Quote:This is the new home of the community that lived at The Thinking Atheist forum
before that site was shut down. Our site is still under construction but we are
dedicated to rebuilding what was lost and to providing a place where atheists
can communicate and support each other and where theists can come to learn
about atheists and why we don't believe in any god claims.

Quote:Welcome to the ATHEIST DISCUSSION forum, a place where atheists, theists, and those
in between can get together to debate and learn about a multitude and of topics, from
the histories and future of religions, to what atheism is all about and its relevance in
today's world, and from politics and philosophy to pineapple on pizzas.  

(01-17-2025, 12:10 PM)Mathilda Wrote: I think people generally don't use discussion forums any more because social media is built to drive engagement.

But that might change as people are getting fed up of the enshitificatiion of social media, especially now it's getting increasingly shittier faster because of a lack of moderation or fact checking. Not that it necessarily means that people will start using discussion forums again, but the call for safe moderated spaces will grow.

(01-18-2025, 01:55 AM)Vorpal Wrote: MSNBCs ratings are down too.   I predict that will change soon.

Election loss is no fun to dwell on, but watching Trump fall on his face will fill some seats.

(01-17-2025, 12:04 PM)SYZ Wrote: As a longer term member of this forum, I'm not failing to notice a
declining number of members posting regularly—or even occasionally.

Many seldom post any more, including several of the original participants.  
I understand of course the ebb and flow of forums' active memberships,
and the simple fact that some members do decide not to post comments
any more as a matter of personal choice—or as their real-life situations
may vary over time.

In the last 24 hours for example, there have been less than 15 members
who've posted at least once, generally in response to existing threads. To
wit: Dānu, skyking, pattylt, Fireball,  jerry mcmasters, KingEric, Antonio,
Minimalist, Paleophyte, brewerb, Mathilda, Reltzik, Charladele, and Vorpal.
(Plus a couple I may've missed.)

During this same 24-hour period, only two new threads have been started:
"Please help" in Off-topic, and "Ba-Boom!" in World News, Politics & Current Events.

     All this from an active(?) membership base of 1,237 people.

The board statistics indicate most users online at one time was 2,768 on
Sunday, 5 January 2025 at 08:59 PM—which basically tells us nothing about
the real-time member activity on the forum.

So... to my implied questions after all this long-winded rhetorical comment.

Is the forum dying?  Are members leaving for a reason specific to this forum?
Is there not a decent spread of non-religious topics open for debate?  Because
the forum is US based, is there too much focus on American politics?  Does
Donald Trump draw too many comments over too many individual threads? Is
the site moderation sufficiently active and addressing breaches of the forum rules?

Etc, etc, etc.....

I note that our landing page still displays this outdated site introductory text:

Quote:This is the new home of the community that lived at The Thinking Atheist forum
before that site was shut down. Our site is still under construction but we are
dedicated to rebuilding what was lost and to providing a place where atheists
can communicate and support each other and where theists can come to learn
about atheists and why we don't believe in any god claims.

This bolded wording can be off-putting to web passers-by, is actually incorrect, and needs a
simple rewrite.  And I really do think that most people are aware that atheists "don't believe
in any god claims" LOL.

Quote:Welcome to the ATHEIST DISCUSSION forum, a place where atheists, theists, and those
in between can get together to debate and learn about a multitude and of topics, from
the histories and future of religions, to what atheism is all about and its relevance in
today's world, and from politics and philosophy to pineapple on pizzas.  

[The above is only my humble, suggested rewrite, and is
not intended to be considered as better or more accurate,  
or more comprehensible than the current version.]

(01-18-2025, 09:28 PM)Dānu Wrote: Not only hatred, but also volume.  I've found that, regardless of the medium, those who post the most content are also likely to be the most popular.  The inevitable result being that volume and quantity sacrifice quality, and the most obvious and promoted voices often have the least valuable stuff to contribute.

(01-17-2025, 12:04 PM)SYZ Wrote: As a longer term member of this forum, I'm not failing to notice a
declining number of members posting regularly—or even occasionally.

Many seldom post any more, including several of the original participants.  
I understand of course the ebb and flow of forums' active memberships,
and the simple fact that some members do decide not to post comments
any more as a matter of personal choice—or as their real-life situations
may vary over time.

In the last 24 hours for example, there have been less than 15 members
who've posted at least once, generally in response to existing threads. To
wit: Dānu, skyking, pattylt, Fireball,  jerry mcmasters, KingEric, Antonio,
Minimalist, Paleophyte, brewerb, Mathilda, Reltzik, Charladele, and Vorpal.
(Plus a couple I may've missed.)

During this same 24-hour period, only two new threads have been started:
"Please help" in Off-topic, and "Ba-Boom!" in World News, Politics & Current Events.

     All this from an active(?) membership base of 1,237 people.

The board statistics indicate most users online at one time was 2,768 on
Sunday, 5 January 2025 at 08:59 PM—which basically tells us nothing about
the real-time member activity on the forum.

So... to my implied questions after all this long-winded rhetorical comment.

Is the forum dying?  Are members leaving for a reason specific to this forum?
Is there not a decent spread of non-religious topics open for debate?  Because
the forum is US based, is there too much focus on American politics?  Does
Donald Trump draw too many comments over too many individual threads? Is
the site moderation sufficiently active and addressing breaches of the forum rules?

Etc, etc, etc.....

I note that our landing page still displays this outdated site introductory text:

Quote:This is the new home of the community that lived at The Thinking Atheist forum
before that site was shut down. Our site is still under construction but we are
dedicated to rebuilding what was lost and to providing a place where atheists
can communicate and support each other and where theists can come to learn
about atheists and why we don't believe in any god claims.

This bolded wording can be off-putting to web passers-by, is actually incorrect, and needs a
simple rewrite.  And I really do think that most people are aware that atheists "don't believe
in any god claims" LOL.

Quote:Welcome to the ATHEIST DISCUSSION forum, a place where atheists, theists, and those
in between can get together to debate and learn about a multitude and of topics, from
the histories and future of religions, to what atheism is all about and its relevance in
today's world, and from politics and philosophy to pineapple on pizzas.  

[The above is only my humble, suggested rewrite, and is
not intended to be considered as better or more accurate,  
or more comprehensible than the current version.]

(01-18-2025, 09:07 PM)Free Wrote:

(01-17-2025, 12:04 PM)SYZ Wrote: As a longer term member of this forum, I'm not failing to notice a
declining number of members posting regularly—or even occasionally.

Many seldom post any more, including several of the original participants.  
I understand of course the ebb and flow of forums' active memberships,
and the simple fact that some members do decide not to post comments
any more as a matter of personal choice—or as their real-life situations
may vary over time.

In the last 24 hours for example, there have been less than 15 members
who've posted at least once, generally in response to existing threads. To
wit: Dānu, skyking, pattylt, Fireball,  jerry mcmasters, KingEric, Antonio,
Minimalist, Paleophyte, brewerb, Mathilda, Reltzik, Charladele, and Vorpal.
(Plus a couple I may've missed.)

During this same 24-hour period, only two new threads have been started:
"Please help" in Off-topic, and "Ba-Boom!" in World News, Politics & Current Events.

     All this from an active(?) membership base of 1,237 people.

The board statistics indicate most users online at one time was 2,768 on
Sunday, 5 January 2025 at 08:59 PM—which basically tells us nothing about
the real-time member activity on the forum.

So... to my implied questions after all this long-winded rhetorical comment.

Is the forum dying?  Are members leaving for a reason specific to this forum?
Is there not a decent spread of non-religious topics open for debate?  Because
the forum is US based, is there too much focus on American politics?  Does
Donald Trump draw too many comments over too many individual threads? Is
the site moderation sufficiently active and addressing breaches of the forum rules?

Etc, etc, etc.....

I note that our landing page still displays this outdated site introductory text:


This bolded wording can be off-putting to web passers-by, is actually incorrect, and needs a
simple rewrite.  And I really do think that most people are aware that atheists "don't believe
in any god claims" LOL.


[The above is only my humble, suggested rewrite, and is
not intended to be considered as better or more accurate,  
or more comprehensible than the current version.]

Forum subscriptions everywhere have been spiraling downward the past 10 years in the same way chat did 15 years ago, and the reason for that is social media. There's just too many other choices vying for our attention these days and there's only so many hours in the day. 

But now social media is also hitting a breaking point as really... it's the same old, same old. People are ready for something new, but I'm afraid that "something new" may very well be something that forces people even farther apart politically and ideologically than they already are.

This is the "Age of Hate" folks, and we're going to see new ideas flourishing that prey on people's emotions to compel engagement to an extent that not even Twitter (now X) can compete with. On Twitter I was a paid influencer making a few hundred a month (if you've been wondering where I've been the past 3 years) as I was known as "The Fact Checker." It was all well and good until I pissed off Musk and he banned me personally without me actually breaking any rules. Just by fact checking posts, I had so much hate spewed on me there that I had threats against my life countless times. That drove my follower count over 20,000, but a lot of them were haters, following me just to hate on me.

The point here is that I learned from experience that hatred drives up engagement, and that translates directly to $$$. Therefore, we can expect to see new web technologies capitalizing on the hatred angle all for the sake of millions of dollars. Ordinary forums like this will just continue to decline in membership as hatred rears its ugly head on other web portals, squeezing the emotions of all involved for every drop they can get, and creating serious addictions to the new hate-filled technologies.

Something is coming and it's going to be very very bad.

(01-19-2025, 04:31 AM)Dānu Wrote: One nice thing about forums is that they're somewhat insulated from the depressing chaos going on in Washington and incessantly being trumpeted in the media.

(12-04-2025, 04:11 PM)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: I don't think "thousands of posts" and an "explosion of comments" is really an issue here. We simply don't have a broad member-base. I think smaller forums allow for more in-depth discussion precisely because there's not the miasma of arguments/trollery/dumbasses that bigger places have.

I'm not a big fan of curated threads and staff approval etc. That way lies echo-chamber.

(12-04-2025, 04:23 PM)observer Wrote: 1. It's already an echo chamber

(12-04-2025, 04:23 PM)observer Wrote: 3. My thoughts were for a  One On One area - all others could remain the same.

(12-04-2025, 04:23 PM)observer Wrote: 4. I think the the thousands of posts is an issue; it's definitely a turn off for me, and I suspect others, and would contribute to a sense of futility which I suspect causes members to lose interest.

Thanks for your comments.