I joined the Dope in October 2020. During that time, topics would be created and/or updated every, I dunno, 3-5 minutes or so. But now (December 2022), topics are being updated every few seconds. Did the Dope experience a surge of new users within the past 2 years? If so, I’m very glad about that! I love this little corner of the internet.
I think it has done better, though hot topics come in waves. IMHO it was much better way way back, like 20 years ago with many active posters.
20 years ago the Board was a lot more active. But considering most message boards have disappeared since then, especially general interest ones, the SDMB appears to be doing pretty well.
As to 2 years ago, we appear to be doing slightly less posting traffic. But roughly the same. At least comparing Novembers.
There was a long period where I’d try to read or post and encounter delays, sign-outs, and posts that wouldn’t post, which certainly decreased my attempts to engage. Discourse is much better and I post more.
Of course, the other thing that was different back then is that the column was still being published, which is how some people found the message board.
3 years the board was working poorly. But even with that the posting numbers were around the same.
Absolutely.
FWIW I too have the perception there’s more action now than a couple years ago. Though far less than, say, 10 years ago.
Not sure if this makes sense …
I feel like we might have more actual posting and less raeg posting in response to trolls and the troll-like? Many of the worst trolls have been banned over the last 2 years and as another bonus a few posters have curbed their worst tendencies to argue a minor point to death.
Another possibility could be time shifting. For example, it could be that more posts are made in the day than before, but then there’s a lack of posting at night that balances it back out.
Or it could be that there are more posts in certain forums, and those are the ones the OP checks out more. That could even be because of what @What_Exit mentions above. If you’re not wasting your time responding to a trollish post in GD, you have more time to post in other forums.
Message boards in general are all trending downwards, and the fact that we are still here means that we are doing better than most.
For many years our post average has been trending downwards. Over the past year, for the first time in many years, the overall trend has been slightly increasing. Every year prior for the last decade or so has been trending downward, so an upward trend, however slight, is definitely encouraging.
Given Covid had many at home two years ago, the sustained traffic is welcome and an observation posting occurs less often unsurprising.
True. But I’ll also suggest that the end of Trump’s presidency also lowered both the rage and the post-count around here. Things got slower, but oh so much more pleasant. And doubly so for the hard-working mods.
As the 2024 election season heats up we’ll see some increase in anger as more and more traffic becomes overtly political. And of course to the degree Mr. Trump stages a comeback, we’ll see a lot more heat & smoke from that, but probably little light.
Take note of how exciting the Musk/Twitter topic has been in the last 30-ish days. Lots of impassioned posting and no small amount of moderator effort to keep the train near the tracks. That’s but a small foretaste of what a serious Trump run at the Republican nomination will do around here. To say nothing of what happens here if Trump becomes the Republican nominee.
A significant number of regular posters have been fortunate enough to retire over the last couple of years so have had more time to post.
Aha! It’s the ‘dead cat bounce’ of posting increases! A brief surge from freed-up retirees before we all start shuffling off this mortal coil and the SDMB drops off a cliff 
.
I’ll take the other side. My impression is that some forums, like FQ, have diminished greatly. Other forums, like the relatively new game forums, do very well.
The Dope always was a system of communities. If you’re part of an active community you’ll feel that the whole board is active. If you’re part of a dormant community you’ll feel that the whole board is dormant.
No idea if there are any members who are universally active. My guess is they’re small in number. The rest of us are the proverbial blind men feeling the elephant.
There’s a community for that, somewhere. Probably shouldn’t Google it.
Recently I’ve started using SDMB almost exclusively through the app on my phone. When I first started doing so, I was not very proficient in entering text on the app, but in the past year I’ve become much more comfortable in doing so, so I’m posting more. I wonder if others have the same experience.
I use “Latest” as my SDMB bookmark. Granted I do have a couple board categories muted as I’m not interested in Thread Games and such, but lately it has been occasionally taking longer every day to reach the “Last Visit” demarcation.
This is good.
Latest is da bomb. Although I start with Unread becuase those are threads I’ve already expressed interest in. After that I turn to Latest.
How specific can you reveal? Are we up 50 posts a month or 500? How many were we losing a year before the increase?
What about views? I’m not sure how those are counted, has the nature of the game/thread game given a boost to views? Does people constantly returning to a thread count as separate views?
This is the one that seems to have taken the biggest hit. You can visit once a week and read all the new posts in no time. I don’t know how much of that is moving threads to other forums, which seems to happen more the last few years. Or is it because most people will simply google the answer to factual answers?
These forums seem to be the most one category posters. A few times I’ve run across a poster in an old thread that I haven’t seen in a long time. If I check their history, they’ve been posting multiple times daily, but only in games. They have given up on the rest of the board.
Coward. Do it in the name of research.
I read in what I think of as two groups. Factual Questions, Great Debates and The Pit. All these are pretty quick reads for me. Then Cafe, IMHO and MPSIMS. These three take up the bulk of my reading by far.
i’m not surprised that forum activity has picked up here. I’ve seen it happen elsewhere in the forum-dom, too. Many people have been fed up with social media (which is an old hat by now and lacking), and are looking into discussion forums once again.
I’m not under any illusion that this would mean a huge boost, let alone a return to c. 2008 levels. But it’s not quite the dying scene people have been saying for the past decade, including even in this thread.