Topic: Changing patterns in online communities

[RABicle]

I took this screenshot earlier today of NWR's forum stats. Registered users, new topics and members online show no real pattern. But page view do (they're steadily increasing) as do new posts (dropping like a rock.)



I feel that this is part of a wider trend. Forums, especially forums that are adjacent to their mother websites, are in structural decline, losing out on online discussions being monopolised by Facebook and Reddit. But obviously there are a lot of other factors that would influence the use of NWR's forums, like NWR's overall popularity and even Nintendo's popularity.

There's another angle to this though. Forums are also giving way to slack/discord/telegram and other centralised chat programs, this is particuarly notable because they're so similar to IRC which itself fell in use as forums rose in the early to mid 2000s.

Anyone a social media analyst or whatever that can make sense of all this for me?

[BranDonk Kong]

Not an analyst but yeah, Facebook is cancer. I'd say Reddit being completely mainstream is also contributing to the decline of traditional website-owned forums such as this one.

[segagamersteph]

I don't think that's all of it. I think this site in particular attracts an older crowd and thus scares away the younger people up front. Then there is the nature of the site. We've been a weird eclectic community with a history of tension and drama that turns newcomers away.

Then you have the trend of fewer users posting but page views going up, this can be explained by the doldrums of the forums forcing users to get creative and scour old posts for forum games, new angles and rehashing conversations we've already had a thousand times.

There is also the rotating cast of characters and dummy accounts that causes confusion to newbies as well.
All of that explains the trends in that chart.

The rest can be blamed on social media. I spend more time on Twitter than I do here but I refuse to participate in Reddit. Chalk that up to me being on the older, more stubborn side of the spectrum.

I think the fact this site still forces users to sign up for the forums in order to comment on articles is probably the only thing keeping this forum alive. If newbies could just post comments using Disqus or any other social plug in like countless other sites use, or even Facebook social comments as a lot of crap sites use, then they wouldn't even need to sign up for the forums at all.

But I disagree it's a trend across the board.

Go to the Blu Ray forum that place is alive and well. I go there when I get bored here. Which is mostly every day. I don't even like talking Blu Ray and movies nearly as much as video games but the community is so a live and well there you still have to subscribe to and pin topics if you don't want them to get lost. I don't think this place has ever been that alive.

*edit: I forgot to mention there are a ton of former regulars here who I run into there so a lot of our community has migrated there too.

[lolmonade]

The internet landscape has thrown me personally for a loop.


Regarding page views vs comment discrepancy, that doesn't necessarily surprise me.  If I go based on my Reddit habits, my posting has declined considerably while my lurking has gone up.  it's usually a product of either someone already stating something close to what I would have said, the comments being a string of puns/references, or the now natural tendency for any responder to be argumentative.


That's why I like it here.  There's a sense of community and diverse opinion, and it's mostly civil.  I think i'm ageing-out a little bit otherwise when it comes to other social media platforms and discussion forums.  I'd love to find one dedicated to 30+ year olds, just to see if the tone and demeanor of conversation would improve at all.

[Ian Sane]

Social media probably plays a part but I think of a few things that make it so we have less to talk about.

1. Nintendo is a lot more secretive than they used to be.  They don't make a big splash at E3 like they used to and they prefer to use Directs to give us news.  They also will wait a lot sooner to reveal a new game than they did ten years ago.  In the past you might get an announcement about a game two or three years before release.  Now Nintendo will reveal something for the first time that's due later that year.  In the past we could speculate about a new Zelda that had been announced but was years away.

2. The Switch is a pretty great system that we're generally all pretty happy with.  So what's the problem?  Well there is a lot more conversation if the opinion is split on what Nintendo's doing.  Some of us liked this and some of us didn't.  Everyone had their opinion of what Nintendo had to do to come back on top and that wouldn't even be the same even if both people felt they were doing things wrong.  And then there was also though that were content with the status quo and didn't want Nintendo to do anything different.  "Yep, they're sure doing a good job" is what we all hope for but it isn't that interesting to talk about.

And 12000 new members in 2010 has to be a bot making dummy accounts or some sort of reset that recreated everyone's profile.  That is way too big of outlier to be legitimate.

[Adrock]

I’m convinced at least 10000 of those new member accounts in 2010 were Linkle Link’s alts.

[broodwars]

These days, I only post on these forums out of habit. 99% of my gaming & movie/TV  talk these days is either on our podcast or on Twitter. There's just a faster reaction time there & it's easier to directly post media.

[Soren]

I'm surprised by how much of a bump the forums got with the release of the Switch.

For the most part I just hangout on Discord now. It's much easier to browse and talk with my phone. The forums not having a real mobile friendly layout or version really hurts at times.

[ShyGuy]

As the Internet matures, consolidation is inevitable. Forum goers of the past are getting absorbed by Reddit and Facebook, and a few different tentpole communities. This situation isn't just happening with forums.

Independent eCommerce has really been stomped on in the past decade. opening PurpleWidgets.com and creating your own shopping cart website isn't the way to do it anymore. You list your wares on Amazon or Alibaba, or heck, Newegg or Walmart as an independent vendor. More shoppers that way.

The reason for this is how people use the Internet. Surfing the web is a thing of the past. People go to destinations and don't venture out as often as they used to.  People don't find NintendoWorldReport.com looking for a community, they already have a community in one of the two dozen sites these visit on a regular basis.

[Mop it up]

Does stuff like spam bots and search engines count towards page views? If so, I'm guessing the increasing page views is a result of an increase in spam bots and other similar stuff.

[ShyGuy]

In the news today, Reddit is now the third most popular site on the Internet

https://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/US

[BranDonk Kong]

Hmm, that top 10 is pretty much exactly what I would have imagined.

[segagamersteph]

My first reaction was how the hell did Yahoo get on that list I haven't been to their main site in forever. Then I remembered I use my Yahoo email to manage all of my email accounts so I am contributing to their traffic more than I realized.

I find it odd that Bing beat out imdb, that seems wrong somehow.

[BranDonk Kong]

Being the default search engine in everything Microsoft makes doesn't hurt.

[nickmitch]

Yahoo is still pretty popular for their news page, I think.  I've seen people have it up on their computers when I'm talking.

[NWR_insanolord]

Yahoo is also maybe the biggest site for fantasy sports. I check it every day to set the lineups for my teams.

[segagamersteph]

I just didn't realize how much I even used it until I saw that. My first thought really was who uses Yahoo, as I had a tab open refreshing my Yahoo email. Call me a ditz I guess.

[BlackNMild2k1]

These days, I only post on these forums out of habit. 99% of my gaming & movie/TV  talk these days is either on our podcast or on Twitter. There's just a faster reaction time there & it's easier to directly post media.

This forum is propped up out of the habits of us longtimers.
the software is long out of date and lacking in the bells and whistles of other newer sites have.
not to mention that the response time between post is sometimes so long... I feel like most things I post here is just so i know where to find it later, as it would get lost on other sites LOL.
This site is like our own personal blog.