No, I was not kidding, and I thank you for those answers.
That is way less than I thought.
I like it here, home might be a bit of a stretch, but I would be sad if this site disappeared. I did not know Reddit, but as it has been mentioned again and again, I had a look. It is not the same.
That is the only thing I could Google. Guess I should not ask questions that can be googled, sorry.
You totally win the thread. We can all quit now. (So why am I still typing? Good question 
)
You nailed the place in your first quoted sentence. That combo of features made it irresistible to me. And I was not already a MB user, except for in-house ones for IRL clubs & such
I joined in 2003 at age 45 and I felt about the right age for the group, maybe a smidgen younger, but still same phase of life, as the fat part of the bell curve.
Conversely, you nailed the SDMB current reality at the end:
If I had never encountered this place before a random Google today, I’m not sure I’d join. For damn sure if I hadn’t been here the last 17 years I’d have found some other outlets for my online timewasting and my love of spewing hastily typed drivel at the world.
Which gives me an idea …
Another recently arising obstacle to SDMB’s future success is that most folks who produce content nowadays are trying to monetize it themselves.
My niece the teacher has an Instagram channel (?) selling stuff she makes for other teachers. She has a smidgen of carefully curated free advice and the rest is money-making, albeit right now from a trivially low base.
Our own @JohnT started to publish a biographical serial here. And (at least partly at my suggestion for good or ill), quickly thought better of it and now it’ll be released via some other site as paid content bought via Patreon or something.
I have often wondered if I’d started an “ask the pilot” blog years ago whether I’d have a large profitable following like Patrick Smith, Admiral Cloudberg and so many others. Or done something similar about politics? Or high school and college underclass math and science explained clearly? Perhaps I flatter myself, but SDMB was not the first online place I quickly became well-known at least in-club as somebody usually worth reading.
Instead I’ve contributed 4,210,555 words to Ed & Cecil’s business (not counting this post) in exchange for the privilege of also paying him $8/year since the Charter Member days.
I sure don’t begrudge what I’ve paid; on a per-word-read basis it’s only microscopically more expensive than my public library. i.e. effectively free.
But maybe, just maybe, if I’ve got the gumption to write 4 megawords as a hobby, maybe I should have the gumption to sell them, not give them away.
Here in 2021 lots of the people who might be good posters and good friends here are probably already over on the side of blogging for profit, Twitting with a mound of followers, or FaceBooking to a group larger and more diverse than just their own cousins and about topics more interesting than just their own meals and (in)digestion. Et cetera through the other 27 major outlets for advertiser-supported user-created content.
Which is a long-winded way of saying we’re not going to attract many new members with scintillating writing by a Son-of-SDSAB. Those authors already have their outlet.
So we’re going to have to attract with something else. Friendliness? Absence of jerks? Really hip, “with it” lingo like Officer Hoppy uses on Sanford and Son?
Looking at those numbers, I think the readership is small, but very loyal. That is something positive, I believe.
I am amused that anyone thinks the way to attract a younger audience is youtube, or podcasts. All of those are old school. Maybe Tik Tok. But honestly, what is there here that would attract a younger audience? Outdated and overly strict rules? A bunch of old farts posting at each other?
The only thing this board has going for it is that it has existed for the life of public access internet. It’s a relic and an oddity.
Message boards are a thing of the past, with the possible exception of special interest groups. Even those tend to skew older.
I’m 32. I joined in HS. Maybe 05? And have stuck around since then with varying participation levels. But honestly, I spend a lot more time on Reddit these days.
If you join, we’ll let you drive our tiny cars!
Oh, wait–that’s how to get the younguns to join the Shriners…
I joined today. Mostly for the “lurker show yourself” thread but this one too.
I read the straight dope in the LA Weekly decades ago, years later i found the website, years later i found the SDMB. been lurking ever since. So im not the young demographic you seek to recruit.
but my one observation is that there are certain “super users” that pretty much control the tenor and tone of the board. if you have replied to this thread you are probably one of them.
So why is the SDMB declining? Why cant we get new younger members? Because its a bunch of old farts who dont want to let anyone into their old fart club.
I wonder how many people post here, get dragged into the pit for some ‘stupidity’ they posted, and never come back. Or perhaps they try to defend themselves a bit, get horribly piled on, and leave. I think the BBQ pit has become a toxic place where posters who don’t fit the zeitgeist of the board get abused until they go away.
Great Debates is no longer great or much of a debate. You either agree with the regulars, or prepare to be attacked, and if the attacks are modded down the beatings are moved to the pit.
Most things I post here now tend to be in technical threads, Tv or movie threads, and other places devoid of the people just waiting to jump on anyone who steps outside of their personal overton window of acceptable thinking. Also, I do most of my reading on an iPad, and it is so painful to type on that sometimes I think of posting something and just forget it because typing long measages and then editing the inevitable typos is tedious.
As for young people coming here, is fighting ignorance still something they care about? Are young people still willing to post in a place where their ideas might be challenged instead of affirmed? Or is this place not ‘safe’ for them to say what they want?
Also, half the country still voted for the other guy. I don’t think any of them are welcome here if they care to justify their beliefs. And if you are just another place for progressives, you’re fighting a hell of a lot of competition.
To me, the unique thing about this board was that for a long time it was the best place on the internet to find actual quality debate between the right and the left. Well, the right is mostly gone now, and it’s become more of an echo chamber for one point of view with some exceptions. There are lots of places on the internet you can go for that.
One thing you could try: A one-time amnesty for people who were long time users but banned for some reason. Not the clowns with nothing to add but vitriol and games, but people like Diogenes the Cynic, December, Shodan, and a number of others. It’s depressing to read old threads and see just how many long-term posters have been banned. They were also some of the hoard’s most prolific posters. It’s also not very welcoming to new users to see so many banned people when browsing threads. It makes the place look touchy and unwelcoming to some degree.
Who may have briefly reappeared here a few weeks ago. Someone using a similar user name registered here, made a few posts in several threads late at night, and then got banned (and his posts cornfielded away) when the mods caught up to him the next morning.
It’s been said upthread by others but is worth repeating.
We don’t need 25yos. They’d be great to have, and I certainly welcome any that show up, but the age is not specifically necessary.
If we got a couple hundred 50yos new to our game that would be a huge difference. Add in some 40yos and we’ve got a balanced enough diet that we’ll last another 10 years and can have this same flail again in 2031.
So rather than focusing on attracting a demographic everyone agrees will find little here of interest, we should aim for something more achievable. The mid-late middle aged folks.
Separately from the above …
I think @Sam_Stone speaks a lot of uncomfortable truth here.
Yes sometimes a dedicated troll shows up straight from 4chan. But too often we treat newbies as target practice rather than a exceptionally valuable commodity to be nurtured, and only if necessary, weeded out later when they can’t / won’t play close enough to nice.
I don’t think that problem is unique to this message board. I used to frequent another message board that also had decent back-and-forth between the right and the left.
And then Trump.
And civil discussion fell to pieces. Some of the conservatives left completely. Some stopped talking about politics. And the rest mostly moved either to the left or the racist right. A lifetime conservative has become a Democratic Zealot. A guy who had been funny and friendly turned into a scathing racist. I mean, maybe he’d always been racist and just hadn’t seen fit to be public about it before? Another couple of conservative/libertarian types were suddenly posting about how African genes were polluting the country (kid you not) or how we had to protect ourselves from our Muslim neighbors.
Anyway, I think a big chunk of the US was radicalized by the last few years. And it’s been a problem for those of us who like to argue in a friendly and collegial way.
Oops: I want to add that I’m not claiming that the people you mention did the stuff I described happening elsewhere. In fact, I only recognize one of the names, and was surprised and disappointed when that poster was banned.
I just feel that civil discourse took a big hit recently.
I’m posting in this thread, and serious doubt I’m a super-user. For that matter, I’m coming up on my one year board cakeday, but I haven’t ever felt picked on. Then again, I was a serious long time lurker, so I was probably tonally similar when I did start posting. And as a social liberal/fiscal conservative, 40 something whitish (Jew) guy, I’m probably pretty middle of the road here. The biggest ‘flack’ I’ve picked up is for being a gun owner who is in favor of common sense controls. And even then, it wasn’t exactly extreme hazing - granted, in those threads there are people for whom it’s a hot button issue absorbing the flack. 
Fair enough, and i don’t doubt you.
I think Sam Stone is on to something, which is that part of the reason our membership is declining is because we…well, banned a substantial number of prolific posters.
Now, we’re not exactly starving for action - I’m sure there are still hundreds of posts being made per day. Activity is still humming. But, IMHO, we banned a substantial number of posters for being “trolls” who weren’t, in fact, trolls. They may have been particularly abrasive posters, but I don’t think they rose to the level of actual trolling. Examples in case: HurricaneDitka, Shodan, WillFarnby…maybe ClothaHump. And people like Bricker left, too (of his own volition). We also banned some liberals like Barack Obama, too, whom I don’t think was a true troll either.
I would have agreed with you had you included some of the radicalization and hate that has also appeared on the left. Accusations of racism are often flung around with very little reason. Moderate conservative opinions are treated as if they came from a Klansman. Ideas that used to be debated because they were ‘wrong’ are now attacked as hateful and racist. Some subjects are untouchable lest you be told just how awful a person you are for even bringing them up.
There’s plenty of radicalization going around on both sides. Free speech itself seems to be under atrack these days. Maybe that will ultimately be the death of this place - the rising intolerance for other opinions and the general ‘othering’ of people who don’t think the same way.
An interesting question is what would happen if we essentially banned discussion of politics and current events that are overtly political.
Obviously in a hyper polarized society, everything can be made political if you try hard enough. e.g.
Don’t like pepperoni pizza? You’re obviously an unAmerican stooge. Betcha like falafel.
Like pepperoni pizza? Why, that’s cultural appropriation of Italian’s precious heritage; Heaven forfend!
We did an OK job of keeping politics out of QZ. Certainly not a perfect job. And have always done so in GQ. MPSIMS and to a lesser degree IMHO mention politics in passing but they aren’t the topic of threads, nor the focus of posts. Ditto Game Room.
If each of us on left and right got our fix of that crap elsewhere, or better yet learned to not live, eat, breath, and type politics all day, would we have enough left here to have a viable community and keep each other’s attention?
Or would we instead end up losing much of our membership to wherever the political arguers took their arguments?
Another example: if I started a Starbucks thread in the Café, here’s what would happen.
If I post the question on the Starbucks subreddit, people answer the question and engage with it.
This place can be exhausting at times.
No that wouldn’t happen. You’re being overly hyperbolic. Or deliberately obtuse.
FTR just kidding. But the fact my sentence sounds so plausible in our context aptly illustrates @dalej42’s point.
Fair. In another on-line discussion, I saw a guy say that women give birth, and he was jumped on by trans-supporters so nastily that he decided to troll them instead of engaging, and that got pretty ugly, too.