# Why is the SDMB membership declining, and what's the best way to add younger members? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [June 14, 2021, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208 "2021-06-14T02:28:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 30
**Author:** ![ShadowFacts](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shadowfacts/32/2934_2.png) [@ShadowFacts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShadowFacts)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2021, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/585 "2021-07-15T02:38:46Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > they had a bad week or because they just could 't deal with the constant personal attacks and lashed out improperly. Yes, it really is a shame how those people were forced to break board rules again and again. No justice, no peace! ---
**Author:** ![mistymage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mistymage/32/459_2.png) [@mistymage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mistymage)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2021, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/586 "2021-07-15T03:21:21Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Yes, with the benefit of them having a de facto board they didn’t have to do anything with. But from what you’re saying, it sounds like they don’t care about having a messageboard of any sort. > > It was just an idea. Snopes actually has two groups on facebook: one is for asking if stuff is real or fake and the other is where they (the admin and mods) post links to Snope’s articles. I like the former because you can post gifs 😉 [Snopes Forum | Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/600266640422295) (Private group but you can post gifs memes etc) [Snopes Tips | Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/441333919315986) (Public group, no pix/memes/gifs etc). Not sure why this one gets a Redirecting label but it goes right to the Public group. ---
**Author:** ![mordecaiB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mordecaib/32/7725_2.png) [@mordecaiB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mordecaiB)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2021, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/587 "2021-07-15T05:49:00Z")
> [@mistymage](#): > > [Facebook Groups](https://www.facebook.com/groups/600266640422295) (Private group but you can post gifs memes etc) > > [Redirecting…](https://www.facebook.com/groups/441333919315986) (Public group, no pix/memes/gifs etc). Not sure why this one gets a Redirecting label but it goes right to the Public group. I know it’s not fair to compare a message board from it’s height 20 years ago to a current Facebook page but those Facebook pages are awful. I’m not even sure why they separate them, they seem to have mostly the same topics. Is the regular snopes debunking site still really popular? I’ve followed links to it a few times over the years and it seems to have considerably broadened the concept of “urban legend.” Maybe it’s just me but a lot of the site seems devoted to fake news type things, even ones that are only a couple of days old. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2021, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/588 "2021-07-15T08:26:26Z")
> [@mordecaiB](#): > > Maybe it’s just me but a lot of the site seems devoted to fake news type things, even ones that are only a couple of days old. They’ve been debunking deliberate political falsehoods for a long time now. It likely takes up most of their time at the moment because political falsehoods are a growth industry. ---
**Author:** ![OldOlds](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a3d4f5/32.png) [@OldOlds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldOlds)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2021, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/589 "2021-07-15T11:04:40Z")
I agree with you, Sam. The number of long-term posters we’ve lost is surely an indication of something wrong. I’ve had spats with my family, but we’ve never banned someone. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2021, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/590 "2021-07-15T15:46:25Z")
None of us likely have any idea of how many readers/viewers/active members crossed financial viability threshold. At s Meanwhile as a participant I would argue that we should focus on quality of discussion not quantity of participation. The quality is way off in my experience. It may be endemic to all discussion but mutually respectful disagreements including with those who hold ideas that we hold very wrong in many senses was a strength here once upon a time. Why do some otherwise intelligent people come to conclusions so very different than I do? Once in a while I found out it was because I was missing something. Minimally these discussions I was better prepared to argue against positions I disagreed with in real life. It is rarer and rarer that posters here are interested in understanding alternate takes and why they are held. Many with great knowledge have given up, especially about areas they know about. In the past there were many here I’d love to meet in real life including those who I disagreed strongly with. More here now I’d avoid in the real world. More posters does not help. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2021, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/591 "2021-07-15T15:54:59Z")
Quantity has a quality all its own. You’re saying the quality of discussion has fallen off. Well, at the same time, the number of regular posters has, too. That MAY be merely a correlation with no causation, but I really don’t think so; I think those do go hand in hand. Having few posters reduces the number of different perspectives and the number of interesting things a person might post. If you don’t want to meet any of these people, maybe we need to bring in some different people. ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2021, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/592 "2021-07-15T16:13:52Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Quantity has a quality all its own. Exactly. The smaller the place, the less people concentrate on the topics and the more they concentrate on each other. It’s like the difference between living in a small town versus a big city. In a big city, there’s enough diversity that people can find others with similar interests and people can talk about the things they have in common. In a small town, there are not enough people to talk about a specialized interest to make a decent conversation, so they end up gossiping about each other. Reddit is like a big city. They rarely talk about each other, but they also don’t have community. The SDMB used to have the best of both worlds, IMO. It was big enough that most topics had people who could be conversant about most any topic and have different viewpoints. But it was also small enough for people to get to know each other. The smaller membership allows for much less expertise and diversity of opinion. On any special interest topic I’ve started recently, it’s hard to get traction on the subject because there aren’t enough people who are interested in that topic. On Reddit, there are entire subreddits with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who are interested in that topic. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2021, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/593 "2021-07-15T17:23:37Z")
Which is cause and which is effect? I’d posit that the decreasing quality drives the decreasing quantity more than the converse. Quantity and quality are not positively correlated. I’ve been here a long time contributing regularly. I’ve had my mind changed on several subjects and maybe pushed one or two to thinking a bit on their understandings as well. Currently though CS is the place that I learn from those who know more or think differently. Going into other fora to have fun disagreements that educate me? Rarely even open them anymore. ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2021, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/594 "2021-07-16T03:42:06Z")
> [@OldOlds](#): > > I find Reddit awful. No thank you. Reddit is very, very good at breaking news and racing to post the funniest one-liner or image response. I do enjoy going to reddits and looking at the top yearly, top monthly, or top all time to get a sense of the most significant (and funniest) recent events on a given topic. But Reddit is _terrible_ at everything else, especially thoughtful conversations. My god, the endless repetition… thanks to the supermassive black hole gravity of time in the reddit voting algorithm – dragging everything down the page into oblivion unless there are exponential upvotes – you’ll see the same discussion over and over again every week. This is why many reddits pin general discussion posts (and FAQs) every week, but.. it’s ultimately contortionism. The tooling is wrong for discussion. (I do think it’s funny that they added chat, of all things!) Hell, [I wrote about it in 2012](https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/01/31/the-trouble-with-popularity/) and I still see this pattern repeated regularly, a decade later.. > One thing thing that does concern me, however, is that [as this subreddit gets more popular] the amount of image macros, memes, rage comics and generally low-quality content hitting the front page has grown to annoying proportions. It’s the nature of the tool. Using an old shoe to drive a nail is never going to work particularly well. I try to use Reddit in a way that plays to its strengths, rather than pretending you can have coherent discussions there. > [@Absolute](#): > > I got tired of constantly having to bite my tongue so I don’t hang out here much anymore. Where do you hang out where you don’t have to bite your tongue? Serious question. I’ve always said the answer is _more_ fragmentation, _more_ isolated subcommunities, not constantly jamming everything and everybody into the same website ala Facebook. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Some of us tried to get a reddit going; but that format didn’t work for the purpose, and while that still exists last time I looked it hadn’t had any posts for months. Reddit is so bad for conversations. You can kinda contort it into working, but it’s like swimming upstream… it’s exhausting. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > You’re suggesting we just get them to link to us, with no other connection being made, and their having no control over the board? I see it as more of an “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” kinda situation. And the enemy in this case, is entropy and Teh Facebooks. Kinda the same thing. > [@DSeid](#): > > More posters does not help. And that’s the paradox, isn’t it? The growth of the internet means “more posters”, putting a super powerful smartphone in everyone’s pocket means “more posters”, cheap highspeed cellular service means “more posters”. > [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#): > > Reddit is like a big city. They rarely talk about each other, but they also don’t have community. Not exactly; one thing Reddit gets very right is the vast number of wildly detailed subreddits, dividing and conquering by subject so people can focus on the _subject at hand_ and not _each other_. So Reddit isn’t a big city, Reddit is a kind of Route 66 where you can get your kicks at various cities, of various sizes, along the way. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2021, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/595 "2021-07-16T10:55:53Z")
> [@superwombat](#): > > I’m curious how many of us link back to threads here when in other social venues like Reddit, etc. Shit, are we _allowed_ to do that now? For so many years, it was either an implicit or explicit rule that you don’t link back here because we don’t want another ‘board war.’ It’s possible that this policy changed years ago and I missed the memo, but it was in place for long enough that even in the past year or two, I’ve passed up on situations where it would have been natural to link to here because I wasn’t sure if it was okay to do so. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2021, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/596 "2021-07-16T11:57:42Z")
Holy shit I should have been banned years ago, lol. No links to the SDMB? What an odd policy. ---
**Author:** ![kevlaw](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kevlaw/32/2281_2.png) [@kevlaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kevlaw)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2021, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/597 "2021-07-16T13:08:15Z")
I was googling on an unrelated topic and came across this quote by @codinghorror. > Stack Overflow – like most online communities I’ve studied – naturally trends toward increased strictness over time. It’s primarily a defense mechanism, an immune system of the sort a child develops after first entering school or daycare and being exposed to the wide, wide world of everyday sneezes and coughs with the occasional [meningitis outbreak](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6113a1.htm). It isn’t always a pleasant process, but it is, unfortunately, a necessary one if you want to survive. [https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/) I think this phenomenon — _trends toward increased strictness over time_ — goes a long way towards explaining why SD moderation is the way it is and why the ruleset resembles something from the late Byzantine era. It also explains why software projects get more brittle and hard to change over time. It’s often tempting to start over from scratch but, unfortunately, that results in something that @codinghorror’s partner at StackOverflow called _[Second System Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect)_. > As a corollary of this axiom, you can ask almost any programmer today about the code they are working on. “It’s a big hairy mess,” they will tell you. “I’d like nothing better than to throw it out and start over.” > Why is it a mess? > “Well,” they say, “look at this function. It is two pages long! None of this stuff belongs in there! I don’t know what half of these API calls are for.” [Things You Should Never Do, Part I – Joel on Software](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/) Joel was talking about software systems but I wonder if anyone has studied the phenomenon in rules for social media (or even Empires!)? ---
**Author:** ![mordecaiB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mordecaib/32/7725_2.png) [@mordecaiB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mordecaiB)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2021, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/598 "2021-07-16T18:34:47Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Shit, are we _allowed_ to do that now? For so many years, it was either an implicit or explicit rule that you don’t link back here because we don’t want another ‘board war.’ No, you could link to other places just not in a way where the mods think it would start a board war. But their interpretation of the rule is…weird. I still don’t understand their fear of a board war. **Miller** said we had two, but the only one I remember was the Left Behind people, and that was just laughable. If that’s what they fear in a board war, we should have a few more. I think we ended up with more posters when that was done, including, I believe, **Polycarp** , who was a well liked long term poster here before his death. > [@JohnT](#): > > Holy shit I should have been banned years ago, lol. No links to the SDMB? What an odd policy. Hey, I’m doing my part. I’ve reported almost every post you make, even the ones that don’t link to anything, it’s not my fault that the mods are falling down on the job. I don’t know what more you think I can do, you post a lot! It’s tiring clicking on that flag all the time. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2021, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/599 "2021-07-16T18:41:28Z")
> [@mordecaiB](#): > > No, you could link to other places just not in a way where the mods think it would start a board war. But their interpretation of the rule is…weird. I still don’t understand their fear of a board war. **Miller** said we had two, but the only one I remember was the Left Behind people, and that was just laughable. If that’s what they fear in a board war, we should have a few more. I think we ended up with more posters when that was done, including, I believe, **Polycarp** , who was a well liked long term poster here before his death. The other one was with Stormfront, which is why the degree of apprehension. They’ve become a good deal better known in the Age of Trump, and we _really_ wouldn’t want a board war with them now. At any rate, such allowable circumstances as there were, were never clear to me. Which my brain translated to “just don’t do it.” And you’re right, we did pick up some new and worthwhile posters in the LB board war. Polycarp, bless his memory, was already a regular here before that started. I don’t think he was ever a member over there. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2021, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/600 "2021-07-16T18:49:44Z")
This is my first time hearing about Left Behind. I’m only familiar with the books/movies. Some apocalyptic Christian fundamentalist thing. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2021, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/601 "2021-07-16T19:08:31Z")
> [@mordecaiB](#): > > No, you could link to other places just not in a way where the mods think it would start a board war. But their interpretation of the rule is…weird. I still don’t understand their fear of a board war. **Miller** said we had two, but the only one I remember was the Left Behind people, and that was just laughable. If that’s what they fear in a board war, we should have a few more. Yeah, in most cases the “Board war” would be like Luxemburg declaring war on Germany. > [@RTFirefly](#): > > The other one was with Stormfront, which is why the degree of apprehension. They’ve become a good deal better known in the Age of Trump, and we _really_ wouldn’t want a board war with them now. Hmm, maybe. In any case the only one every talks about is _not_ Stormfront. ---
**Author:** ![mordecaiB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mordecaib/32/7725_2.png) [@mordecaiB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mordecaiB)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2021, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/602 "2021-07-16T19:13:31Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > The other one was with Stormfront, which is why the degree of apprehension. I don’t remember that at all. Was that in AOL days? I don’t really think Stormfront as it is now would give a damn about the SDMB. Plus they would be banned after they made their first post. I really don’t think they care about a message board with a few hundred members, they have bigger things in mind. > [@RTFirefly](#): > > And you’re right, we did pick up some new and worthwhile posters in the LB board war. Polycarp, bless his memory, was already a regular here before that started. I don’t think he was ever a member over there. You could be right, but I thought he was a Left Behinder. He never lost his religious faith while he was here, he just wasn’t in your face about it. I miss him also, even with his WalMart prophecy. > [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I’m only familiar with the books/movies. Some apocalyptic Christian fundamentalist thing. It was a long time ago, but yes, I think it was that group. it wasn’t so much a board war as a minor skirmish. I found it amusing at the time. They knew they didn’t have a receptive audience here and most just trickled away. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2021, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/603 "2021-07-16T20:12:55Z")
Nah, Polycarp had a low opinion of the Left Behind series, and [referred to “Left Behind”](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-rule-about-linking-to-other-message-boards/304200/4) as “sinister buttock.” I believe that skirmish happened right around the end of 1999. StormFront was within the next year or two, IIRC. It definitely wasn’t in the AOL days - I wasn’t aware of this board yet then. ETA: I _would_ be worried about tangling online with StormFront. On the one hand, they might think we weren’t worth bothering with. On the other, if they were able to get someone to track down any of our real identities, they could be a danger to us and those living with us. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2021, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/604 "2021-07-16T20:14:21Z")
Oh, that was way before my time. I joined in 2007. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208.md?page=29) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208.md?page=31)