Why is the SDMB membership declining, and what's the best way to add younger members?

[codinghorror]

@JohnT

The permabanning might have made sense in 2003, but we have lost a LOT of good posters who went off the rails temporarily, many times due to external pressures which had nothing to do with this website

The suspension mechanism in Discourse is designed to encourage forgiveness and offers common time intervals along with the suspension – a week, a month, 2 months, 6 months, etc. (But wouldn’t people who really wanted to come back, be able to come back with a different email address?)

@Sam_Stone

There’s no reason why a person who cannot be civil in political debates should be banned from talking about their favorite TV show in another forum

I dunno. In my experience, people who can’t be civil with the tough topics … “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

@Ziberian

I think this would appeal to a lot of people, if only they knew about SDMB.

It’s been mentioned, but perhaps the most straightforward way to grow is the most obvious one – share interesting discussions via the share link under each post!

@Omniscient

Cecil should probably be running a YouTube series (and/or TikTok/SnapChat/Instagram for bite sized truthbombs) in which the question of the day is answered with the appropriate level of snark. YouTubers are the new blogger and it’s a fantastic platform for discovering new stuff. Setting aside the discussion about skill and time required to do this well, it would be an absolutely fantastic way to attract a new set of acolytes.

That’d be neat, and it would be cool if @Cecil_Adams created some interesting topics every now and then to cultivate fun, irreverent discussions. Right now Cecil’s created… three topics.