Is Bitcointalk.org losing user base?

[aoluain]

~~~

But remember, you still won't get accurate data to judge the number of active users on a forum because the same member can post and be active on multiple board. What I've shown above is to see who and how many are active on a particular board and can't be used as a tool to assess the user base across forum.

snip

Understood, it just paints a picture of the number of users per board. The user base will actually
be less than the sum of the users per board of course.

Daniel91's personal experience confirms evil fees are damaging to the community, and many scammers/spammers have shown it doesn't stop them. I can't believe I'm saying this, but: can we go without evil fees for new users?

I knew someone that registered on this forum that told me he paid 0.0012 BTC as fee (not evil fee but Bitcoin transaction fee on the exchange he used) before he could register on this forum. A true newbie may not know someone one this forum and just see this forum to be useful and want to register. Some will not even know how to make use of Bitcoin at the time, some will even be charged high fee by helpers because they do not know anything about Bitcoin and/or grin at the time of registration. These can discourage many people not to register. The spammers are acquainted to this forum, they know how to bypass the evil fee.

snip

Its funny, I came across something about this earlier today, I didnt post it because I thought
it was spam and because I didnt believe what I was reading.

There are a lot of reviews, positive and negative and some  SCAM reports, some are obviously
venting but others below are people who were scammed.

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/bitcointalk.org?b=MTUzMzY0NTU3NTAwMHw1YjY5OTMwNzlkMmRlZjBiN2M4Yzk5MDc

Stay away
They are really Dubious!!!
They stole all my investment
Scam!!

Run by scammers.

It looks like extortion
After signing up I got message:
"...Your account contains 21.13 units of evil. To atone, you must pay a total of 0.00001177 bitcoins (0.01177 mBTC; 1177 satoshi). Pay to the address 3LAbpiPNyUWMiG8P4RzVYghXNwt3yGJCZA. Once you have paid the full amount, wait a few seconds and then reload this page. If the fee is so small that your wallet is unable to send it, you can send any larger amount, though you will not be refunded the difference..."

The site is immodestly extorting money. It is a pity that the impression of the site is spoiled the first time you use it.

Scam site
Scam site, very hard to understand mostly people degrade you or discredit you, pay to unblock even if you new here , this is absurd bitcoin was not made for this.

[PrimeNumber7]

In addition to the total number of users participating in the merit system, the number of users receiving their first merit is also declining.

With the exception of the 10th-anniversary art contest, the number of accounts receiving their first merit has steadily declined until late last year. In October 2020, the price of bitcoin crossed $10k, and this may have attracted more users to the forum. This trend ended in January 2021, which correlated with meme stocks and related forums taking users' attention away from bitcoin and bitcointalk. It now looks like we are going to have two consecutive months of ATL number of accounts receiving their first merit.

[libert19]

Isn't this something that happens every time bear market arrives? Plus why would this forum ask for evil fee during registration? People might not even know how to use btc and come to this forum to ask for help then the same forum asks for fee (and learning curve to use wallets) so they get registered? This is wtf moment imo.

[LoyceV]

There might be an argument to say that the evil fees are too high, and we should consider lowering them. I don't see any reason why someone should need to pay $20 or $30 to have the ability to post, and this is far above an amount that will deter the above described spammers.

Theymos agrees:

The fees actually paid (by people who are presumably not spammers) may be a bit high, though: I feel like it should be about a tenth of that.

[Saidasun]

The evil fee could be reduced now that we have less account farmers and new members signing up. The workload might increase for the staff but at least we might get more people signing up that way. I know this is a Bitcoin forum and its kind of expected people would have Bitcoin before joining but I did not and I assume others wont and a lot of members will want to keep their privacy and will use a VPN and when they get rejected they probably won't understand the evil fee because they are new and will assume whatever connection they try to sign up with they will be required to pay it.

[NeuroticFish]

you will read spam posts on cryptotalk and you will be tired

Been there briefly on their beginnings and it was shitposting all over. Of course that since I knew Bitcointalk already I had higher standards, but I can't tell for others. People did spend time there and I can't really tell why.
But if it went from bad to worse then yeah, sooner or later they went from potential competition to no competition at all.

Oh well, if there aren't better sites then maybe it's the fact that forums are no longer a thing in 2021. And since the search engines may not send the users here.. the number of newcomers is lower than it could be.


The evil fee may indeed have its role in all this.


Something else that may worth mentioning is a possibly growing problem of group(s) ganging up and using DT and trust feedback for their own goals/benefit and may discourage people (especially on local boards, I guess) and make them leave the forum. But I don't actually know how big this problem is. I do see now and then "dubious" people ending up in DT, but I didn't pay that much attention (yet?).

[Jet Cash]

All of the points mentioned are valid, but the real issue is thge loss of many of the long term members, and the disappearance of the community spirit.I don't feel that I am part of a community any more, and that may be the result of a number of changes, some personal, and some political. I always hoed that we could have a vibrant information exchange amongst members from many nations, but that doesn't seen to have happened. I'm saddened by the majority of members who seem to accept the government and pharma propagfanda about covid for example. I also feel that many of the members are secret fans of the fiat systemn, and look on Bitcoin as a valueless token that they can use to earn a bit if their local fiat currency. That may be an unjustified opinion, and be the result of my reduced activity here.

[Saidasun]

All of the points mentioned are valid, but the real issue is thge loss of many of the long term members, and the disappearance of the community spirit.I don't feel that I am part of a community any more, and that may be the result of a number of changes, some personal, and some political.

What has changed to make you feel not wanted or not a part of the community? You mention something about political changes but I am unsure what you mean by political changes. Political changes towards you or changes that have been made that effect you? I think most people just become bored and are not as passionate about Bitcoin or they tire of the spammers and that is when they do not feel a part of the community anymore but its probably all psychological because if you look back at the early days of the forum there was still people complaining about the same things unless you mean there has not been enough changes and everything stays about the same? 

[OutlawsGrandSon]

Bitcointalk is one of the biggest forums I've ever seen, with forums going out of style, im surprised to see the amount of activity bitcointalk still has

[ShowOff]

Bitcointalk is one of the biggest forums I've ever seen,

Yes, it has been almost 12 years since Satoshi introduced it to the community in November 2009 and I believe this forum is still the largest among the many forum discussing bitcoin.

with forums going out of style, im surprised to see the amount of activity bitcointalk still has

Perhap you shouldn't be surprised to find out the statistic of this forum that users keep on using all the time. Although people think this forum is outdated compared to other forum, but so far I'm still quite comfortable without any problem since 2015 because basically forum will never be the same as social media. The development project is ongoing and maybe one hope that this forum will be friendly with android users who tend to use apps as opposed to website.

[Saidasun]

Perhap you shouldn't be surprised to find out the statistic of this forum that users keep on using all the time. Although people think this forum is outdated compared to other forum, but so far I'm still quite comfortable without any problem since 2015 because basically forum will never be the same as social media. The development project is ongoing and maybe one hope that this forum will be friendly with android users who tend to use apps as opposed to website.

Forums are a dying platform and is been taken over by social medias like reddit Bitcointalk still existing is a achievement alone and eventually Bitcointalk is going to need to adapt to try and retain its members but at the moment I do not think we are close to it but I think another decade and we will be having a lot more problems than we are having today.

[ChuckBuck]

In fact, I have to admit that Bitcointalk is slowly losing its place in the crypto market, especially in terms of corporate advertising, there are more and more platforms promoting crypto projects out there, and a lot of big projects have succeeded there, and since then those platforms have become more popular, and it is slowly replacing bitcointalk. In fairness, this forum is still the best place to promote gambling platforms, but it is no longer the most attractive place to promote and develop new projects, especially are altcoins, right?

[aoluain]

All of the points mentioned are valid, but the real issue is thge loss of many of the long term members, and the disappearance of the community spirit.I don't feel that I am part of a community any more, and that may be the result of a number of changes, some personal, and some political. I always hoed that we could have a vibrant information exchange amongst members from many nations, but that doesn't seen to have happened. I'm saddened by the majority of members who seem to accept the government and pharma propagfanda about covid for example. I also feel that many of the members are secret fans of the fiat systemn, and look on Bitcoin as a valueless token that they can use to earn a bit if their local fiat currency. That may be an unjustified opinion, and be the result of my reduced activity here.

I kind of understand this, a lot of the time I have that impression too, yes we are all
interested in Bitcoin but I rarely feel part of a community, or to put it another way I
havent been able to connect with anyone, maybe that is down to the vastness of
the forum and the amount of users. Maybe the local boards have a more community
based feel or people are able to make connections there, also maybe on some of the Gambling Discussion threads too IDK although myself and
@Timelord2067 seem to have the Rugby thread all to ourselves!

Maybe this is something new users pick up on too, "its hard to make friends here"
hard to make connections.

[darklus123]

What do you think? Do you think forum is losing userbase and this is a bad thing? Are there other reasons this is happening and other solutions?

How about the evil fee paid that spammers already know how to bypass with VPN and DPN. Real newbies do not know how to bypass the evil fee while many of them do not even know how to make use of Bitcoin at the time of registration. They just left the forum because even many of them think the transaction fee for Bitcoin is high like $20 because most of them are misled by the exchanges they are using. How many people will want to pay such high fee. It will be good if there is another solution instead of the evil fee paid.

Also we need new forum software, we need forum app, especially the mobile app which will have beautiful UI.

But about that charts, smerit were pre-generated for users at the start of merit system in accordance to individual rank, spammers were sending merit at the time even to each other. But there suppose to be an increase after the sometimes as users are increasing, this makes your post valid.

101% agrees to this. I've been inactively posting on the forum for quite some time because of my busy schedule. I have an eye problem and navigating the forum on my mobile phone really sucks a lot. And because of that and it somehow discourages me to visit the forum at all.

I know there are still people who think that we don't need the app. But someone guys we are on the 21st generation already we need to adapt to these changes and we need to hurry up or it might get too late who knows 

[HaleyOccam]

As a newcomer, I want to talk about some of my feelings in the Bitcoin forum, which may express why forum members are losing or the number of quality posts is decreasing.
I want to explain my point of view from the subjective and objective aspects:

The subjective reasons of the Bitcoin forum itself:

• At present, everyone (including me) has fully adapted to mobile applications, and the format of the Bitcoin forum itself is not new, and it looks tiring to use a mobile phone.
• The information timeliness of the forum is not as good as the current social media such as FB, TWITTER, REDDIT, etc.
• Bitcoin forums are not chat rooms, so opinion responses and discussions are delayed. For me, some opinions may be momentary, and they may be forgotten after a while.
• Bitcoin forums have certain thresholds for membership requirements. In Bitcoin forums where content is king, after more than 10 years of development, there will be a discussion bottleneck period. For example, the current active sector is the altcoin sector. The demand is greater than knowledge and technical discussions.

The objective reasons are:

• Many people lose a lot of patience due to the high returns and profit temptation of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and pay more attention to market conditions, all kinds of good or bad news. In other words, they prefer fast-food platforms and neglect to sink their hearts to think. . In the hearts of these people, you are not suitable for Bitcoin forums.
• After a long time in the forum, you will get to know many heroes and legendary members, some are doing data analysis, some are technicians, and some are programmers. Therefore, there are a lot of discussions about technology in the forum, and some people who naturally reject it, because my major is not technology, it is difficult to integrate into it.
• The newcomers to the forum do not have too much knowledge and time to settle. For example, in the forum, many people read it again and did not express their opinions. The reason is either to come to the Bitcoin forum to look for projects or to look at information.
• This last point, I am a newcomer and forum user, what attracts me is the atmosphere here, but the page and format of my forum are not attractive, and I may need time to get used to it. Sometimes it's awkward to use. For me, who has a relatively fast-paced life, the Bitcoin forum is more suitable for me to reply and study at night.

Thank you all, thank you.

[fillippone]

I must admit I am quite surprised of the quality of this thread.
Every single post contributed valuable ideas and proposal. Even if I might not agree I think everyone tought about what proposed.
So I tried to sum up here the main points that emerged all over the thread. I also included some sort of “proponent” even if the idea was shared or proposed by multiple users. This is why I didn’t link to a specific post.

So, here is the foor for thoughts that emerged on this thread

According to some of the readers of this thread, Bitcointalk is losing steam because of the following reasons:

• Lack of SEO. Bitcointalk.org results are buried in tha back pages [@NeuroticFish]
• Automated payment for posts on other platform[Citation needed] [@NeuroticFish]
• In the last 12 years, community spirit has changed since Satsohi created it: it’s no longer a transnational free spirits community, but some bunch of people looking at bitcoin as a “Get rich quick scheme. As opposed to a “don’t get poor slowly'' scheme. [@JetCash]
• Declining quality of posts [@ddmrddmr]
• Lack of mobile theme [@almost everyone]
• Hostility toward new members [@Daniel91]
• Staticness, or too slowly evolving forum experience [@CryptopreneurBrainboss]
• It’ a natural evolution of the userbase who moves on, not replenished by other members. [@dkbit98]
  the forum is dying - and perhaps that's deserved / inevitable. [@ AdolfinWolf]

Suggestions:

• Mobile theme
• SEO Optimisation
• Strategic Targets in order to  push Bitcointalk as a reference “brand” for bitcoin (/crypto)information into the mind of newer generations further that it currently does.[@ddmrddmr]
• Revive altcoin Board to Attract more newbies primarily interested in quick profit to later convert them to bitcoin [@rikafip]
• I think there is the potential for a lot of discussion around things such The current structure of the altcoin section does a poor job at facilitating conversations around topics like smart contracts, stablecoins, ERC20 coins (and similar), and NFTs (this may be temporary).[@PrimeNumber7]
• Refine Evil Fee to avoid false positive.
  
• A system that has a means of punishing the offenders or disobedience, should have a means of rewarding the law abiding members. When there are no means of rewarding goodness, it will surely decline. [@KingsDen]
• Focus on branding and corporate advertising (@ChuckBuck, stripped of sarcasm). Necessary evil to keep Bitcointalk relevant and finance more money intellectually relevant part of the forum, I might add.

This is only what has surfaced until now. Feel free of course continuing proposing or discussing everything proposed so far.

I hope @theymos, even without commenting, is reading this.
We talked about and analysed all the forum weakness. But I am sure what is the biggest driving force and asset behind during these last 12 years: the community.

[Jazmin Leslie]

I must admit I am quite surprised of the quality of this thread.
Every single post contributed valuable ideas and proposal. Even if I might not agree I think everyone tought about what proposed.
So I tried to sum up here the main points that emerged all over the thread. I also included some sort of “proponent” even if the idea was shared or proposed by multiple users. This is why I didn’t link to a specific post.

So, here is the foor for thoughts that emerged on this thread

Suggestions:

• Mobile theme
• SEO Optimisation
• Strategic Targets in order to  push Bitcointalk as a reference “brand” for bitcoin (/crypto)information into the mind of newer generations further that it currently does.[@ddmrddmr]
• Revive altcoin Board to Attract more newbies primarily interested in quick profit to later convert them to bitcoin [@rikafip]
• I think there is the potential for a lot of discussion around things such The current structure of the altcoin section does a poor job at facilitating conversations around topics like smart contracts, stablecoins, ERC20 coins (and similar), and NFTs (this may be temporary).[@PrimeNumber7]
• Refine Evil Fee to avoid false positive.
  
• A system that has a means of punishing the offenders or disobedience, should have a means of rewarding the law abiding members. When there are no means of rewarding goodness, it will surely decline. [@KingsDen]
• Focus on branding and corporate advertising (@ChuckBuck, stripped of sarcasm). Necessary evil to keep Bitcointalk relevant and finance more money intellectually relevant part of the forum, I might add.

This is only what has surfaced until now. Feel free of course continuing proposing or discussing everything proposed so far.

I hope @theymos, even without commenting, is reading this.
We talked about and analysed all the forum weakness. But I am sure what is the biggest driving force and asset behind during these last 12 years: the community.

According to some of the readers of this thread, Bitcointalk is losing steam because of the following reasons:

• Lack of SEO. Bitcointalk.org results are buried in tha back pages [@NeuroticFish]
• Automated payment for posts on other platform[Citation needed] [@NeuroticFish]
• In the last 12 years, community spirit has changed since Satsohi created it: it’s no longer a transnational free spirits community, but some bunch of people looking at bitcoin as a “Get rich quick scheme. As opposed to a “don’t get poor slowly'' scheme. [@JetCash]
• Declining quality of posts [@ddmrddmr]
• Lack of mobile theme [@almost everyone]
• Hostility toward new members [@Daniel91]
• Staticness, or too slowly evolving forum experience [@CryptopreneurBrainboss]
• It’ a natural evolution of the userbase who moves on, not replenished by other members. [@dkbit98]
  the forum is dying - and perhaps that's deserved / inevitable. [@ AdolfinWolf]

As a newcomer to the community, I have also participated in the suggestions and imagination of a small partner built by the forum App;

• 1. When people start to move from the PC to the mobile phone, we are bound to make some changes. This change conforms to the intentions of the people, and builds an app with the original intention of maintaining high quality in the forum, and joins some groups. The group function allows users in various countries and regions to communicate effectively.
• 2. Set up some reward mechanisms for high-quality posts, so that everyone here is not only spiritually driven, but also rewarded.
• 3. Set up a group function so that everyone can learn and communicate effectively in this group. I have to say that the communication method 10 years ago should now be added with some diversified functions, and more young people have also joined in. The level of our life is increasing in all aspects, to meet some of our delays and misses due to timeliness. Your good ideas and good friends will be more beneficial to push the forum forward.
• 4. The app can be launched in stages and recruit volunteers from the Bitcoin community to participate in the development. I think only friends here can do what we want.
• 5. We come from different countries and regions. We need to overcome language barriers and expressions to get effective communication. I think a large number of partners have encountered the same problem.
• 6. Offline communication is also a very important link. It will be warmer than online communication. We can regularly send offline communication meetings so that friends who love Bitcoin can meet and interact, so that this group can be more powerful and affect More people join the cause of building the forum. Of course, my ideal is to be able to show up a Bitcoin tour of the Holy Land, where Bitcoin can be used to pay for anything, hotels, museums, convention centers, restaurants. . . .
• 7. This friend said very well @fillippone What is the biggest driving force and asset in the past 12 years: community. Regardless of whether it is a community giving back forum or a forum giving back to the community, what should we do to give full play to the power of the community.
• 8. Some boring sections of the community can be removed.

As a newcomer, I think I shouldn't talk so much, but I really love Bitcoin, love this place, and love the people here, so I'm sorry to say too much, please forgive me.

[ChuckBuck]

• Focus on branding and corporate advertising

Thank you for compiling this valuable information!

I also want to add a little more, this forum used to explode between 2016-2018, what was the cause of that explode? It is the strong rise of Bitcoin along with a series of altcoins created, but it was in the last year that Bitcoin also surged again and rose higher than ever, is this forum really as explosive as before? Obviously we can see a difference, a big difference between the number of users at these two points in time, the answer we have above, but the real solution is still a difficult question 

[BITCOIN4X]

~Snip

It looks like you've summed it up pretty well from all the poster responses in this thread and all the point you've inferred are mostly real from this forum and we can't deny that.

For newbie, I've made several attempt to encourage people I know to learn about bitcoin and more from this forum. Most of them are not interested in contributing due to strict rule that make it difficult for them to develop themselve and their account but they are only interested in trading and becoming bounty hunter.

It is undeniable that most newbie are only seen as poster who just fill in all their post history with report on social media assignment in the bounty thread. They are interested in money compared to knowledge and in my opinion only 10 out of 100 or maybe lower than newbie it seem like people are willing to learn about bitcoin if we go through their post history.

[darklus123]

It looks like you've summed it up pretty well from all the poster responses in this thread and all the point you've inferred are mostly real from this forum and we can't deny that.

For newbie, I've made several attempt to encourage people I know to learn about bitcoin and more from this forum. Most of them are not interested in contributing due to strict rule that make it difficult for them to develop themselve and their account but they are only interested in trading and becoming bounty hunter.

It is undeniable that most newbie are only seen as poster who just fill in all their post history with report on social media assignment in the bounty thread. They are interested in money compared to knowledge and in my opinion only 10 out of 100 or maybe lower than newbie it seem like people are willing to learn about bitcoin if we go through their post history.

Has and always been the problem especially if you are in a country where people are less knowledgeable. Here are my common experiences when trying to convince the people around me of what needs to be done or to know before investing in crypto.

Crypto is somehow being recognized more in my home country and a lot are trying to test their luck in this environment. I suggested visiting this forum so that they will be involved in a community where they can get a lot of information. Sadly 90% of those became less interested upon checking the forum for the first time and would prefer discussing things in social media (eg: FB). While the other 5% are swallowed in the bounty hunting section.

The sad part of that 90% is that almost all got scammed because of the "ignorance" and focusing more on the "quick rich scheme". I ask some of them why they feel that being here is not worth their time. The response that I am getting is they think that most of the articles in here are crap (I can't somehow blame them tho).