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

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208
**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")
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### 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 9, 2021, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-sdmb-membership-declining-and-whats-the-best-way-to-add-younger-members/944208/522 "2021-07-09T06:23:13Z")

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> [@GreenWyvern](#):
>
> How has the number of active users posting changed over time? Those stats should be available to the mods.

Here’s some information on active users from 2019.

> [@Has traffic to this website decreased a lot? Seems to be a lot less activity on forums.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-traffic-to-this-website-decreased-a-lot-seems-to-be-a-lot-less-activity-on-forums/831553/64):
>
> I was curious about whether your perception matched some data points, so I looked up my usual data set for that type of perception. I went to the [Wayback Machine](https://archive.org/web/web.php), put in dates for the last several months and looked at the active member count on that date. Here are some data points of dates and active member counts. 11/18/18. . . . . .3423 12/19/18. . . . . .3429 01/23/19 . . . . . 3426 02/19/19 . . . . . 3485 03/09/19 . . . . . 3470 04/11/19 . . . . . 3400 That’s actually pretty stable…

There were roughly 3,500 active users in 2019. There are roughly 1,200 active users now.

You can take a look at the [Wayback Machine](https://web.archive.org/web/20190701000000*/http://boards.straightdope.com). That gives a snapshop of the front page of the forum. I haven’t looked at it since the change to Discourse. Looking at the trend, you can sort of tell when Google’s algorithm changed.

Based on what I’ve seen on other message boards, 107 new users in a month is super low. It depends if it’s true new users or if it contains spammers and return users past the 30 day mark, but even without that, it’s still very low.

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