After all this stuff, I basically lost what little sympathy for the Chicago Reader/Creative Loafing I ever had, and Ed/Cecil is even more irrelevant to what actually makes this board what it is. I don’t look at ads, I don’t care about the Chicago Boards. I’m sure a lot of others are the same way; perhaps folks that would normally have been more charitable will no longer be so. They cut us out of the decision-making process; fine, I’m just going to ignore them. If he/they hadn’t done this, there might have been more support for what they’re trying to do. But no, Ed pissed that away.
I got concerned about that episode, but only because Ed et al seemed to be making everything so unnecessarily difficult for themselves. They seemed to be being wilfully obtuse. All that ‘if you don’t like it, get out’ seems an extraordinary way of running a business or board. There were so many ways it could have been done without generating so much frustration; it’s as if he was delibeately spoiling for a fight.
Personally, my strong feelings for the board are only because of the posters. I’ve never bought into the rather odd (to me) Cecil adulation and I don’t live in Chicago so I have no interest in or knowledge of all that CL stuff. I think the day to day moderating has become a bit ‘smoother’ recently, and I don’t feel that the Pit has suffered significantly because you can’t do whatever it is you can’t do there. I’ve lost track of all the rule changes.
So, if anything, I’d say that things are a bit better now. I’d also say that the management have shown themselves to be rather odd.
Did anyone really migrate to another board? I know a lot of people post at the splinters (I do) and that might mean some reduction in their posts here, but did anyone really stop posting here?
I’ve no idea. I’ve just looked at the list of registered users at domebo, and there are a lot of names there that I used to see here, but don’t anymore. Not very scientific, I’ll admit and with my powers of retention, probably virtually meaningless. I’d like to know, though.
Again, :shrug:
What can I tell you? My experience here is unchanged.
Pay-to-post in 2004 was the real watershed in this board’s history IMHO. Every subsequent kerfluffle has been relatively trivial in terms of board impact.
Folks, just look at the Alexa graphsfor the Dope traffic (click “max”). It’s pretty troubling that things changed substantially around the time Ed started getting involved.
What I see if I look at a 1-month or 3-month view is a trendline of SDMB traffic increasing slowly still.
Woo-hoo, we’re making a comeback! 
Seriously, are you disputing that the dope stats have taken a dive since mid-last year? I suppose there is a *slight *uptake recently, but it’s still nowhere near the highs of last year.
I agree the Alexa trends did go down, then back up.
I think the cause is open to debate, especially if you don’t compare past year trends at that time. It could be because Ed is Teh Evil, it could have been related to Election year buildup then fatigue, I don’t know. Not to be pedantic, but I’m unsure how well Alexa represents the real traffic of any board - I’d rather compare server-side stats, but since they aren’t available I won’t throw out Alexa entirely.
Mainly what I see from the Alexa stats is a lot of volatility, a downward trend that then seems to turn back up. I guess what I’m saying is I can’t disprove your hypothesis, but nor do I think it’s proven. I do believe that there is a large baseload of the SDMB - call them the “Great Silent Majority” - which largely is insensitive to most all of the Board drama.
I agree – there is no doubt a large “baseload” as you call it of diehard viewers/posters who will keep this place afloat. Otherwise we would have seen a much more dramatic drop in rankings.
But there has been a significant and consistent downward trend in the rankings of this place, and it appears to coincide with Ed’s “interferences”. (The election argument doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny, as the downward trend started prior to Nov.) Perhaps there *are *other factors – these days there are so many things that can affect a business that it’s naive to only look at one.
That being said, Ed himself has stated over and over that his “interferences” are a direct result of the pressure from above to make this place more profitable and important in the new digital era of CL. So if we look at the past 6-9 months of activity, his efforts have actually produced the opposite effect (even if the net result is not a *direct * consequence of his efforts).
In other words, if the goal over the past year has been to increase the page hits and viewership of this place, then it has failed.
I love my Mommy and my Daddy Dopes!
sniff
HAWK
Floooie
pit
DING
It’s called onomatopoeia and that’s yall’s word of the week
'K I’m done
Q
Me.
I know of at least one (formerly-) prolific poster who refuses to come back even to read SDMB, let alone post.
I haven’t looked at the Alexa trends, but Ed Zotti did say on 3 March 2009 “[T]raffic now is at a record high.” and [post=10899194]in the same thread[/post]
You should; it will only take one click and about 30 seconds.
I would be interested in looking at the Google stats, but since there appears to be a lot of secrecy over the stats of this place, I doubt those would be apparent anywhere.
If traffic really were changing all that much, it would apparent as we posted.
For instance, you’d be regularly seeing three-day-old posts on the first pages of all the forums. It hasn’t gotten to that point yet, obviously.
Eh, I agree with those saying- no big deal, no sky falling.