I maintain three forums, and it's harder and harder to get new users and get those new users to post useful stuff. People is getting used to post shallow content that contributes nothing.
I discussed it with my older users and we tried different strategies, but maybe 1/30 new <30yo users is worth it. I had to ban some of them just because they posted too much noise.
> I maintain three forums, and it's harder and harder to get new users and get those new users to post useful stuff. People is getting used to post shallow content that contributes nothing.
>I discussed it with my older users and we tried different strategies, but maybe 1/30 new <30yo users is worth it. I had to ban some of them just because they posted too much noise.
I didn't mention the fact that I was a Admin/Mod in my earlier post, but my biggest issue was fending off being spammed by bots. We had tons of traffic to the site/forum without the need of SEO as we were always on top of the search engines, and member registration was good but like you we had limited 'good' user activity, and the few that was good was hard to filter through at times that I made post approval a thing until we just disbanded the forum as the newsletter and conferences/workshops/irregularly scheduled weekly calls had more impact on the core business.
Ultimately, I think this is a struggle that will only be mitigated by a migration to a new form of the Internet, one in which we are not encumbered by the ad driven, panopticon business model, and shallow click-bait sensationalism to keep it running.
It became clear to me sometime after 2010-11 that Internet culture had entered into an obvious decline to some of the more critical parts of it that made it worth spending time on, I often relate it to how the early monolithic structures of Egypt were far superior to the later versions as it declined: something very critical was lost along the way.
Can it be recovered, with a great deal of sacrifice and hardwork I'm sure it can as HN is a constant reminder that many of those very same people who valued that spirit of the early days entered the Industry and went on be a part to build this system and are equally as disgusted and tired of this perverse abomination, that no amount of viral 4k streaming videos of an influencer showing off on holiday that 'breaks the Internet' was worth what was lost along the way.
I use stopforumspam, and have a little script to deal with spam, that queries a read-only copy of the main DB. Anyway, users report it before I realize someone spammed the forum. Also, if your userbase is not too specialized using a white list of email domains can help. That makes some powerusers angry, so YMMV.
I think that what happened is that Internet got totally democratized, so there's a lot of noise, and valuable people is lost in that noise. Lost in the sense of we have a hard time finding them, and they have a hard time finding us.
I can't compete with the ad budget of all the social media trying to capture eyeballs.
And then you receive a lot of people who back in those times probably was thinking that forums are for nerds, and there you have it, your average idiot who demands to have an equal voice, but refuses to make any effort to contribute.
It may sound like an elitist POV but honestly, this is how it is for me. I praise HN so much just because people here at least makes some effort.
You will be glad to know that I was on newsgroups nearly a decade after 'Eternal September,' but I was eventually there.
2010 was 2 years after the emergence of the Iphone and the shift from the Internet being mainly PC-centric to the massive paradigm shift to mobile. Myspace and facebook were already a thing, but I really think it was that paradigm shift that made the pan-opticon, ad driven system we see now.
As a <30yo that grew up posting, moderating, and administrating forums (when I wasn't on IRC or Teamspeak), the decline in quality pales in comparison to the uptick in spam over the years. Maybe it's just different audiences but the spam was eventually so bad I moved multiple communities off of forums that we'd used for years and years- and got at least an hour a day of free time back in return.
In my experience spam is easily the biggest contributor to the death of forums, most groups just don't have the resources to keep their heads above water.
I see people complain on platforms like Reddit or Discord about one or two spam messages getting through, I don't think they realize how good they have it. A channel I follow on YouTube just got a single spam comment which one of his followers responded to, and he made a 3 minute video about it.
Can you imagine making a 3 minute video every time a spammer registered for your forums?
I've never been in the admin side. Thank you for your work. I'm sure your users appreciate it.
I wonder if the problem is just that the barrier to entry is lower now than it once was? Eternal September, Sturgeon's Law, and all that.
I mean, there's plenty of "shiny (or rusty) new tool" posts on the machinery forum, but folks usually manage to turn any such thread into a nerd-fest regardless. That seems to promote a culture that dissuades shallow interaction. I'm going to contradict my previous point and wonder instead if part of the issue is growing a community at a rate that allows new users to take over the culture without understanding the existing norms.
But hey, I'm talking out my butt here. I'd love your take from the admin side.
Like most things in life, not all growth is a good thing. But not only are the growth people in charge, a lot of the seed money comes from people who only care about explosive growth. So there we are.
It’s the low barriers to entry that cause a lot of problems. Some people solve that with money. It takes very little of it to dissuade spammers. But you can substitute other barriers too, like expertise. Criminals have the Dark Web to lurk about in. What would you call the equivalent but for white hats?
I remember it took 8 months for NeoGAF to approve my account back in college. By the time I was a member, I was putting a lot more thought into my posts and replies.
One downside is that if you feel what you have to say isn't smart enough, you might miss out on an a conversation that could go interesting places.
I discussed it with my older users and we tried different strategies, but maybe 1/30 new <30yo users is worth it. I had to ban some of them just because they posted too much noise.