Is Bitcointalk.org losing user base?

[Pmalek]

<Snip>

I have heard lots of good things about TryNinja's and LoyceV's bots. I personally use LoyceV's. The only reason I opted for that one is because I don't feel like using Telegram. TryNinja's bot (just like most other alternatives) sends notifications over Telegram.

Having a notification system is another feature that the forum needs to change and improve with the release of the new forum software. Such solutions should be made in-house I think.

[1715224766]

1715224766

[Upgrade00]

one of my friends quit because she envied others for their merit coz she had zero. Though I do think her words really don't deserve merit, her confidence wasn't satisfied anyway.

With such mindset, it's little wonder she found it difficult to get merits. Merits are of little value besides forum rank, a lot of members got airdropped lots of merit during the merit launch but have very little knowledge about the forum or Bitcoin.

The merit mechanism is to encourage everyone to communicate more and express their inner thoughts. No matter if your idea is right or wrong, if you express your opinion and are useful to others, others will give you merit.

Merits were implemented to ensure only those contributing quality content rank up, thereby discouraging spam content all over the forum, it was later followed by the newbie restriction, which was implemented for the same purpose.

[actmyname]

Such solutions should be made in-house I think.

Searching "quote [name]" works perfectly fine as a forum alternative.

Is it better? No.

[anotherdayyyy]

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Thank you, KingsDen and LoyceV, I appreciate you help. having stayed in this forum for almost one year but just got to know how to check responses quickly.

~

I'll take your advice and use LoyceV's.

~

sure, my friend is a little utilitarian, vain and ambitious. She loves Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency field. sometimes she deems her posts profound and helpful but gets no merit, I know she had thought about the topic seriously...maybe that upset her. She said she felt ignored and her voice wasn't heard. personally, her work really preoccupied her and stripped her of the time spent in here. As far as I know, she's still skimming this forum nearly every week, the best place to get a glimpse of what is happening in crypto world!

[fillippone]

<Snip>

I have heard lots of good things about TryNinja's and LoyceV's bots. I personally use LoyceV's. The only reason I opted for that one is because I don't feel like using Telegram. TryNinja's bot (just like most other alternatives) sends notifications over Telegram.

Having a notification system is another feature that the forum needs to change and improve with the release of the new forum software. Such solutions should be made in-house I think.

On the other hand, using @tryninja bot could lead you to the infamous "hairy wrist gallery":

#meritislife: how to be notified on a smartband of merits and mentions

We are open for new members!

[Pmalek]

She said she felt ignored and her voice wasn't heard.

That can happen, but people don't ignore or overlook people intentionally unless there is a good reason for that. If you or she feel like she has good posts that haven't been merited, tell her to take a look at the Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source thread. She can report her own content or you can do it for her. Merit sources often browse look there in search for posts that deserve to be merited. 

[skarais]

She said she felt ignored and her voice wasn't heard. personally, her work really preoccupied her and stripped her of the time spent in here. As far as I know, she's still skimming this forum nearly every week, the best place to get a glimpse of what is happening in crypto world!

Merit source are not blind or deaf to see and hear the sound quality of post made by forum users. So far there are 111 merit source on the forum and it would be hard to accept if he said he was ignored. There are several reason why he feel neglected by the merit source are:
1. He doesn't have a habit of posting on thread or board that interest the merit source.
2. Post quality is not appropriate.
3. His post was buried by thousand of other users' post.
4. There is no automatic detection to judge the quality of forum users' post, and
5. The merit system is not moderated.

pmalek's advice will be very useful to him and you can also take part if your friend is not brave enough to do it himself. So, of the many other reason why the forum's user base is declining, the merit system is also one of the reason.

[Pokapoka124]

sure, my friend is a little utilitarian, vain and ambitious. She loves Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency field. sometimes she deems her posts profound and helpful but gets no merit, I know she had thought about the topic seriously...maybe that upset her. She said she felt ignored and her voice wasn't heard. personally, her work really preoccupied her and stripped her of the time spent in here. As far as I know, she's still skimming this forum nearly every week, the best place to get a glimpse of what is happening in crypto world!

Merits is not the cornerstone of the forum. The merit system was introduced to reduce spamming, the only place where rank is really visible is the service board where one can apply to work for sig campaigns. I'm happy to hear your friend still visits the forum frequently that shows her intentions are true. I understand some of us are ambitious and always want to win, the urge to be at the top drives the need for merits. If you feel your posts are good enough to have merits you can report it. There is a thread for that. When she sees how far you've gone she will be encouraged to continue contributing her quota to the forum.

[aysg76]

sure, my friend is a little utilitarian, vain and ambitious. She loves Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency field. sometimes she deems her posts profound and helpful but gets no merit, I know she had thought about the topic seriously...maybe that upset her. She said she felt ignored and her voice wasn't heard. personally, her work really preoccupied her and stripped her of the time spent in here. As far as I know, she's still skimming this forum nearly every week, the best place to get a glimpse of what is happening in crypto world!

See this forum still has huge user base and many posts and threads are being made on daily basis.For example i made a post in B&H section just one or two days ago and if there is no reply to that post it will automatically shift towards the next page and get burried under the piles of other posts and your chances of getting merits get reduced.The other thing is sometimes we like our own posts and that why we have made the same post but other members or merit sources don't find it suitable for merit worthy or similar threads have made multiple times so she won't get any benefit for the same.She is enthusiastic and contributing to the forum which is good thing but your post quality should also be matched with that dedication and sincerity.But if she feels ignored then what you or she can do is :

Report the quality posts in Re: [self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source

On page 31 you could find that @mv1986 report the post of @RainbowKun in this thread and merit sources and other likes his philosophical ideas about bitcoin and now he has gained 224 merits in total.Sometimes member don't notice such posts and you can't say you are on ignore list so this type of thread can help her.

You can pm any merit source to have history check of your posts and if they find any worthy or quality posts made by you merits will be delivered to you.

Made more posts in some more sections like B&H along with local sub-boards so that your post can be noticed by more members.

[skarais]

Hello everyone, I'm quite curious about the decline in the forum's user base so far. I'd like to get a little idea to find out the specific forum user base for the 11 most active local boards right now. Thank you Tryninja for providing a great resource for collecting this data from Ninjastic.space. I think all this data is not 100% accurate as some users from other local boards may be able to post on other local boards due to their language needs and skills. This is just an illustration to find out some user base in the selected board locale from 1 January 2021 - 31 July 2021. There are many untracked users because they are not active in the local board, so the accuracy of the forum's user base currently experiencing decline is not fully reflected in the data this.

Calculation time format.

Code:

Local Board Pyccкий (Russian) & Child Board with 2806 user active

Local Board Türkçe (Turkish) & Child Board with 1149 user active

Local Board Deutsch (German) & Child Board with 1124 user active

Local Board Indonesia & Child Board with 531 user active

Local Board Español (Spanish) & Child Board with 455 user active

Local Board Français & Child Board with 442 user active

Local Board Italiano (Italian) & Child Board with 380 user active

Local Board Português (Portuguese) & Child Board with 315 user active

Local Board Pilipinas & Child Board with 311 user active

Local board العربية (Arabic) & Child board with 228 user active

Local Board Hrvatski (Croatian) & Child Board with 130 user active

I'm not displaying the names and number of posts they made because I have to post 3 or 4 lines in a row because the characters are limited at 64K. So I only count the active user base on the local board for the last 7 months. What do you think, should we be responsible for on the decline of that user base?

[ccFOUND]

This forum may have lost users but those were the ones who didn't have the appetite to handle the merits earning pressure with good mindset. Other users either left crypto completely because they got banned here or couldn't earn through their accounts, or some left this forum as they became too much busy in their life. All left here are a part of a very low number of people who are active among the total users here. When we see armies (farms) of people who do it just for the sake of money and when they get busted, the number goes very big so there are many more alt accounts to be exposed, and we believe some of them have already left this forum.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

The thing is, just looking at that data, we cannot conclude if there is indeed a decline in the user base on those local boards. We’d really need to be able to compare the numbers in that timeframe to the numbers in the prior semester (although there may be some stationality). Ideally though, it would be better to see the monthly evolution in those numbers.

Another thing to bear in mind is that "active" is a relative concept here. By active, I believe we are seeing here the number of distinct users that have posted on a given local board in a certain timeframe. I’ve checked a couple of boards, and the detailed data displays that over half of those accounted for have either 1 or 2 posts only.
It could be interesting to separate those above a certain threshold per unit of time frame (i.e. month) to those below. For example, above or below or less than 2 posts per month.

I don’t expect anyone to draw the above complete set of data and chart it, but it would provide a more detailed insight into the local board situation (I follow post a basic post count , but not the number of distinct posters, which is rather interesting to see).

[skarais]

~~~

True, it would probably be much more accurate if this calculation was done for a monthly timeframe as opposed to 6-12 months. The local poster data overview above is only to find out which local board has the most user base in the last 7 months. My current focus is the Indonesian Local Board which I update every month. I don't see it as something that should be our responsibility to maintain and increase the user base, but we really have to support them to stay as far as they are interested in using this forum.

[fillippone]

@ddmrddmr has just updated his dashboard with the now complete August data.
We can now look at how the user count evolved over this last month:



Again, I am using users involved in the merit system as a proxy of "active users" worth of consideration. Trolls/bot/alts not gaining a single merit in a month are not worth considering as a "userbase".

We have a small correction in the trend. Of course August is a summer month, with many people still on holiday, a situation of course is not favourable to posting on an internet forum!
Hope we can revert the trend!

[fillippone]

Jameson Lopp noticed something about Bitcointalk on his 2021 review:

Bitcoin 2021 Annual Review



He also stated:

I myself abandoned BitcoinTalk many years ago because I felt it was hard to find signal through the noise. It looks like user growth on that site continues to be modest.

It might be time to advertise him to give the forum another try after the introduction of the merit system?

[PrimeNumber7]

Per his numbers, the number of users increased by ~17% last year. This is compared to ~10% in the preceding year, and is the highest since 2018 when the number of users increased by ~83%.

He described user growth as "continuing to be modest". I am not sure I would agree with that statement.

[BITCOIN4X]

It might be time to advertise him to give the forum another try after the introduction of the merit system?

The merit system has managed to grow a quality user base on forum with much higher quality discussion. Unlike the years before the merit system was introduced or maybe, but now we can find hundreds of quality users more easily engaging in interesting discussion. I agree on this, he just needs to review bitcointalk after the merit system was introduced since 2018.

[fillippone]

He described user growth as "continuing to be modest". I am not sure I would agree with that statement.

He’s probably comparing the growth ratio with the one registered on other social media as Reddit, for example, where user growth has been 100% on r/bitcoin.


I tweeted to him saying to give our forum a second chance. I doubt he will change his mind.

[LoyceV]

It might be time to advertise him to give the forum another try after the introduction of the merit system?

I have no idea who this is, but his logic has a flaw: the total number of registered users doesn't mean anything.

[IadixDev]

I would easily agree with him here i always been avid forum / irc / mailing user, in itself the forum format is ok for me, wouldnt mind a few bigger buttons for mobile but its still useable.

But yeah few years back there used to be deep conversation about fondementals of economic laws, bitcoin openned the way to radically rethink the economy of internet, bring up so many discussion on distributed network, privacy, cryptography, economic flow etc that were really interesting mind blowing and revolutionary.

Now mostly what you see is people with adverstising everywhere racing to get some coin by shilling some online casinos.

Let say you come into a meeting and everyone is wearing an hat or t shirt with some adverstising on it trying to compete to be the most visible only to gain some monney.. who has any intererst in reading that   Its the kind of content that has a direct flow from my letter box to the trash bin usually no 

Only about investment which bitcoin was never about to begin with chasing the golden goose eventually stabbing each others.

I mostly left the forum when shelby was banned, he surely had some issues but was still very good at bringing level headed discussions. Now surely i miss this sort of discussion compared to which one to invest, when moon, shilling online casinos.

For me it seems fairly obvious this policy of making the forum this way is not going to make it very attractive. Other than for people seeking to make a few bucks out of each others back which can only last for so long.