Topic: Is Bitcointalk.org losing user base? (Read 3253 times)

Let's see what has changed from July 2021 to now. You can compare this data from bpip.org to find out some.

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There has been an increase in the number of users who registered their accounts on the forum from July 18, 2021 to today where there have been around 75,244 new profiles registered since then. Meanwhile, the active user base in the last 3 months has decreased from 122,470 in July 2021 to 93,906 users. Decreasing the base like this depends on the user's own interest in using the forum, they can be active at any time which affects the number without or doing activities. I think the addition of new users can be expected to continue to happen with or without bitcointalk social media like youtube.

I haven't looked at the stats to see how much we have increased or reduced in terms of newbies joining the forum. Bitcointalk social media pages online aren't really active that could be a reason for a decline. Some of the old members who were here from day one aren't posting much anymore. With the Bitcointalk Show on YouTube I'm sure we will be blowing waves soon. I just watched the second episode. I'm eager to see what's next

If it's not on Bitcointalk, I probably won't read it. Bitcoin isn't about "famous people".
It's kinda funny that he complains on Twitter about "signal to noise" on Bitcointalk. That means he prefers an algorithm that decides what he gets to read, instead of making that choice for himself.

That might be true, but I don't think the two numbers are necessarily apples-to-apples. Subscribing to r/bitcoin causes the r/bitcoin sub to be added to the user's feed on their reddit account. To my knowledge, you do not need to subscribe to r/bitcoin in order to post/comment there (you do need a reddit account). If someone is creating a bitcointalk account, it is generally because they want to write a post for some reason. It is possible to read bitcointalk without creating an account (there are many people who read bitcointalk without creating an account -- this is something I did before I created my account).

In any event, theymos is in charge of both r/bitcoin and bitcointalk.

I like all the work Jameson Lopp is doing for Bitcoin, but I didn't notice he tweeted about bitcointalk.
It's real question how many of this new registered users are real genuine users, and how many are bots, spammers and trolls.
That number should probably be reduced with number of banned users to get a better picture of stats, including number of active and inactive users.

Here is one idea for contemplation, why not make one interesting interview with Jameson Lopp, and who better to do the job than our very own BitcoinTalkShow, who just released second episode few days ago.

omg... Have you been living under the rock, or maybe you have been drinking a lot (alcoholic beverages) again? Only around 40% this time  
Type Jameson Lopp in search engine and you will find his website, most famous for stress testing metal backup plates, and collecting Bitcoin resources for years.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Jameson Lopp noticed something about Bitcointalk on his 2021 review:

Bitcoin 2021 Annual Review



He also stated:


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

@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!

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.

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).

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.

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.

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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?

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.

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.

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.

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.