Same philosophy.

 I like this forum the way it is.

While the idea of someone switching forums entirely because the other one is 'better' on mobile is laughable, I can well believe this place is more trouble than it's worth for some. Soon enough if not already the majority of the world's internet users will be on phones.

This place is great on a computer. If I had to use it exclusively on a phone I'm not sure I could tolerate it for long.

[DdmrDdmr]

Not easy to say exactly something on this topic whilst being in absolute possession of the truth. Normally one would need to compare to competitor forums, but there are not that many (if at all) that are significant in numbers to compare to, and less to infer flow of users from one to another (and even less if we go into quality instead of quantity of the lost users). Forum usability and looks, alongside a phone-friendly interface may help, but my gut feeling is that it is not a key driver.

Phones usability is indeed important nowadays (and the Forum will have inner numbers on phone access to the forum), but I personally find that posting with quoted extracts, searching, multiple tabs, and writing more than a few lines in a post, become a pain on a phone, and would likely still be so (at least for me) on a phone-friendly environment.

Then there’s the number approach comparison of users to BTC price (which is not aligned) and trends. Whilst BTC price has gone up noticeably this year, reaching the 11K zone during July 2019, the number of unique IPs and unique logged-in users did not follow the trend here (see [Chart] Bitcointalk statistics on impression counts for ads ). I wouldn’t have expected it either, since the price rise has not made much buzz, and there are no ICOs to add to the whole hype feeling. I would not expect much shift in tendency here, until BTC reached the area of the ATH again, and a heavy influence on forum newcomers may not be met until the ATH figure is well surpassed.

Probably the heaviest element of influence are ICOs over the last couple of years, and that should account for a fair share of user gains and losses in recent years.

[Thekool1s]

I like this forum the way it is.

Same...

My only complaint is, sometimes it takes two tries to make a damn post.

I believe you are talking about session timing out? I think it is to prevent unauthorized activity from your account but I'm not sure why the session times out.