Decline in OT activity

[Bootstoots]

As I think we’re all aware, the activity of OT has been declining for quite a while. Back in early March, I decided to quantify the decline. I forgot about it until coming across a thread on ths subject in IALS, and I finally got around to putting the data into Excel and charting it today.

I went to page 10 of OT, then page 20, and so on at 10-page intervals all the way to the beginning. I wrote down the date of the last post in the last thread on each of these pages, which gave me a measure of how long it took to generate 450 threads in OT. I assumed that the thread creation rate is roughly equal to the thread abandonment rate (with a time delay, but I’m ignoring that for now).

The results were pretty alarming. It now takes about 3 months to create 450 threads. By way of comparison, throughout the entire period from late 2002 to early 2008, the average was consistently about 3 weeks. It then tailed off slowly but steadily over the past 7 years. OT is now as inactive as it's been since 2001, only a year after the site was established in its current form. Our activity has declined by a factor of more than 4, from 20/day at the beginning of 2008 to less than 5/day at the beginning of this year, and is probably still falling. It is now as inactive as it’s ever been since late 2001, when the forum was a year old in its current form.

Here’s are rough thread creation averages (threads per day) for 2007-14 and a chart of OT activity from January 2007 to March 2015. I haven’t yet entered earlier data into Excel; what I have in my notebook shows a rapid climb to mid-2002 and a roughly steady plateau lasting to early 2008.

2007 20.08
2008 18.51
2009 13.64
2010 11.57
2011 9.51
2012 7.71
2013 6.20
2014 4.84

Spoiler Chart of thread creation rate :

There are several things to discuss here. I’ll throw out some possible questions:

• What is your opinion of the decline in OT activity?
• Why is this happening, in your opinion? Feel free to mention any possible factors, including moderation as long as the discussion is general and mentions no specific cases.
• Does it bother you that the forum isn’t as active as it used to be, or do you prefer a more sedate posting rate?
• Is this a site-wide phenomenon?
• Do you have any suggestions for slowing or reversing this trend?
• Did I pick a useful measure of OT activity?

This thread is entirely my idea and isn’t “official” in any way. Discuss!

 

[cardgame]

I think it's safe to say that the Civilization series, and as a result the entire forum were at the height of popularity around the start of your chart. Naturally this drew in people to the OT. Thereafter there is a natural decay... perhaps moderation changes and OT split drove some away, but the chart seems pretty smooth for the most part. Civilization V, while successful in its own right, wasn't a Civ 4 and I think the general market has shifted away from the genre.

It does bother me a bit that things are a lot quieter, but it's not like I can blame anyone, I'm mostly on reddit these days and haven't created a thread myself for years. Speaking of reddit, it's grown a lot also since 2007 and their civ subreddit has 120k subs and 760 active users as of right now.

I think more information could help, such as posts in OT per day, or especially how many different users are posting, if you can access this data. Those are as meaningful or more than thread creation IMO.

 

[Lohrenswald]

I don't know how much this matters, but:
I have at a couple of occasions searched for the threads in OT with most replies since the beginning. And I found most of the largest threads are rather recent.
So I think maybe that while there are fewer threads, people stick longer too them these days.

 

[Bootstoots]

I don't know how much this matters, but:
I have at a couple of occasions searched for the threads in OT with most replies since the beginning. And I found most of the largest threads are rather recent.
So I think maybe that while there are fewer threads, people stick longer too them these days.

That's true. I never thought to look at that, and the effect might plausibly be pretty significant. The top 11 threads have all been posted in during the past year. The old restriction of threads to 1000 posts is likely behind much of that, though.

I think more information could help, such as posts in OT per day, or especially how many different users are posting, if you can access this data. Those are as meaningful or more than thread creation IMO.

Also a good point. I'm not sure how to access that data myself though.

 

[Kennigit]

I think it is fairly lucky that such a statistic probably still correlates well with the decline in OT activity. Because there are periods of certain posters spamming threads--whether good or completely terrible. The statistic by itself doesn't mean anything but from my own biased perspective, it seems to fit the model of decline in OT activity well. So useful by proxy in that it fits the model but would be an very poor predictive statistic.

I do not know the dates offhand, but the splits of arts and entertainment, sports, and science & technology killed a lot of threads or discussions on those topics. Combined with the advent of the chamber and the tavern discouraged the activity of a variety of forum posters (regardless of whether those posters had legitimate complaints about the forum structure or not).

The enforcement of a&e or s&t were particularly arbitrary (many active threads would be moved to a&e, but not all threads related to a&e created in OT were moved). Now they pretty much are dead so those topics just get made in OT again.

But I feel like the start of these stats were before those splits, and before some of the more active thread-creators got discouraged [whether due to the changes or just in general going inactive anyways].

As for why this trend occurred or reversing the trend, it really is just having a solid block of posters doing the work. For whatever reason (just coincidence probably), there were a large block of posters in the 2007-2009 timeframe that were ~ages 18-27 that were active in creating threads about all sorts of news, from political to otherwise, and active in participating in the threads.

There's no real reason that couldn't occur now, or even mildly trolling thread creations churning out activity. I think it's just some random in the pool of people that are around.

Certainly the user base of CFC site-wide has increased.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The decline seems to have started when I left OT as my primary posting ground for NESing....

Boots, that is pretty interesting and I commend you for your effort. I suspect that there are both internal and external reasons for change and those might be one way to break out the discussion.

Interesting questions:

*How much has the aging of OT core population of 2004-2008 has changed things.
*Has the departure of "leadership" posters over time caused others to leave? By leadership I mean posters who garnished a large following because of their strong presence for good or ill. "Fifty" is one of many examples.
*How does Civ impact OT?
*Can we overlay the rise of other similar posting opportunities (Reddit?) that may be sucking members away?

 

[Triewd]

I think it's safe to say that the Civilization series, and as a result the entire forum were at the height of popularity around the start of your chart. Naturally this drew in people to the OT. Thereafter there is a natural decay... perhaps moderation changes and OT split drove some away, but the chart seems pretty smooth for the most part. Civilization V, while successful in its own right, wasn't a Civ 4 and I think the general market has shifted away from the genre.

It does bother me a bit that things are a lot quieter, but it's not like I can blame anyone, I'm mostly on reddit these days and haven't created a thread myself for years. Speaking of reddit, it's grown a lot also since 2007 and their civ subreddit has 120k subs and 760 active users as of right now.

I think more information could help, such as posts in OT per day, or especially how many different users are posting, if you can access this data. Those are as meaningful or more than thread creation IMO.

seconded

also to support the point:

Civilization IV was released between October 25 and November 4, 2005 in North America, Europe, and Australia. The game's first expansion, Warlords, was released on July 24, 2006. The most recent expansion, Beyond the Sword, was released on July 23, 2007.

your charts suggest 2008 as the point where threads became less frequent

Its quite simple really: people did not like Civ 5 at least your core audience did not, I have civ 4 and all of its expansions but I have no intention of getting civ 5 due to its considerable bad points heard from people I trust.

I have only been here I month so I have little further to offer.

EDIT: Reddit is a good reason you can even cite steam boards there are 500+ active threads there now.

 

[Lillefix]

Of the 50 topics on the first page 18 are of the type: daily charts, what are you reading/watching etc., babe thread and so on. I sometimes look at them but they don't really interest me. Although the reading thread is a great place for finding good books.

 

[Bootstoots]

One comment about whether or not this is a useful measure: I agree that there are better ones. I picked thread creation mostly because it was easy to measure and probably correlates passably well with overall activity rates. Anybody who knows how we might get better or more interesting data should say so.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I don't want to say "I told you so" but, I told you so.

People don't discuss things because they aren't allowed to actually discuss things. There's a narrow frame of acceptable dialogue, and outside of that if the moderators don't shut down the discourse then other posters do and the mods step back and let it happen. There's no system for dealing with passive-aggressive trolls, so the calm trolls drive away the passionate debaters because the mods only target strict breaches of etiquette.

The result is that the people who made this forum are tired of being treated this way, and leave. I predicted this years ago, before the Chamber and Tavern split even happened. I'm sad to say that it's coming true, but there it is.

 

[CavLancer]

These days its facebook, twitter, etc that capture folks. I'd say you are actually doing pretty good as imo the other game related forums have declined even more.

Perhaps there's a clique mindset among the posters who mostly reply to the in crowd. If new posters get no response then... How many folks you gave making a few posts and then vanishing forever?

Moderation...while it has eased quite a bit there is still no discussion of moderator decisions. This is a problem, believe it or not. Gives a constrained feel to the place. Uphold the rules, don't freak out if someone disagrees with you, just let freedom prevail over fear. Being able to state an opinion about moderation makes people feel like they belong to something. Not being able to stand up for ones pov is the pits. I recall years ago getting banned from the place for saying that Italy didn't keep its international agreements, or some such. The high moral response kept me away for years. "It didn't have to be like this etc" Come on, I had made 1 post and got banned for it. Still not happy about that, and this is the first time I've even tried to resond to the event in public. That's not good.

Whatever you do don't try to reverse the decline by stopping moderation all together. You will get a temporary boost in traffic as trolls and non trolls go at it. Then the non trolls say the heck with this and leave, such as myself from another site I posted at for a decade. The trolls subsequently get bored trolling each other and go to greener pastures. All you have left are a few die hard trolls complaining about how slow its gotten.

You could also email posters who have quit and have a set date when everyone comes back to greet old friends. 'Fiesta Day' perhaps. Some might stick around.

I would try...

to introduce a 'be nice to new folks and enter into discussions with them' initiative.

allow discussion of moderator actions.

uphold the rules of the site, don't let chaos prevail.

Fold history into the OT. The site isn't big enough any more to warrant division. People who don't see the history threads will now do so and react to them, and visa versa.

 

[Bootstoots]

I don't want to say "I told you so" but, I told you so.

People don't discuss things because they aren't allowed to actually discuss things. There's a narrow frame of acceptable dialogue, and outside of that if the moderators don't shut down the discourse then other posters do and the mods step back and let it happen. There's no system for dealing with passive-aggressive trolls, so the calm trolls drive away the passionate debaters because the mods only target strict breaches of etiquette.

The result is that the people who made this forum are tired of being treated this way, and leave. I predicted this years ago, before the Chamber and Tavern split even happened. I'm sad to say that it's coming true, but there it is.

Is there any reasonable way to deal with calm, passive-aggressive trolling? I can't think of how to do that without shutting down even more discussion than we already do.

Also, was it better at any time in the past in your opinion, and if so, what decisions were made that led us to the current situation?

 

[Gucumatz]

Question for the longer-term members here, who was fifty? I know his name-sake chat exists that some of you use, was he just a vocal poster on the likes of Dommy/MobBoss?
---------

As for thread creation, I feel like there hasn't been as many new threads about things the smaller things that happen in the world [IE no one created a thread when Jon Stewart/Colbert announced they were leaving CC, no one created a thread when the Saudis began (and have now recently ended) their Yemeni campaign, no one created a thread on the Tsarnaev trial, etc. and other "smaller" threads that could have been created about some interesting smallish events went unauthored).

I feel like discussion has become more centralized around a certain couple of generalized topics, at least thats my take on it.

 

[Triewd]

If you want political topics I can certainly oblige but you will not like my politics....

 

[GenMarshall]

For me, I'm just too hesitant to voice my opinions without getting flamed or bashed. Plus there have been topics which have been done to death.

Question for the longer-term members here, who was fifty?

He was a poster in CFC who frequented OT a lot many years and moons ago.

 

[Hygro]

Total posts would be interesting: how much is because threads get longer faster?

I think the main thing that's changed is that forums used to have monopoly power on spreading good knowledge fast. Now we have many platforms that share that space.

 

[Narz]

What killed it was the stupid separation of OT forums. I bounced for a couple of years after that happened & it clearly has not rebounded.

 

[Narz]

Question for the longer-term members here, who was fifty?

Some dick who started a chatroom (where the forum's lonelier members would congregate) & would regularly organize trolling.

 

[Narz]

I don't want to say "I told you so" but, I told you so.

People don't discuss things because they aren't allowed to actually discuss things. There's a narrow frame of acceptable dialogue, and outside of that if the moderators don't shut down the discourse then other posters do and the mods step back and let it happen. There's no system for dealing with passive-aggressive trolls, so the calm trolls drive away the passionate debaters because the mods only target strict breaches of etiquette.

The result is that the people who made this forum are tired of being treated this way, and leave. I predicted this years ago, before the Chamber and Tavern split even happened. I'm sad to say that it's coming true, but there it is.

There are WAY fewer trolls than their used to be. I don't know if you remember how childish & stupid this place used to be for a few years.

I agree though that there is still too strict moderation. I left for a few months after I could not start a suicide-presentation-support thread.

Maybe make the minimum age 16 or something & then moderators can treat people like adults & allow them to discuss issues passionately without stepping it to close threads that get "out of hand" (i.e. : someone's feelings may get hurt or real issues come up).

I really don't mind the no swearing or no talking about sex or drugs (ok the 2nd bit is annoying) but I think a more hands-off approach by mods is needed (to spark the forum's growth again) as long as there isn't intense user-specific trolling (mean-spirited & useless posts) going on.

 

[Zack]

Question for the longer-term members here, who was fifty? I know his name-sake chat exists that some of you use, was he just a vocal poster on the likes of Dommy/MobBoss?

Fifty was a lot more like Perfection than Dommy or MobBoss.