Topic: Decreasing number of forum users (Read 753 times)

Some forum members made so much effort to reduce number of users by banning users for "plagiatrism" and similar offences, so why would we complain when user base start to drop?

Same...


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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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


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.

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).

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.

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

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.

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.

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 ).

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

In Meta, tables with the merit & trust statistics are often discussing, but other important information is overlooked.

Bitcointalk has a summary where periodically published the data on how many visitors on the forum: https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

When you compare with previous years, then you can see that the amount of traffic on Bitcointalk fell to a breaking point.


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.