Topic: Decreasing number of forum users - page 2. (Read 708 times)

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.

The numbers have decrease but if its the quality members that are here, that stats would be alright, the forum will survive even with more market struggle.
I think the main reason is the market itself, once this market turn into bullish, for sure we will see some surge of visitors in this forum.

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).

 I also noticed this, the diminution is clearly visible. For the cause, my think go to that users are discouraged by the merit system, the older members  no longer find what's interesting to do, so they come less frequently to the forum..    !  What else ?

Remember that the introduction of merit system must have also had a great impact...especially from 2018 onwards.... that coupled with the bear market are the most likely contributing factors.

With the introduction of merit system, the account farmers slowly started to leave the scene.
To make matters wosre for them... there was introduction of the new bump rule. I think such things have a significant effect too, thou most accounts that stop logging in are usually alts and farmed accounts.

I also remember around may this year, lots of members were banned much more than any other time i have been in this forum.

Personally, i think Bitcointalk is still going strong.

I see a lot of users are now reporting cheaters and scammers.
Even farm accounts are reported and banned.
Not so easy to register on the forum, as many ip addresses are flagged as evil now.
All this is a factor on reducing number of members.

Quality is important, Not quantity.

a question about the new forum: are we going to be able to migrate our account when the new forum is released or our account will be automatically moved there or do we have to start from the at the beginning again?

As others have already stated, there is a high level of correlation between general market interest and forum activity. This has happened before in past bear markets, perhaps not to the same degree, but the trend is clear.

I agree with users above that decreasing number of users is related with current situation in crypto and bear market. But I think there is one more reason related with merit system. Before merit system huge number of people were signing up here just to rank up quickly and earn good money here. There was huge farms of accounts, people had 10, 20 or 30 accounts each. Now when we have merit system it become almost impossible for them to rank up and most of them just gave up.
And @Welsh have good point. Now many people prefer social networks, chatting platforms like Telegram, Discord over forums. Forums becomes into a bit outdated things. But these new platforms don't have historic value. It's good to discuss cureent things. but just after few weeks or months nobody will not remember what your wrote. While on Bitcointalk forum we are still discussing what satoshi, Hal or other historical Bitcoin personality wrote 10 or 8 years ago.

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. However, forums will always have a place within a niche for worthy more in depth conversations. Reddit has a community of karma whores with mostly low value content. However, that's by design. Reddit wasn't created for good conversations which can be read back throughout the years. No doubt that both Twitter, and Reddit have their own little community within their sub reddits none have a community like a forum can have.

However, this is the forum that everyone will know about, why? Because it has a history, and a good one at that. Satoshi created the forum when he was looking to launch Bitcoin, and for that reason alone people will want to become part of its history. I like to think we've moved past being reliant on Satoshi's name though, and have made a name for ourselves. Bitcointalk is where you come to discuss anything Bitcoin uncensored. I can't name another forum which treats freedom of speech how this forum treats it. Its a very rare thing to find these days.

The introduction of the merit system definitely played a part in weeding out the plethora of alternate account farms that were going on at the time. This forum has become a place where you have to work hard to be among the higher ranks. This isn't a place like Reddit or Twitter where you can get your followers, and upvotes from nothing. The forum has its own ecosystem, and its own little community.

The majority of regular posters on the forum I can name, and I quite like that. However, as others have suggested when Bitcoin hits new peaks Bitcointalk.org will always gather more temporary traffic. This is obvious by the amount of registrations, posts and reports the moderators have. This is testament enough that Bitcointalk will forever be relevant, and the place to come. If new users of Bitcoin are getting interested in Bitcoin then you can bet your buck they'll come to Bitcointalk at some point.

I think suchmoon is onto something.  If the number is decreasing, it's likely because all the ban evaders and bounty abusers are gradually being weeded out.  Some of them probably had dozens of sockpuppets.  A small number of genuine users will naturally be far more engaging in a discussion than most of the accounts that have been purged would be.

Quality > Quantity

The bitcoin price is kind of boring at the moment, it’s not exciting & there aren’t a lot of genuine noobs coming into crypto atm so this is reflected in the number of genuine new people finding this place & starting an account.

When the price begins to move significantly upwards after the halving bitcoin will be exciting again & lots of average joe’s will flood here after reading/seeing about bitcoin via mainstream media outlets.

Activity here is always lower mid cycle, don’t worry about it. The noobs will come in their masses when the price heats up again.

Yep and yep. 

If bitcoin starts shooting to the moon again and we get a market like 2017, you can be sure people will be flocking to bitcointalk for various reasons.  I think the relative dearth of signature campaigns in 2018-19 might also be a factor.  It seemed for a time that they might even die off, but I've seen some new ones get started this year.  When bitcoin spikes, people start wanting to earn it through those campaigns again.

And the ICO market had to have had an effect on traffic here.  I've heard the whole scene is almost dead, but I'm not sure about that.  But it's definitely not like it was in 2017 where bounty hunters were seemingly everywhere and those stupid ICOs were coming out almost daily.  Bitcointalk is still going strong, and I'm not concerned that it's in jeopardy or anything.

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

I doubt they are switching, maybe they are just not communicating now that the market is down, they want a bull market, that's what the interest is about, if they are interested in a platform to simply just communicate, it'll definitely be this forum.

And it's all good, because without the stats you wouldn't even notice anything is wrong, if there is actually

I like @ Coin-1’s thread that displays some nice charts derived from the same data source: [Chart] Bitcointalk statistics on impression counts for ads. The last update was made a couple of months ago, but the charts cover from 2017 onwards.

I think you could reduce the number of users by 80% and not see a difference. Start with the bounty board.

Come to think of it, that's what most likely happened since December 2017.

The new forum will be more modern, and perhaps more compatible with mobile devices, but it's still a forum.  I don't know that the "modern" aspect is such a big factor that it will turn things around.  If you look at the traffic rates, they seem to coincide with the price of bitcoin.  The more BTC is talked about the in the news the more traffic the forum receives.

The other point one should consider, is an increase in traffic something the forum should be pursuing?  

I think it's the bear market too..
More like the spike in new users back then was due to the crazy bull market we were in at the time.. Including ETH/ICOs..

I used to think about that too but clearly It is all about the bitcoin price.

If there is one thing I learned from this forum, it is best to buy when nobody is interested in bitcoin which is now.

Forum? It will do just fine.