OMG, the SDMB is going down? Oh Noes!!!1!!
What will I do for entertainment? I would play Monopoly, but since they took away the cash, its just not the same.
Hey, wait a minute! Aren’t you the one that predicted that The Dope would be GONE by April of this year? So at least it’s still here.
Aeschines’ prediction that The Dope would not be here past 4/13/07.
Then Aeschines’ prediction that he won’t be frequenting The Dope as much. So not very surprising that he hasn’t been around much lately. He predicted that. More prediction info. about the demise of The Dope that sounds remarkably like this OP.
Anyway, that whole thread was fascinating reading. And I’m sure that someone has pointed this out to Aeschines before and he has snuck out on it. But I wanted to beat What Exit? to the punch on this because how many times does one get to do that?!
Hey Aeschines, your ears must have been burning. I was just posting about you the other day here.
~waving~ to** Aeschines**
OK, we’re talking Mod here, so we have to make it look like a tragic hamster accident.
I’ve been a lurker, and then a member under a couple different names, since the AOL days. I really miss a lot of the people that didn’t follow when the place went pay. Everything just seemed more “boisterous”. I dropped out for a while then, too, but then I got a job, and decided it was worth it. I remember more “game threads”, riddles and such. My first few posts were in a riddles thread, against SwimmingRiddles, I was a freshman in college, way too big for my britches 
But the point is that the SDMB can’t attract people like that, off the cuff, anymore. People like me, college-types, or random newspaper-column enthusiasts may wander in and read a bit, try to post, realize they charge, and then simply leave and never come back. Had it been charge way back when, I probably wouldn’t have lingered.
So you’re a sock?
Cause if you are, then . . .ummm. . . Welcome back. Now fuck off. although I must say that you’ve already seen your share of pile-ons.
I agree with the OP. I hae been coming to this board almost daily since the summer of 99 and it has been going down hill since we went pay to post. I love the board and I will probably remain a paying member (even though I don’t post much) for at least another year after this one is up. But it is kind’ve sad how few new members we seem to attract. Some days I check in and it seems nothing has changed in the Pit or GD during the previous 24 hours.
The real question, at least in my mind: is there anything we can do about it? A promotion? Marketing? Does the Reader want to increase membership or is it just a money maker that they don’t want to invest anything in? Is there anyway that we can boost membership back to the levels seen pre-2003? Is there anyway we can convince WildestBill to come back?
Yeah, funny how no one used to pile on me when I had a post count in the thousands. There’s such an “old-timer”/“newbie” double-standard around here, still. But anyway, I’m not about to hijack the thread about it.
I’ve noticed it also. The thread quantity and quality in GD and the Pit has gone down dramatically.
I’m still pretty much a “newbie” here, and my posts are always treated on their own merits and with respect. And it’s been that way since my first post. There are plenty of things to complain about here, but this isn’t a legitimate one in my opinion. I post on some other boards, and it is far, far worse elsewhere.
I don’t know if I’m the only one who thinks it or just the only one who’ll give them the pleasure of actually typing it, but I honestly think the other board has a good bit to do with it. I know for a fact that two very funny and popular Dopers stopped posting because they didn’t want to deal with the bullshit from over there, and while I haven’t stopped I no longer post any long rants or personal stories because I’m tired of the PMs and emails from people who either misguidedly think they’re doing me a favor by directing me there or are two-faced shit stirrers. It’s just not fun anymore.
As for things that are bound to this board, I’ve noticed a significant upswing in Dopers who are too easily offended by comments that aren’t even personal in nature as well as nitpickers who’d take a red pen to correct spelling errors on the original copies of the Magna Carta. Again, they take away from the fun whether intentional or un.
That said, the drinks may be watered more than they used to be and the drag queens are just phoning in their lip synching, but for now it’s still the best bar in town. Hopefully this is just an off-season slump and it’ll all pick up again, but if not we’ll all stick around til somebody opens a better bar or this one picks back up or we just get tired of it and then we’ll sing an Anatevka/Born Under a Wand’rin’ Star medley and find someplace else as “it’s just a place”, and not even that really. But I have some faith it will get a bit better before it plummets, and one quick run over to Yahoo’s boards or, god forbid, imdb and the like will make you appreciate the level of discourse here all the more.
Yeah, I agree there used to be a lot more “churn,” people who would show up out of nowhere and post 20 times in one day, etc. God, it used to be you never knew WHAT could happen, and that was pretty awesome. Now . . . well, it’s almost as if people are censoring themselves. A while ago there was serious consideration given to banning swear words in thread titles. The Mods seem more zealous than ever, though I’m not aware of any specific reason for them to be so. If anything, you’d think because we are paying to be here we are entitled to MORE leeway, not less, but the opposite seems to be the case.
I still think ths Board is great, but it’s not the vibrant place it once was. Maybe that doesn’t matter, but it’s sad to see something so fascinating disappear. My relationship to the SDMB is the longest relationship with anything or anyone I’ve ever had, outside my immediate family. I used to think that if the Boards didn’t exist, they would need to be invented. Now, I just hope I keep wanting to come back.
It was really greasy anyway.
I compared it with SomethingAwful and Fark, and they both show a similar decline trend in about the same timeframe.
I think some of the traffic has gone to the social networking sites - or at least their graph goes up at about the same time as ours is going down.
4chan is exploding, though. I suspect that this may be among the first signs of the Apocolypse.
I think this place is fantastic, although in all fairness I’ve only been here since 2005 (first as a lurker). I’m always finding things that make me laugh out loud, topics to make me think and want to contribute to and, well, things to do basically. Is this not just “it were better in my day” syndrome?
Edited for grammar.
Please explain. I see it used both ways on just about every site that makes refereence to it.
No, read the link that H&R. It’s just been your typical echo chamber social phenomenon combined with horrible moderation.
I think moderation has improved since I wrote that post (remember that we actual scandals here on the board?), but the damage of the echo chamber has been done. The only “outsiders” left here are retarded, uninteresting trolls who are more to be pitied than laughed at/with.
My prediction was wrong, but there was a lot right in that. At that point the SDMB really had purged itself of dissidents, moderation was pathetic, and (as this thread seems to bear out), participation was on a downward trajectory. Whether the board was to be “GONE” or not, as my post implied, was whether the Reader would continue to support it. I still don’t think things look good over the long term.
True, but that was participation. Now I can barely find a reason just to come here and read.
Yeah, cool. I’ve been proud to provide a little entertainment on this board from time to time, but there’s really not much to work with any more.