I have a question!
Do you have an idea why the old forum was frequented much more often.
I notice it in the call numbers of the individual threads. In the old forum, the average views were several thousand views (Tjub had more than a million views after several years - if I remember correctly), now at most a few hundred. It is more than noticeable.
Is that really only due to the changed internet habits of the users (Facebook, Instagram, Discord, etc.), or are there other reasons?
What do you think?
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The former. And search engine results are complete garbage these days which probably doesn’t help either.
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Anytime I go there there’s like 30 guests browsing. Always assume their bots. If I’m using my desktop my cdo links go there then I go banner to here or I use the old forums or wiki for quick reference on something I’m looking for as I’ve used that forum a ton more and know where I mean to go. So some maybe me. My phone just comes here
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Also, counting is way different. The old forum counted absolute visits. If you @Zanko visited tjubs thread 100.000 times you’d up the counter by 100.000 times too. Discourse doesnt do that for logged in users. Or… not afaik.
It probably does do that for anonymous users that return.
That and forums arent nearly as popular as before.
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I’d love to see hard numbers on this. I’ve given some thought to creating a miniature buy/sell/trade discourse because of how awful facebook is to use but I just don’t see it succeeding.
It seems to me that a view is counted if you view a thread that has a new post since your last viewing but I have not been able to test this.
I think internet habits are primarily to blame. Most people are already on facebook/insta/discord so those groups quickly reach high user numbers, the hardest part of creating a self-sustaining community. And since they fill the basic needs filled by a forum it’s hard to get someone to visit a new site, much less make an account.
Another part is, if someone is really dedicated to the craft they often end up creating their own full blog somewhere and post primarily there. Folks like Blue are still mad involved in the classic Warhammer community, but if he’s got stuff to share it’s going up on his blog, which he feeds traffic to though his Instagram.
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Never understood why people like to use these trading groups. Maybe the seller saves a few cents in commission but heck are they frustrating to browse.
Just out of curiosity: I have the impression that FB groups are a lot less active compared to what they used to. Is it mostly Discord now?
Ideas to get people putting more content on the forum would be good. The golden hat is probably the biggest one. More blogs are needed so theres something going on every day.
If it wasn’t for this forum, i may never have started chaos dwarfs
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I like them for a few reasons, mostly pricing and availability. Prices are largely based on sold eBay listings so if you find something you want it’s probably reasonably priced and you don’t have to go through the rigamarole of bidding. The downside is you are less likely to find an especially good deal. The oldhammer trade groups I’m in are also rather busy, and while it doesn’t reach eBay levels of product it’s quite a steady stream without a bunch of goldfish-blues filling thinks up.
That said, fb does their best to make their platform unusable and the groups are a huge pain to browse or stay up to date on. I can’t wait for the day they go belly-up and people move on to sites that don’t suck ass.
I’ve noticed a general downtown in fb group activity with covid in the past, but I think it’s just less time in social media rather than moving to new sites unfortunately.
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Forums don’t have the newer members coming in like they used to. Younger generations have been put off all kinds of social media due to crazy people and the awful conversation tracking that you have in single stream social media that makes it too easy to miss threads and discussions that they could contribute to. Thread-based forums like this one are still the far superior option for casual members. Discord just moves too fast when more than a handful of people chat, Facebook hides stuff based on unknown algorithms and is full of rightwing old people meming (it had a good Groups implementation 10 years ago, but got rid of it), Reddit is a happier medium but easily disrupted by anonymous trolls.
The old site was constantly under attack by spammers. I must have deleted thousands of spam accounts and rejected even more. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the traffic was from them.
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Ah, thanks for the information regarding spam bots and the social media - I have no idea about that at all. 
I’ve never been active on Facebook, Instagram or whatever there is.
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