A few months ago the board peaked about 140 users online. Now its about 250 but doesn't translate to more discussion.
The users online count is generally meaningless - 75% of the site traffic is non-members who lurk and read but don't post, the users online count includes guests and bots. It's not an accurate measure of anything relating to site content really.
You have to remember there's only about 200-300 truly active posters on this board with maybe 15-20 people who post everyday so the numbers aren't big enough to translate to interesting discussions.
I guess that depends on how you define "interesting", I guess.
Perhaps you mean "controversial" ?
Either way, post volumes are no less now than they have been at any time in the past 5 years ... there's a lot of discussion happening, just less of it on "controversial" topics right now.
There's a heap of discussion every day by people who are out there investing and needing help with doing that. Nothing has changed there, and this has always been the main source of post traffic on the site. We tend to have a very "broad" range of threads with relatively few "deep" (ie long) threads. Quite different to some of the other sites I run.
As for "interesting" discussion, right now, there are less controversial topics to discuss, that's all. Interestingly, even though Somersoft seems quieter - the statistics don't really seem to back that up from what I've seen ... post volumes are still consistently up there where they've been for a few years now.
My favourite board currently has 13,682 people online so we get lots of interesting topics with input from people all around the world.
Don't forget that we are a niche site - Australian Real Estate Investing. Very different demographic.
The threads here that tend to get the most hits are usually gossip and inevitably get deleted at the request of a random poster who opened their mouth too much. Ironic they can request a whole thread be pulled after people take the time to compose a reply.
Our goal is not to create threads that get "the most hits". Our goal here is to discuss real estate. That's still happening, and very effectively.
The gossip threads don't inevitably get deleted. Sometimes they get moderated and some posts removed. Sometimes they get closed if they veer too far off topic and start to cause problems. Very rarely do they get deleted.
There is never a "random poster" who requests a thread get deleted. Usually in those circumstances the person making the request is the subject of the thread - the thread is talking about their personal situation specifically and in sufficient detail to potentially cause them problems outside of the forum. There's nothing random about those requests or our consideration of whether to delete them. We don't automatically delete such threads.
What happened to Aceyducey (i saw his ex wife Jas post the other day), thefirstbruce, Duncan, seechange, Bill.L etc. I think bad admin and mod decisions encourage some to leave or drift away.
As mentioned by another poster - many of them just got busy. AceyDucey is still around and has been very active in the government sector. You should follow him on Twitter - he has a lot of interesting things to say. Just not much about real estate these days.
As for "bad" decisions? That's a very subjective measure. We stand by our decisions and those decisions are almost never irreversible (and often are reversed - threads get reinstated, people get unbanned, etc).
What actually happens in many cases is that people get annoyed because they don't get their way all the time. They break the rules that we set for the site and can't stand being told off, so they take their bat and ball and go home. Most of them drift back eventually, some become valuable contributors to the site, others end up getting banned again and again because they never get that they could ever be wrong and aren't prepared to listen to our point of view.
There are certainly some posters who get "encouraged" to leave - but only as a direct result of their actions. There have been some very annoying posters over the years who have never been banned, since their actions never warranted such actions. Some are still active posters and arguably, valuable members of the community.
For the most part - the members who are no longer active have found more important things to do with their lives. I do stay in touch with quite a few members who are no longer actively posting. Their reasons are many and varied. People come and go - such is the nature of communities like this.
