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

[HMS_Irruncible]

@Little_Nemo

And vice versa. I’m an old guy. I read this message board because I feel it covers all kinds of topics of general interest. If I go to reddit, it looks to me like a bunch of young people talking about stuff that only interests people like themselves.

Reddit has over 130,000 distinct forums. Almost certainly you can find whatever high-quality discussion you want. The upside is choice, the downside is the effort in narrowing your interest and and finding that forum. You might be very surprised at how well suited some of the discussions are to your own idiosyncratic interest.

Perhaps you are like me, coming from a message board like this one where there are like 10 general-purpose forums that almost never change, I found the choice overwhelming at first. But I soon grew to prefer it.

[ParallelLines]

Just wanted to drop back in on the ongoing debate?argument? about the OP to make a quick mention - anyplace where one of the front page threads is “Real Music Died in the 1970s” is going to probably turn off anyone born before 1980 (or worse). So yeah, our age bracket is a huge problem in terms of younger posters. I’m not saying that I can’t see the point in said thread, and even as a sub-50 member of the board, I’m more likely to listen to a 60s/70s/80s music stream than a 80s/90s/00s, but wanted to bring back the point that even if we use any of the above ideas to drive more clicks, the content of the board is likely to turn off new subscribers in the younger bracket.

[TriPolar]

@Riemann

First of all, I don’t accept your theory that moderating threads that are jerkish and hostile toward women results in a decrease in membership.

First, I didn’t pose this as a matter of hostility towards women, Czaracsm did that. It applies to moderating anything on the basis that it’s offensive to somebody and I’m not advocating that or it’s opposite. And I’m not advocating changes to content as a way to increase membership, I don’t care if it increases at all. We need a way to pay for this, and if it’s not going to be through payment by the existing membership and whoever else may wander in then I don’t think this board will be here much longer at all.

Now if you want to go the approach of wider appeal then widening the scope of the board is one way to do it. And most ways to do it aren’t going to pass all the proposed purity tests. Simply doing the same thing even more so isn’t going to get anywhere IMHO.

[Thudlow_Boink]

Note that there are two kinds of answers to “How do we add new/younger members?”:

1. Change the SDMB to be more attractive to more and/or younger people.
2. Keep the SDMB essentially what it is, but increase awareness/outreach/advertising, so that we draw in the kinds of people who would enjoy and fit in well here but are currently unaware of the SDMB.

I’m wary of #1: I suspect that small changes wouldn’t make enough of a difference, and big changes would make it not be the SDMB any more. But #2 we should definitely be looking into.

[Riemann]

@TriPolar

First, I didn’t pose this as a matter of hostility towards women

Oh really?

@madsircool

Here at the SDMB a question of who is hotter, you or your wife? gets closed because it makes the aging mods uncomfortable.

@TriPolar

What madsircool said. Just that this is not blatantly obvious highlights the problem. The diminishing readership lines up with the increase in speech policing on the board.

You then tried to walk it back to a vague generalization about censorship. And that, of course, as @Czarcasm has pointed out is a straw man, since there has been no general increase in censorship. The only change in moderation policy that I’m aware of since I joined the board is a specific policy to moderate misogynistic material to make the board less hostile to women.

[filmore]

@Thudlow_Boink

I’m wary of #1: I suspect that small changes wouldn’t make enough of a difference, and big changes would make it not be the SDMB any more. But #2 we should definitely be looking into.

I agree with this. I’m not sure that it would be worthwhile to attract members who would take the board in a different direction. The membership here has a certain kind of personality and it would be nice to get more people who fit in. It seems counter-productive to expand board membership in a way that makes the board into something else.

[TriPolar]

@Riemann

Oh really?

You cited my response to Czarcasm. If you wanted to talk about what madsircool said you should quoted my response to that. And his remark didn’t even address what madsircool said. So go off on your dream of an argument.

[Dewey_Finn]

@Darren_Garrison

The omnibus threads are especially harmful to discussion. For instance, the “movies you have seen recently” thread, lumping all movies together into a giant, chaotic unwieldy thread. Seen a movie you like? Start its on thread. That means hundreds of threads instead of one? Good! That’s the way a forum should be!

The problem is that this board is small enough that for more obscure movies, few others have seen it. (I miss the IMDB message boards because you could always get someone to talk about a movie or TV show episode.)

[Kron]

Each subreddit has its own moderation policies; not surprisingly, where it is essentially the wild west, often it becomes a fairly misogynistic place, which drives out ~50% of potential members… exactly like what happened here. I don’t want to be r/redpill.

The more erudite subs with actual moderation for quality content, though… aren’t far removed from what we do here.

[Little_Nemo]

@HMS_Irruncible

Reddit has over 130,000 distinct forums. Almost certainly you can find whatever high-quality discussion you want. The upside is choice, the downside is the effort in narrowing your interest and and finding that forum. You might be very surprised at how well suited some of the discussions are to your own idiosyncratic interest.

Perhaps you are like me, coming from a message board like this one where there are like 10 general-purpose forums that almost never change, I found the choice overwhelming at first. But I soon grew to prefer it.

I feel that approach can be its own trap. I might find some forums on reddit (or is it Reddit?) on topics of particular interest to me. But I’ve been on message boards with narrow focuses; you end up wishing people would change the subject.

I’ll post on the Board Game Geek board, for example. It’s a great place when you want to talk about board games. But don’t go there looking for conversations about other topics.

So I prefer a general topic board like this one, where a variety of topics are discussed. Including some new topics I hadn’t thought of before. And on this board, there’s a good percentage of threads where I’m interested in the topic.

[Czarcasm]

The problem is that becoming more like Reddit isn’t going to cause people to leave Reddit and come here-Why would they?

[Czarcasm]

Again I ask-Where has becoming more like Reddit helped other message boards?

[Riemann]

@TriPolar

If you wanted to talk about what madsircool said you should quoted my response to that.

I did. I cited the only post in this thread by @madsircool, and your subsequent unambiguous reply to that post. Once again, if you insist:

@madsircool

Here at the SDMB a question of who is hotter, you or your wife? gets closed because it makes the aging mods uncomfortable.

@TriPolar

What madsircool said.

I you now regret agreeing with someone who was explicitly advocating against the new policy of moderating misogyny, changing your mind would certainly be welcome. But please don’t imagine that we can’t read.

[BippityBoppityBoo]

@Czarcasm

Were sexist threads “a lot more fun” for female posters? Lets ask them.

Ask me, ask me!

No, they aren’t. They are harsh, unwelcoming, inhospitable and can drive 50% of the potential new readers away. Sexism and misogyny are hostile and pernicious. People run away from hostile and pernicious as fast as they can.

There’s a huge difference between racy and adult and prurient and sexist. Racy and adult is appealing and fun. I’ve stuck around for it. The other is not.

[Riemann]

@BippityBoppityBoo

No, they aren’t.

But, but… infringing men’s freedum to leer at boobs makes them uncomfortable! Have you no empathy?

[BippityBoppityBoo]

@Riemann

First of all, I don’t accept your theory that moderating threads that are jerkish and hostile toward women results in a decrease in membership.

Second - no, I don’t agree with your proposal that we should be trying to attract new members for whom allowing jerkish sexist threads would be a significant positive factor in joining.

Like.

[bump]

@madsircool

Reddit is popular because its almost completely uncensored and you can discuss almost anything that isnt racist.

I’d argue that it’s not so much the free-wheeling discussion aspects, as the staggering variety of subreddits about any and all possible topics, sex and really weird stuff included. So while the SDMB seems to be more general knowledge based, with a sort of preference for politics, pop culture and the like, Reddit has high activity subreddits (and often more than one) for specialized topics- barbecuing, cocktails, beers, cosmetics, PC building, gaming, home improvement, and so on. Pretty much any niche interest you have, you can probably find it on there. Most major metro areas have their own subreddits where various local stuff is discussed, and when disasters or other big events happen, resources are shared/marshaled as best as they can.

I think the upvote/downvote is an interesting thing… not sure if it would work here with the current culture. And on Reddit, posts can often get lost in the static depending on how people are sorting the posts, etc… so it’s not as intimate feeling, and you don’t know if your post ever even got read, much less commented on.

If I had to describe it to really old farts, I’d call it the spiritual successor to Usenet newsgroups, just with a bigger platform and a better interface.

I do agree though, that there was a sort of… revamping of the moderation guidelines sometime in the past (probably about a decade and a half ago if memory serves) and there was a pretty hard crackdown on more vulgar thread topics like sex, excretions, etc… and IMO, that changed the tone of the SDMB for the worse; it went from fairly light hearted and fun, to something more serious and staid.

I mean, there were threads about stuff like “What was your worst sex injury” or “Tell me about how you pooped your pants” (I remember the threads, but not the actual titles). They were hugely popular and hysterically funny.

[Procrustus]

@bump

I mean, there were threads about stuff like “What was your worst sex injury” or “Tell me about how you pooped your pants” (I remember the threads, but not the actual titles). They were hugely popular and hysterically funny.

I think both those would be allowed today.

[Riemann]

@Procrustus

I think both those would be allowed today.

I agree, what’s wrong with those? The proscription isn’t against sex, it’s against sexism. And there is a currently active thread about “20lbs of poop”. I don’t think the introduction of pants would bring down the banhammer.

[bump]

All I know is that there was a pretty good change in tone at some point and IIRC, it was the result of moderation changes w.r.t. certain topics. And it wasn’t a positive thing overall; yeah, it elevated the tone, but it sucked out a lot of the fun.