Is the forum growing?

[deusexlumina]

Curious to hear the opinions from regulars, newcomers and the mods/admins about how the usage of the forum has changed in recent years. Is it growing? Is is shrinking? Has it stayed the same size but people are using it more?

Why am I curious? The other day I was taking a look at my social media usage, and decided I'd had enough of certain sites and chose to de-activate them. The forums, however, have pretty much always been a positive experience for me and I hope to continue to use them for years to come.

I appreciate the lock down situation has probably amplified usage in recent months, but this is more of a general question and an outlook of where it might sit in a few more years time.

 

[MissChief]

well, @I DON'T fancy boys , The forum is usually growing in users, but growing and developing in the right way I'm, not so sure.

 

[moon man]

Not sure about usage but since lock down especially the quality of the forum has plummeted , it has declined steadily over the years ,imho . pointless doing any post with any thought or intelligence , gravitas stick to what colour socks do you wear or slimier and you will get some replies ,maybe when the schools fully open the iq will rise again ,feel like a racehorse amongst donkeys in some threads ,just saying

 

[arknor]

Not sure about usage but since lock down especially the quality of the forum has plummeted , it has declined steadily over the years ,imho . pointless doing any post with any thought or intelligence , gravitas stick to what colour socks do you wear or slimier and you will get some replies ,maybe when the schools fully open the iq will rise again ,feel like a racehorse amongst donkeys in some threads ,just saying

you can tell someone posted a letterbox through his queen wasp and killed his dad for a living, good job hes not a shop

 

[drakulton]

There seems to be a lot more silliness... for which I'm playing a small prat.

 

[BUDFORCE]

Not sure about usage but since lock down especially the quality of the forum has plummeted , it has declined steadily over the years ,imho . pointless doing any post with any thought or intelligence , gravitas stick to what colour socks do you wear or slimier and you will get some replies ,maybe when the schools fully open the iq will rise again ,feel like a racehorse amongst donkeys in some threads ,just saying

With recent threads like these:
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/all-humans-fall-into-into-1-of-2-categories.18890193/

I can't possibly imagine what your on about?????

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

I've not met any of you in real life, but I find forums a more personal experience. That's because people actually write replies to each other.

Where on Facebook, I have mostly family and friends on there, but it seems to be mostly about accumulating "likes" rather than people interacting properly. Also, a lot of political bile gets posted on there both from the left and right, so I sometimes have to mute people.

I much prefer the forum format and I've never muted anyone on here (although I know there is that option on here).

 

[drakulton]

I've not met any of you in real life, but I find forums a more personal experience. That's because people actually write replies to each other.

Where on Facebook, I have mostly family and friends on there, but it seems to be mostly about accumulating "likes" rather than people interacting properly. Also, a lot of political bile gets posted on there both from the left and right, so I sometimes have to mute people.

I much prefer the forum format and I've never muted anyone on here (although I know there is that option on here).

Stafford is not so sunny right now. Thunder/lightning scaring the poo out of the dog.

 

[Rroff]

I see more new names in threads these days so I think in terms of activity they are growing a bit.

Overall I don't really feel like the environment has changed much, there have been some movements in different directions but in the longer term it tends to smooth back to where it was. (There has been some ways it has grown up a bit and we seem to have a broader range of posters these days but overall that has kind of balanced out).

 

[Mason-]

I think it’s just part of the political climate these days but the amount of inane, petty squabbling and point scoring has infected the majority of the internet and it’s prevalent here too. I try to as a rule now, not enter any political threads because frankly it’s quite sad, and that goes for both sides of the argument.

I also really hate how it’s always been a rule that you’re not allowed to personally insult someone. But people will get around it by saying “Well people who do <x> are complete and utter idiots”. When they know full well that the person they’re arguing has done <x>. But they’ll weasel out of it by saying “I didn’t directly call them an idiot”. It’s this sort of back handed nastiness that has been allowed to thrive on this forum that I hate. I think if mods clamped down on these back handed insults the forum would be a better place.

 

[HangTime]

I think short posts are possibly more common than they used to be - post count has probably risen but not necessarily word count. Certainly the most active threads seem to to get more replies than in yesteryear, I remember that it was extremely rare for anything to get over 10k replies, but now we have 5 threads from 2016 onwards with over 20k replies. Coronavirus has hit over 40k in three months and that's with a seperate sub-forum having been setup; the 'new' Brexit thread has nearly 20k and it seems that doesn't include an older large thread. I appreciate they are topics that impact most people and have been an issue for an extended period of time (compared to other hot topics like the London riots in 2011) but there are some other big threads too.
Football Stadium seems to have fewer threads (even pre-Covid) than it used to.

As for comments about the quality of posting, people have always moaned about that for as long as I can remember; you'll probably find people saying it's gone downhill in every year for the past 15+ years, which when compounded would imply that back in the early noughties this must have been some sort of uber-elite echelon of supreme content, which it wasn't.

I think it is less cliquey than it used to be, which potentially means there is a wider variety of active posters.

 

[Mr Blonde]

I would agree with the above in that it feels like there's more short posts these days. It also feels for me that there's more people posting off the cuff or throw away comments.

It also feels like more people are less willing to change their mind about something. In the past I feel more people could be swayed or persuaded to alter their stance on a matter if faced with a well thought out reply. These days it feels like more people have a view on a matter prior to going in to a thread, be it right or wrong, and that they're less likely to be swayed much from their initial thought on a subject, regardless of any new and valid or compelling information that might be put forward in reply. We've become more intransigent I feel.

And I for one do feel that in the main the quality of posts in the past were better. Maybe it's been a slow burning thing so as not to be too noticeable. For me in the last twenty years at least it's gone from fairly decent mark to somewhat palatable. But this is generalising. Some areas are likely better while others are not....it could be an age thing too of course.

It also feels like there are more 'David Icke' style of initial posts. The ones where any sane individual simply takes one look at them, shakes their head and goes and does something else.

 

[chrcoluk]

Dont know but it is one of the most active forums I am a member off, and the community seems more tolerant to non mainstream views as well.

Twitter and similar services declined forums a lot.

There is also reddit, but a lot of subreddits have extremely tight posting rules, some even have flowcharts you have to follow to decide whether to post or not, lots of auto moderation deleting posts etc. on there.

This forum seems to have the balance right.

 

[alchal]

There seems to be a lot more silliness... for which I'm playing a small prat.

Lol.

Plenty of good threads and much better than most social.
Just stay away from the Brexit thread and the one about George in the political chat and most are civil.

 

[LabR@t]

A pale shadow of its former glory

 

[Jimbeam3678]

Surely a mod could confirm numbers? I would imagine numbers have fallen since Facebook etc have come around. Still like it on here as generally you get a good opinions on all subjects spoken about. There are a couple of obvious exceptions

 

[BUDFORCE]

Lol.

Plenty of good threads and much better than most social.
Just stay away from the Brexit thread and the one about George in the political chat and most are civil.

Just stay out of that Speakers Corner all together.

 

[diamount]

If it has they stay out of general, a place of stagnant discussions and opinions.

 

[Smokey Deza]

Probably hard to tell given all the deleted threads people had contributed to.

 

[Mason-]

Just stay out of that Speakers Corner all together.

Squabblers Corner*