Robots.txt

[gilesgoat]

I think "data needs correct interpretation" at times.

I would not say "a forum is fading out" simply based on the fact "we don't have a constant rate of people joining" ( or new
people joining at all ).

I'd more say "a forum is fading out" the moment no one is posting/reading on it any more, you coud have a super active
forum with maybe just 20 people writing/reading it .. as well as you could have a "dead forum" with hundreds of people
registered/registering and very few "partecipation".

Quality no Quantity and stuff like that.

If the forum would be constantly growing ( and it still is, is only the trend of growing that is a bit smaller ) then you'd
need more and more and more resources and considering this is a non-profit thing it means you'd probably get an increasing
difficulty in management even if, the more people, the more theorectically resources-to-keep-it-up ( funds ) you could get.

Also stuff are always a bit "cyclic" and go "in waves" .. you can have moments more "up" and moments more "down" the
trend can always change.

As I said more than "joining rate" I'd check how much people actually read/writes in this forum also this forum is quite
particular in many ways because it really is "a forum no forum" I mean it's completely "multi tematic" even if there are
quite some different areas with specific interests it's really "extremely full of variations", I think it actually is a bit
"a complex forum to be in" because "you can expect anything to happen"

It would be interesting to see some stats about "how the trend of posts is" probably even more interesting would be to
see "how much posts are read and in which way".

[RiK]

Maybe the reason people dont join here is cause it's basically pretty dull and not a lot really happens anyway? Jeff doesn't post his blog on here anymore and the retro gaming league thing is dead. Almost every gaming thread follows the same pattern (person x posts about game, person y says how game is bad as its not on a Nintendo platform, Meow says its rubbish cause its not 40 hours long, etc...).

The whole place lacks a purpose other than to be somewhere where the locals hang out. It's like a pub in an out of town suburb. If you're not local, there's no reason to go in there even if you know it exists.

Yup, whilst YMMV, for me the signal to noise ratio these days makes it far less attractive as a community than when it was a lot smaller. That's not just nostalgia talking, it's simply the way of forums as they grow. I used to love this place when we had just a few hundred members and it was a real sense of hanging out with your mates but these days there are just too many people posting meaningless crap, memes and me-too copycat threads whilst hiding behind the relative anonymity of the internet for me to feel the inclination to engage with much of what's going on.

I'm sure the usual people will flame away for me daring to suggest 'it's not like the old days', and that's fine, you're entitled to your opinion too

I've met some amazing people on here that I now count among my best friends who I hope I'll know my whole life and I do spend time and talk to them pretty much every day, though for the most part that's just not on here any more.

[Istar]

... opinion ...

This.

I spend more time on Stack Overflow these days. I flash into YY to scan page 1 of Bleatings, maybe see what's new in the Pictures thread or check out anything with a moderately interesting title (rare) then bugger off. Programming is always open in another tab, but I just refresh that two or three times a day to see if there's anything cool going on, or a problem I can help with.

I have no suggestions for improvement - more joiners probably just means more noise, less signal; the basic problem is that there isn't much signal anyway. IMHO, YMMV, IANAL, POP3, RSVP.

[Flabio]

It doesn't feel like we have that many members anyway. There's certainly less than 20 people who regularly post in Bleatings these days. Some months it's a lot less than that.

[RiK]

It doesn't feel like we have that many members anyway. There's certainly less than 20 people who regularly post in Bleatings these days. Some months it's a lot less than that.

That maybe so but it seems to me when forums reach a certain critical mass that the dynamic changes and the people tend to care less about what they post.

[Fil]

To be fair, i've never cared about what I post.

[gravy]

[Darkflame]

I think current activity is largely irrelevant to whether or not you want more people to join or not.
Imho, this site should be out there for people to find. Just on the principle there might be others who would enjoy this community. Share the fluffyness, etc.

I don't think it should be an issue of "omg! The forum needs new blood or it will die out (etc)"

[zip accident]

I think current activity is largely irrelevant to whether or not you want more people to join or not.
Imho, this site should be out there for people to find. Just on the principle there might be others who would enjoy this community. Share the fluffyness, etc.

I don't think it should be an issue of "omg! The forum needs new blood or it will die out (etc)"

I think I mostly agree with that as an ideal, but...

I do think that there is less posting than their used to be, I wouldn't like to judge what's happened to the s/n ratio (after all, one person's signal is another person's noise), but I feel they're both down on what they used to be. That seems to me to be fairly general across the net, there just isn't as much chatter as I'd like to hear, maybe there never was and it just seems less, but it does seem less to me.

[disciple]

Maybe the reason people dont join here is cause it's basically pretty dull and not a lot really happens anyway? Jeff doesn't post his blog on here anymore and the retro gaming league thing is dead. Almost every gaming thread follows the same pattern (person x posts about game, person y says how game is bad as its not on a Nintendo platform, Meow says its rubbish cause its not 40 hours long, etc...).

The whole place lacks a purpose other than to be somewhere where the locals hang out. It's like a pub in an out of town suburb. If you're not local, there's no reason to go in there even if you know it exists.

Yup, whilst YMMV, for me the signal to noise ratio these days makes it far less attractive as a community than when it was a lot smaller. That's not just nostalgia talking, it's simply the way of forums as they grow. I used to love this place when we had just a few hundred members and it was a real sense of hanging out with your mates but these days there are just too many people posting meaningless crap, memes and me-too copycat threads whilst hiding behind the relative anonymity of the internet for me to feel the inclination to engage with much of what's going on.

I don't really agree with this, I think it's comes more of a feeling of not knowing all other members.

It struck me when putting this graph together :



The forum formed start of 2002, I joined end of 2003, when I joined people were moaning that it wasn't like the old days then! In the lifetime of Yakyak this "old days" "golden period" was very very short!

Maybe someone who was there could add this "golden period" to the graph!

Fer Christ's sake the whoring for sheep thread from back then was NOTHING BUT spam/noise. I tend to think that spam/noise is defined by your opinion of the poster, if you know the poster well then it's not spam, it's a mate having a laugh. If you don't know the poster well, it's spam.

I'm not pointing fingers here because I don't see it as an issue and you're hardly a spam-monger, but if this thread created by your good self the other week isn't a spam/forum noise thread I don't know what is : http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=79258 everyone does it, your perception all depends on your relationship to the poster.

Regarding Yakyak being a backwater pub, surely that's cos no-one can find us! Search indexing moves the pub back to the A road. 0f course yes, if the pub's shit people won't stick around, but it's pointless being a great backwater pub if no-one knows you exist.

[gravy]

If you're data's right when did Robots.txt get removed originally?

If it really is as an important a factor as you think it is then you should be able to tell from your data

[disciple]

is this a trick question?

July 2007, I'm getting that from your first post in this thread and seeing an associated drop off in the graph.

[gravy]

It was Jan 2008

It was on when I did the switch to phpbb3 and I turned it off again then.

You're not making a very convincing case.

I think Flabio's hit the nail on the head to be honest

[RiK]

Regarding Yakyak being a backwater pub, surely that's cos no-one can find us! Search indexing moves the pub back to the A road. 0f course yes, if the pub's shit people won't stick around, but it's pointless being a great backwater pub if no-one knows you exist.

I'd far rather have a quiet little country pub with a few of my best mates than a city-centre Weatherspoon's full of chavs any day.

[Darkflame]

For all you know, some of the nicest people out there you have yet to meet.