Decline in OT activity

[downtown]

I had a friend live in Bulgaria, learned to speak Bulgarian and everything. Her elementary school students were very sad for her that she was like 24 and not married. They thought no one would want her by then.

Ha, my kids felt the same way about me.

So, I feel like we have this discussion almost every six months, but at least now we have some quantitate data surrounding it. Beyond Civ itself becoming less popular, I don't think the reasons for this are rocket science.

1) The product itself isn't very good. By this, I don't mean the community, I mean the blood and guts of CFC. This layout and format essentially hasn't changed at all since I started coming here about a decade ago. Few new features have been added, even when we've asked for them (like a like button) and if anything, thanks to forum splitting, the actual user experience has gotten worse. As other communities and other technologies have grown, there is less a reason to come here. There are probably upgrades that would make this a more enjoyable posting experience, but they either cost money or time, and I doubt that the powers that be are looking to make any investments. Which is fine.

Lots of people have mentioned that they go to Reddit now instead. For me, I go to Twitter. That didn't really exist during my heyday here, and I found a bunch of news stories I would have never otherwise found here. Now, I have a zillion other places to go.

2) The core group has aged out. The college-aged and young professionals of the 2008ish era are now less young professionals. I joined this place when I was a senior in high school, and now I've graduated college, had several jobs, got married, and have a kid. Many of my peers during that era were around the same age, and have made similar life changes. That means less posting, and if you don't have a ton of inertia built up in this place, there aren't attractive reasons for making the time investment.

3) It's boring. As others have said, the moderation can be tough, frustrating and arbitrary. Most of these threads were political, and after several years, we've already beaten those horses to death. The demographics of the forum make discussing some topics really frustrating (we had a run where we had a ton of racial-issue threads...now, feminism seems to be popular. Both were horrid), and most things feel like re-treads.

The only solution is to start topics that are actually interesting, or new.

 

[Kyriakos]

Although we haven't recently discussed the issue in staff, I think it's safe to say that a 'like' button would at least not be strongly opposed. The major obstacle is actually being able to implement it, and the current situation is such that that's not at all likely.

As DT noted above, the more core issue is that most of the posters in OT have been here for many many years, and just don't bother much by now, cause the forum (was never meant to be anyway) is not about very specific subsets of OT topics. So it is filled with either humorous OPs, serial threads, political threads or the random theological or philosophical one, but still it is not meant to generate that much new posting.

And i am pretty sure that there are considerably less OT regulars now than 5 years ago.

Maybe the OT currently would make more sense if all the Colloseum (or most of it) was joined up. But really i doubt it would make much difference, cause the main reason it has less traffic is that new sites which specialise in discussions on specific topics (eg subreddits) appeared and rightly command the largest share of such web posting by now- at least in non official sites on any one topic.

 

[Commodore]

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?

Infractions for dogpiling would be a good start. All too often, posters who express a viewpoint that is counter to the popular view here are ganged up on and bullied out of a thread. The mods let this happen without so much as a peep and, on very rare occasions, sometimes actually join in on the dogpiling.

What we need is for the mods to recognize when dogpiling is occurring and treat it as trolling/flaming and issue an infraction to all that participate in it, even if the language the dogpilers are using aren't specifically violating the current forum rules.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Although we haven't recently discussed the issue in staff, I think it's safe to say that a 'like' button would at least not be strongly opposed. The major obstacle is actually being able to implement it, and the current situation is such that that's not at all likely.

At this point I'd be happy with the email notifications working reliably again (and not going to the spam folder) and a few new smileys.

Has an upgrade to a newer version of vBulletin been discussed? That may be what's needed before a "like" button.

3) It's boring. As others have said, the moderation can be tough, frustrating and arbitrary. Most of these threads were political, and after several years, we've already beaten those horses to dead. The demographics of the forum make discussing some topics really frustrating (we had a run where we had a ton of racial-issue threads...now, feminism seems to be popular. Both were horrid), and most things feel like re-treads.

The only solution is to start topics that are actually interesting, or new.

So what interests you that would interest a general group of people here? I have to say that I get why some current topics would interest a forum that's 99% male in terms of demographics, but honestly that stuff is TMI as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not only not going to reply to those threads, but once I realize the general intent of them, I'm not even going to read them.

 

[Kennigit]

Re valka: visibility isnt about remaining on the front pages

If someone wants to talk about dr who, they'll easily find the doctor who thread. People involved with nanowrimo will remember the thread on it

Also i dont deal with thread subscriptions but others do. Falling off the front page of OT isn't really losing visibility

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I'll add more later but I'd like to point out that 'aging out' shouldn't actually be a problem in and of itself.

An active, healthy community should be replacing those that age out with newer, younger members. I actually do believe DT's theory 100% in that a lot of solid posters are growing up and moving on. But I don't see it as a problem so much as a natural phenomenon. The problem is really why aren't people joining at a rate sufficient to replace those that leave.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Re valka: visibility isnt about remaining on the front pages

If someone wants to talk about dr who, they'll easily find the doctor who thread. People involved with nanowrimo will remember the thread on it

Also i dont deal with thread subscriptions but others do. Falling off the front page of OT isn't really losing visibility

And what if a new person joins the forum and starts a new thread because they don't know the old one even exists because it's been pushed 10 pages down by a mass of serial threads, why-can't-I-get-a-girlfriend threads, American politics threads, TMI threads, and so on?

That's what used to happen regularly with the Comings & Goings thread. It would be pushed many pages down, and when a new member would join and make a thread to introduce himself, he'd invariably get it locked and he'd be chastised for posting a "personal/look at me" thread.

I don't expect the Doctor Who thread to be stickied, but yeah, when it's off the front page, it's no longer visible for those who look at the main indexes instead of subscriptions. And my preferences are set to the maximum - 40 posts/page, 40 threads/page, threads listed back to the beginning. So if it's dropped off the front page and several pages down for me, it's done that for everyone else, too.

 

[sophie]

I'll add more later but I'd like to point out that 'aging out' shouldn't actually be a problem in and of itself.

An active, healthy community should be replacing those that age out with newer, younger members. I actually do believe DT's theory 100% in that a lot of solid posters are growing up and moving on. But I don't see it as a problem so much as a natural phenomenon. The problem is really why aren't people joining at a rate sufficient to replace those that leave.

Aging out isn't a problem in of itself. The problem is that:

a) forums are passé nowadays to begin with
b) there's more competition (reddit, facebook, twitter)
c) CFC is old fashioned and doesn't really offer anything that you can't get elsewhere. The barrier for entry is high and there aren't really any benefits to justify that barrier.

So the core group of regulars is aging out and there isn't much in the way of anybody coming in to replace that group.

 

[Seraiel]

• 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?

My opinion to the declining number of threads, is, that most of the forum staff do only the most necessary things, so that this site functions. They're mostly inactive and do nothing to keep this great site alive.

Proofs:

This forum was never updated to the latest version of vBulletin. Having a better forum would help thw users greatly, and vBulletin is known to develop their software very well. I don't know all features we are currently missing, but I'm sure that there are really valuable ones missing.
One great feature that I know that is missing i. e. is, that the newer vBulletins automatically find similar threads and show them below the active thread. Like this, it's much easier to know what already was discussed prior to the active discussion.

Further proof:

The HoF has a non-functioning display of a game's graphs. It was reported, nothing has been done about it 'til now.

I asked various things in the HoF forum, none of those got sufficient answers from the admins.

The HoF mod known as BUFFY didn't get updated for years. They wanted to implement a feature which can distinguish 2 certain forms of victory. As it's now, both get listed in the same tab, even though one is a lot faster, banning all games that use the other playstyle on the last places.
There would be users who could finish the new BUFFY, still, nothing has been done.

The War Academy didn't get any updates for more than 5y. It's outdated for great parts, so it doesn't help the readers anymore (mostly new players) but even confuses them. There were efforts already to change this, the most recent one is still in progress, it seems as if the admins wouldn't care about that new players get told things which are completely wrong from a today's perspective.
In addition, several new guides have been published, some so great, that they took about 20 users to write and research for 1 month. Still, nothing got done from the staff to value players making such an effort, which imo is disastrous.

_________________________

The forums being less active is a site-wide phenomenon, and it matters greatly to me. I don't want my most loved site left to die!

Revolutionizing the staff and finding more active staff-members who are willing to take care of this great site would reverse a lot of this and imo should be the first step to this site again becoming more active and improving on its content.
If the current progress doesn't change, users will wander of to Steam or different forums. The only reason why CFC gets chosen by many players, is, because the site is still superior to all others, this won't last much longer though if nothing is done.

I think the method with which you measured the declining activity is good. I believe counting the posts would have been more precise, but the point you made comes through perfectly.

Seraiel

 

[thecrazyscot]

I'm relatively new to OT...I wasn't here before the forums split. I will say that I would probably participate in more threads if OT wasn't split into so many subforums.

RE: nudity and more mature content. I appreciate the content restrictions as I browse CFC while at work...

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.

Less people post here because less people play firaxis games. Civ5 was in every way a huge disappointment, BE was even more broken and starships hardly is played at all.

You reap what you sow firaxis, you can pretend everything is fine but people vote with their feet.

Well this is just wrong. Civ V is incredibly popular.

 

[Izuul]

I don't frequent this particular forum, but i would be interested to see site-wide data. I'm still primarily a Civ 4 player and the activity there has seriously declined in the last 2-3 years, but i think that is to be expected of a game that is 10 years old and hasn't seen any new content in 8 years. There are still some vary passionate Civ 4 players around, but many have moved on or show up very infrequently now.

Civ 5 is probably the thing to look at in regards to overall site traffic. While it is a very popular game, I don't know if the Civ 5 game play inspires the same type of discussion that Civ 4 generated.

I would also be curious to know if the average age of the posters on here has changed significantly over the last ~10 years. I don't believe the younger generation frequents forums like "we" did.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I think Seraiel has it right, we need some new blood into the ranks of the moderators and maintainers. If people don't have the energy / enthusiasm they once had that's fine let's get them some help. I think changing preferences (Facebook / Reddit etc) and the age of the most popular version of the game are definite factors as well but let's at least get the obvious problems fixed.

(This is not a dig at anyone - I appreciate all that those in power do and the time they spend but let's get them the help they need).

 

[Pangaea]

Amount of posts per day or active users per day would probably be better measurements, but those may not be readily available, so the chosen measure is probably fine. It hints at a trend afterall, and I doubt it's a coincidence.

Can't speak much about the OT forum as I've barely posted here, but I've posted a lot in the Civ 4 forums for years, and although I got into this game quite late, activity has noticeably reduced over the years I've been active, with some "leadership" posters disappearing, sometimes for good, while others come back every now and then. To be blunt, the forum feels pretty deserted by now, and it doesn't help when mods obstruct attempts to revive some activity.

Less sure if all that much can be done about it. Civ 4 is a fairly old game by now, so reduced activity is probably to be expected. Civ 5 was a massive letdown, and the less said about it the better. It's probably been discussed to death in many forums over the years anyway. Then you have the other venues people have these days, so they are less drawn to a forum like this. The need to register to take part may be an obstruction too, if they can do much the same on Reddit and other sites. I still believe the quality of this forum is superior to whatever one finds at Reddit and elsewhere, but you can perfectly fine access that here and post about it elsewhere.

Trying to reverse the trend may be like pushing a big stone up a steep hill. What would help the most is arguably another excellent game in the Civilization series, but I don't know if that is forthcoming. Gamers may prefer different games these days anyway. Call of Duty #71 for instance

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Also people keep trying to pin the blame on Civ 5 relative unpopularity, yet total CFC user base is up since Civ 5. Even if I give that the OT members didn't like Civ 5 on the whole (and I'm being generous in this assumption) that still doesn't explain why OT doesn't get a steady infusion of new members from the rest of CFC.

It doesn't explain why OT old-timers are leaving either.

 

[LucyDuke]

In 2007 when I was 21 and playing Civ4 this was the place for the best game information, and OT was a good general OT that was better than alternatives.

Are the 21-year-olds playing Civ5 finding the best game information here and a better-than-the-alternatives general OT?

 

[thecrazyscot]

In my experience, yes, although I'm a tad bit over 21. OT is a little more tightly regulated though than it should be perhaps.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Also people keep trying to pin the blame on Civ 5 relative unpopularity, yet total CFC user base is up since Civ 5. Even if I give that the OT members didn't like Civ 5 on the whole (and I'm being generous in this assumption) that still doesn't explain why OT doesn't get a steady infusion of new members from the rest of CFC.

It doesn't explain why OT old-timers are leaving either.

Total userbase versus percentage of all players playing is worth a look too, but that's a bit tangential.

If we're discussing the reason OT in particular has less activity, it's probably that people are going elsewhere for the hot button issues, which makes sense. I don't think CFC can realistically compete with forums that are not constrained to a series within a genre in the "OT" category. Essentially, this stuff is draining to where it is not "off topic" in many ways.

Infractions for dogpiling would be a good start. All too often, posters who express a viewpoint that is counter to the popular view here are ganged up on and bullied out of a thread. The mods let this happen without so much as a peep and, on very rare occasions, sometimes actually join in on the dogpiling.

What we need is for the mods to recognize when dogpiling is occurring and treat it as trolling/flaming and issue an infraction to all that participate in it, even if the language the dogpilers are using aren't specifically violating the current forum rules.

I was never a big regular here in OT, but I'm no stranger to dogpiling. It goes on a lot, but I'm not sure how moderators can handle it unless certain lines are crossed, similar to passive-aggressive trolling. If you lay a framework of rules and then act in ways that are not consistent with the rules, you lose everybody, and dogpiling/trolling evaluations both necessarily have subjective elements when they're otherwise within the rules. It doesn't just open moderators to accusations of bias, it necessarily drives them towards it, unless they try to moderate with bots only. We're all human.

My most dominant presence was always in strategy, because my original purpose for coming to the forums (discussing the game, and even more specifically how to play it more effectively) didn't change. It's also why I didn't post for a long time after the Civ V vanilla disaster. I disappeared from OT as an extension of that.

But the OT regulars, from the time I spent here a few years back, did not follow the same path. By and large, the most common ones, and the ones with the most posts, had long since vanished from general or strategy discussions about civilization proper. As someone with 20k posts in Civ IV era, I would go into OT and see someone with even more posts than me...that I had never seen anywhere else. While the dated nature of the forum and community organization are legit matters to look into, I believe the primary reason we lost some of these regulars is simply that CFC (with an emphasis on the first letter) is getting out-competed in the realm of non-civ related material by other means of social media. I do not believe this is a battle CFC can win in the long run, so OT will shrink to some new equilibrium in line with the playerbase that shows up.

For the time being, this site is still far superior to others I've seen in regards to strategy discussion and games regularly posted by players who know what they're doing. You can study your way to deity here in short order if you're willing to make a time investment, but that isn't going to bring new blood to OT.

 

[warpus]

I'm not sure what the problem is, but it's likely not the mods.

I think one of the issues might be that U.S.-specific political discussions often overwhelm other threads in the OT subforum. There are far better forums to discuss American political issues, and those of us who are non-American might not necessarily care about the issues to begin with. Having said that, I don't see a solution around that, as creating a "U.S. Politics" subforum doesn't seem like a good move either.

In the end we have a collection of people of all sorts of walks of life here, which is what keeps me coming back. There's Norwegians, homosexuals, hardcore Christians, Muslims, fathers, uncles, dog owners, even racists. It's an interesting and diverse bunch - but the discussion topics often aren't. I'm not offering a solution, just pointing it out. It feels like we've discussed all the big topics way too many times - and interesting topics do come up from time to time, but it doesn't seem like it happens often enough.

I also urge the mods to reconsider the "Nipples are definitely evil" stance. It's a bit silly and detrimental to the future of the forum.

 

[Hygro]

One of the fun threads got closed because it's "probably" against the rules.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Norwegians? What's with Norwegians?