Decline in OT activity

[Birdjaguar]

Fifty, moderation in the old days, my first infraction, strange threads, all in one place.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6607299&postcount=1

If you read this 4 page thread and note the back and forth banter and the moderator response when I got "out of hand". Albeit, I only got a warning. Boots, how would you expect to moderate that thread today?

 

[sophie]

Everybody is more or less in agreement politically. All or most all of the interesting people went away.

I think age has to do with it too. Most of the regulars on OT have been around for a long time. Long enough to have seen the cycles of discussion. Very few threads are being made, but even those that are are rehashes of the same tired old topics we've been having for years now, so everybody going in knows generally how the thread is going to go. The same people are going to make (nearly verbatim) the same posts they made the last time the topic came up.

The forum is also really dated. How many forums and websites remain that ban swearing, nudity and vulgar conversation? There's not much left that CFC offers that you can't get elsewhere (such as reddit) and there are a lot of annoyances about CFC that make the barrier for entry (or barrier for switching from another platform like reddit) rather high.

For me OT simply isn't really enjoyable anymore. It's become a sort of no-fun zone. Don't look like you're enjoying yourself too much, and don't talk about anything fun, carefree, or entertaining or you'll get swatted down by the mods. The community used to keep me coming around, but now it's mostly just JR and Hygro.

 

[Azale]

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

Narz can't deal with the hard facts. OT was best when fifty (and by extension, fiftychat) was going strong.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Is homosexual penguin sex moral?

Interesting thread, not only for the topic, but to see how various interpersonal interactions have changed over the years.

As for the penguins... if it doesn't bother them, why is it any of our business?

 

[Narz]

Narz can't deal with the hard facts. OT was best when fifty (and by extension, fiftychat) was going strong.

Haha, one of the minions comes out to defend his beloved leader.

Everyone has to grow up sometime. Some folks just aren't ready yet clearly. Don't worry I'm sure you'll find another older-brother figure in your life, a craigslist ad perhaps?

 

[Gucumatz]

Because as the superior species, we have a right to decide the sexual preference of lower beings like penguins, fish, and frogs. God save the GMOs.

 

[Narz]

Strange no one has addressed the forum split. That seemed almost delibrately desgined to kill the forum :tinfoilhat:

 

[Kennigit]

I used to belong to another gaming forum 9 years ago that had a specific section of subforums for the sorts of topics that we have in A&E. They called that section of the board "Media Mosh Pit" and it included places to talk about movies, TV shows, books, comics, and had a dedicated subforum for writing and writing competitions. This area was quite far down the main index from the actual gaming (ie. "product") forums and the "off-topic" general talk area. But it was a very busy place, because people knew that this was the only place on the site where these topics were allowed. And no, this didn't kill their general talk area, even considering that politics and religion were not allowed to be discussed there (seriously). They did allow more personal threads as long as they offered scope for a more general discussion (ie. the time I mentioned getting a flu shot, and composed the OP in such a way as to steer the conversation onto the issue of vaccines in general).

Yea, but CFC didn't make A&E exclusive for A&E content, or make it more personal. All the 1-3 page A&E content related threads get posted in OT and die. Even some quality threads just don't have much content to continue going. The choice is either slap it in OT to get a little bit more participation or throw in in A&E where I don't think it gains anything in quality. Look at the scarce activity of A&E or S&T threads--they live for a little while then die out. If S&T and A&E were put back into OT, literally like 3 threads would be effected (s&t frequently asked questions, draw your own story, and nanowrimo). And I think they would change for the better- the quality won't really change if put into OT.

I'll give 2 examples- 1 S&T and 1 A&E:

1) There's actually duplicate discussion occurring on "news" related threads. E.g. a little press hype thing by skunkworks on magnetic confinement. OT and S&T. There's not really any difference between the two, because the same people are involved in both. Whether that thread was created in S&T or in OT the "shelf life" of the thread would be the same--a science discussion would occur for 3-4 pages and then just stay in the minds of those involved.

2) OT continues to get cluttered with relatively meaningless A&E threads such as a thread currently active on the upcoming Suicide Squad film. Now I created a movie thread that would be able to handle and consolidate such 1001 (movie) threads that keep popping up in OT but it did not take off. CFC never established "the place to discuss movies is here". They have a supposedly "serious" place in A&E that no one uses, and the culture is still to have 1 thread for 1 personal thought rather than have a place to collectively have personal thought discussions.

So what benefit does A&E and S&T provide? They don't increase quality and they don't really increase the longevity of the discussion. All these subforums do is decrease visibility.

They either have to be strengthened and be THE place or finally die.

 

[Bootstoots]

Fifty, moderation in the old days, my first infraction, strange threads, all in one place.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6607299&postcount=1

If you read this 4 page thread and note the back and forth banter and the moderator response when I got "out of hand". Albeit, I only got a warning. Boots, how would you expect to moderate that thread today?

That thread is pretty mild even by today's standards. It's not impossible that you or Fifty would have been infracted for the circle jerk comments, but I think a warning is really all that was needed and it's probably what I would have done in that situation too.

I think age has to do with it too. Most of the regulars on OT have been around for a long time. Long enough to have seen the cycles of discussion. Very few threads are being made, but even those that are are rehashes of the same tired old topics we've been having for years now, so everybody going in knows generally how the thread is going to go. The same people are going to make (nearly verbatim) the same posts they made the last time the topic came up.

The forum is also really dated. How many forums and websites remain that ban swearing, nudity and vulgar conversation? There's not much left that CFC offers that you can't get elsewhere (such as reddit) and there are a lot of annoyances about CFC that make the barrier for entry (or barrier for switching from another platform like reddit) rather high.

The overall aging of the forum and the lack of novelty that having very few newcomers provides is certainly a big factor behind the forum's decline. And yeah, I'm generally in agreement about the bans on swearing and some vulgar conversation: those are obviously holdovers from a time when those things were considered more offensive than they are today. I don't really know how we can compete with reddit et al. except that it's a smaller and cozier community, which is apparently becoming smaller by the day.

As for silly threads, I don't know that we shut those down especially often. Every once in a while a pure spam thread is shut down, but I don't think this has become more common at least since RD threads were introduced before the split. But then again they're rarely posted anymore compared to how often they used to be.

Finally, about nudity, not only will this not be allowed but there's another, unexpected problem that's popped up recently. Stay tuned for an announcement that will come sometime in the next couple of days, and in the meanwhile save any babe thread pictures you're attached to. I can't say more except that this is being forced on us externally and has to do with robots and Google taking over the world. I'm not kidding.

 

[Kennigit]

There's no point in saving any babe thread pictures because cutlass has just taken it upon himself to repost from reddit. It's a dying age to have a "babe" thread or a .gif thread in forums. This isn't unique to CFC, as these things are simply and widely available nowadays. Same with funny pictures, etc etc.

I mean I used to spam the babe thread with pictures from another forum when I was younger, but now that forum's thread has died off as reddit or the source material (e.g. the models/actress/dancer/singer/whoever's social media postings) pretty much fulfills those desires.

 

[Hygro]

The babe thread is cool because it's both a competition and a place where you can see the juxtaposition of poster personalities and... another side of their personalities. I felt like I learned a lot from checking in once in a while back in the day and posting a bit in the past few months.

@Owen

 

[Agent327]

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

Did I pick a useful measure of OT activity?

Without a comparable number of posts per day list, this doesn't really say anything about 'OT activity'. All we can conclude now is that there has been a decline in thread creation since 2007. That, however, is not really a useful measure of OT activity.

 

[Hygro]

I think it is, but threads do get a lot longer, faster, nowadays, so it's definitely incomplete.

 

[Narz]

Without a comparable number of posts per day list, this doesn't really say anything about 'OT activity'. All we can conclude now is that there has been a decline in thread creation since 2007. That, however, is not really a useful measure of OT activity.

I'd say it is. Without variety of subject matter to discuss the forum becomes duller. I suppose if each of the diminished # of topics had were a hotbed of activity it'd be some compensation but thats not the case, some threads on the front page have gotten longer but there have always been hot topics on page 1.

The best metric is perhaps the # of forumers viewing OT at a given time & that definitely seems to have dropped significantly. Often less than 10, late nights less than 5.

 

[Antilogic]

Don't have a lot of time to post now, but a few thoughts:

I think the thread creation rate is a good metric, total postcount would be too but I understand that might be harder to calculate unless the mods have access to some database tools.

I agree the decline in the community's activity is somewhat driven by the prominence of the Civ franchise in the gaming community. Beyond Earth brought in a small bump, but nothing like the Civ3-4 days.

I think the relative maturity of the forum (in internet years, definitely not the posters!) is also a contributing factor. A lot of us joined in the high school or college years, and many have moved on. I wish we could draw a few of those back in to keep the community alive, but when they have full time jobs and kids its hard to get them back for any length of time.

I think the lower number of threads, though, and declined overall activity may be independent of the value we take away and contribute to it. This is not the place where the exact same "debate" is played out every single thread on the contentious topic of the day, for example, but rather a place where I can talk with some old friends that I largely know about several different subjects. The new threads may be inspired by current stories, but we start at a level of familiarity with each other and a point further along in the debate, so to say, and that is unique for me on this forum as opposed to the other places where I lurk.

Don't know if that made sense.

 

[Bootstoots]

Without a comparable number of posts per day list, this doesn't really say anything about 'OT activity'. All we can conclude now is that there has been a decline in thread creation since 2007. That, however, is not really a useful measure of OT activity.

Again, I would certainly be interested if anybody wants to write a script to collect data on OT posting rate, views, and the like. I chose thread posting rates only because they are much easier to determine manually. I suspect they are a fairly good proxy for posting rate and view rate - not perfect, but passable. There has certainly not been anything close to a 4-fold increase in average thread length to make up for the 4-fold decline in new thread creation.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Measuring, counting and competition can be fun. How about adding badges for contribution to OT activity?

Most threads started in past 90 days
Most OT posts in last 90 days
Thread started in a month with the highest post count on the last day of the month

If you want people to post and start new threads, give them a reason to do so.

 

[classical_hero]

I thought it was a cyclical thing related to initial releases, but apparently, things declined right through the release of Civ V. That was the height of strict moderation, so maybe there was less fun to be had so we didn't get the bump.

I do have to say that in earlier times it was much more fun to post here and yet there was still serious discussion to be had but even in the more serious threads there was allowances for people to have a bit of fun and a break from the discussion before the getting back to the discussion at hand. i just think right now we are trying too hard to be too serious.

 

[caketastydelish]

There's one particular poster (whose name I won't mention as forum rules prevent me from singling a poster out) who literally brings up MRA's more than the rest of the entire forum combined.

It's sad because that's probably the only poster that gives a rat's ass about MRA's, and the rest of us would be perfectly happy with not having to hear about them, and to not have their threads which have nothing whatsoever to do with MRA's being derailed into another MRA subject.

In other words, both "pro" MRA comments, and "anti" MRA comments should be banned on the spot, because discussion of the subject is repetitive, predictable and tiring. It's become a cliche thing for CFC, and not in a good way.

edit: in addition, feminist-bashing (or overly pro feminism) threads should also be banned on the spot. MRA/feminism brings out the worst in CFC more than anything else.

 

[Oerdin]

Civ five just hasn't been that popular (we can discuss why but it certainly didn't bring in the tons of new posters Civ4 did) while most of the younger kids seem to be sticking with social media instead of internet forums.