DeadliestWarrior34;1241917 wrote:That's bullshit. I got banned a month for my first

The mods have a penchant for making up their own rules and punishments.

sleeper;1241972 wrote:The mods have a penchant for making up their own rules and punishments.

It's all in hopes that you will become oppressed little puppets that dance when we pull strings.

O-Trap;1242009 wrote:It's all in hopes that you will become oppressed little puppets that dance when we pull strings.

Or what's actually happening like a decline in user base and user activity. Keep on trucking though.

sleeper;1242031 wrote:Or what's actually happening like a decline in user base and user activity. Keep on trucking though.

Stats? Source? Evidence?

I can't say anything to the size of the active user base (I believe there was a thread that tried to recall everyone that left, and most of them weren't contributing in any positive way anyway). However, the number of posts per day over the entire site seems to be just fine.

But don't let me interrupt your "sky-is-falling" prophecy. Carry on.

Here's a stat for you.

10,920 members out of 14,877 have ZERO posts.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that activity around here barely pulsing. Unfortunately, Justin refuses to open the books and let everyone get a look at user activity levels. I wonder why? :rolleyes:

sleeper;1242045 wrote:Here's a stat for you.

10,920 members out of 14,877 have ZERO posts.

You do know that that's normal, right?

Kudos for finding a stat, though.

sleeper;1242045 wrote:It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that activity around here barely pulsing.

Appeal to common knowledge fallacy ... and maybe ad hominem depending on how that "rocket scientist" part was intended.

Here, in order to see where we're at, I'll watch the site activity over the next week or two, and we'll compare it to the historical average. Needless to say, if things are as bad as you think they are, then it should be quite telling.

For what it's worth, since the inception of the site (best I can do with the facts given), we've averaged a total of 1,228.46 posts per day, not including any that have been deleted, and not accounting for the fact that today is not over yet (given the time frame we're working with, the difference would likely be negligible).

So, in the words of Tobias Fünke:

[video=youtube;Li4A85HIBZY][/video]

sleeper;1242045 wrote:Unfortunately, Justin refuses to open the books and let everyone get a look at user activity levels. I wonder why? :rolleyes:

The books? As in what he makes on the site? He has let some know what he makes/made with AdSense.

Since June 1th of this year, there have been 32 new contributing members (at least 1 post). Just an FYI.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that "it doesn't take a rocket scientist..." implies that one would not need to be or hire a rocket scientist in order to understand the concept.

Wow, 32 members with 1 post in over 2 months. Soon enough Justin will need to upgrade the servers in order to handle this explosive growth. :rolleyes:

sleeper;1242097 wrote:Wow, 32 members with 1 post in over 2 months. Soon enough Justin will need to upgrade the servers in order to handle this explosive growth. :rolleyes:

32 members with AT LEAST 1 post. I believe the largest poster from that time frame has 61 posts or so.

In either case, "explosive growth" isn't typically the key for an adequate long-term model. Slow, incremental growth is. If the site nets a single active user who results in as little as a single net post increase over the course of a month, then the site is growing.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist" to put that together.

As for your defense of the "it doesn't take a rocket scientist" fallacy, I'm not sure what you're trying to do. Justify your fallacy? I can do the same thing.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the orange in my hand is a gift from Odin."

It's a fallacious argument for your position, right or wrong.

O-Trap;1242165 wrote:32 members with AT LEAST 1 post. I believe the largest poster from that time frame has 61 posts or so.

In either case, "explosive growth" isn't typically the key for an adequate long-term model. Slow, incremental growth is. If the site nets a single active user who results in as little as a single net post increase over the course of a month, then the site is growing.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist" to put that together.

As for your defense of the "it doesn't take a rocket scientist" fallacy, I'm not sure what you're trying to do. Justify your fallacy? I can do the same thing.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the orange in my hand is a gift from Odin."

It's a fallacious argument for your position, right or wrong.

Like I've said, if this site lasts another year I'll be shocked. The activity is dying. We've replaced all the trolls(read 30% of the user base) with the 1% of the user base who likes to post what they had for lunch, dinner, breakfast, afternoon snack, etc. Great website. I mean go take a look at serious business right now and find me a troll-less thread that's reached page 2(not counting 1 year old+ threads that never die because they are what kind of beer I drink and what kind of food I eat threads that keep getting uselessly bumped). Fucking 0.

sleeper;1242176 wrote:Like I've said, if this site lasts another year I'll be shocked. The activity is dying. We've replaced all the trolls(read 30% of the user base) with the 1% of the user base who likes to post what they had for lunch, dinner, breakfast, afternoon snack, etc. Great website. I mean go take a look at serious business right now and find me a troll-less thread that's reached page 2(not counting 1 year old+ threads that never die because they are what kind of beer I drink and what kind of food I eat threads that keep getting uselessly bumped). Fucking 0.

You can start threads in the basement to troll, hope this helps. Honestly - why are you complaining if you can still post under other names? Makes no sense. Keep complaining about something but continue using it...

#sleeperCries/Whines/Bitches/Moans

sleeper;1242176 wrote:Like I've said, if this site lasts another year I'll be shocked. The activity is dying.

Again, I ask for substantiation for your claim.

sleeper;1242176 wrote:We've replaced all the trolls(read 30% of the user base) with the 1% of the user base who likes to post what they had for lunch, dinner, breakfast, afternoon snack, etc. Great website.

Facebook does okay with the same content. And so long as there are over a thousand user posts per day, it's obvious people have something to say.

Also, I'd LOVE to hear where that 30% came from. There are a few trolls on the site, but I'd put good money on it being in the single digits unless we're defining a troll as anyone with a snide remark (but then, that 30% would still be around, by and large, making the "replace" part of the sentence false).

sleeper;1242176 wrote:I mean go take a look at serious business right now and find me a troll-less thread that's reached page 2(not counting 1 year old+ threads that never die because they are what kind of beer I drink and what kind of food I eat threads that keep getting uselessly bumped). Fucking 0.

And, of course, you're wrong, but that's becoming a habit of yours.

All these are currently on page 1 of Serious Business ... and all are multiple pages:

Olympics (Discussion and Results aka Spoilers)
2012 Olympics (No spoilers, NBC Prime time version)
Bucks0331: NCAA Online Dynasty
LeBron has no game
NASA Curiosity Landing - 1:30 AM
Why do people say "god bless you" when you sneeze?
Vigilante is it time..... better yet Citizen Mafia

Several of these were started just a couple days ago or less, mind you.

They're all multiple pages. Olympics ones and the NASA one are current events related (which I personally think is valuable content). The vigilante one poses a question about current events as well. The LeBron one is pop culture (something you'd see in a gossip magazine ... not my cup of tea, but still valuable content from a business perspective). The "god bless you" one asks a question about a cultural colloquialism ... again valuable content. I don't know what the Bucks0331 is, but it sounds like gaming networking.

Nowhere is someone asking what someone else ate, drank, etc.

Moreover, if you look at even the topics that are a single page in length, most of them have a number of posts that indicates plenty of people are interested in discussing them (and not the same 5 people as every other thread).

Also, this site even still has a place where people can troll. If THAT is what people truly want, then the Basement will still have plenty of traffic ... which means the site will still get the traffic.

Dear lord, it's like you would prefer not to let the facts get in the way of your rant. You been "slingin' rocks on the mean streets of the Internet" with Sage or something?

Responding to sleeper is about as effective as responding to Isadore or Big Gain.

otrap I'm not reading that book of a post.

Number of words in my post (not including the words of yours I quoted): 396
Number of words in Dr. Seuss' book Cat in the Hat: 1,702

Perhaps the "What did you have to eat last night" topics are more your speed after all.

I read the post and stopped when I read the comparison between the OC and FB. The OC will never be FB, nor will it last more than a year. Mark it down, 8/8/2013 this place will be a ghost town.

sleeper;1242437 wrote:I read the post and stopped when I read the comparison between the OC and FB. The OC will never be FB, nor will it last more than a year. Mark it down, 8/8/2013 this place will be a ghost town.

Sleeper, where do I say this place will be Facebook? I said that the content you mentioned wasn't the death knell of a website, and I used Facebook as an example of that, which it is.

Perhaps you don't know that appealing to the lowest common denominator of society is, in fact, a successful business model, but it is, so even if the content was 100% the shallow stuff you mentioned, the precedent still exists for it to be profitable.

Oh, and you never substantiated the claim I called into question prior to the Facebook reference (NOTE: not equation).

By the way, you can now add the "Google Hurdle Game" to the list of threads that have reached two pages on the first page of Serious Business.

O-Trap;1242453 wrote:By the way, you can now add the "Google Hurdle Game" to the list of threads that have reached two pages on the first page of Serious Business.

It has 25 posts. Trying upping your post per page limit to 50 like most mature and able bodied individuals.

sooo about that ban....

O-Trap;1242450 wrote:Sleeper, where do I say this place will be Facebook? I said that the content you mentioned wasn't the death knell of a website, and I used Facebook as an example of that, which it is.

Perhaps you don't know that appealing to the lowest common denominator of society is, in fact, a successful business model, but it is, so even if the content was 100% the shallow stuff you mentioned, the precedent still exists for it to be profitable.

Oh, and you never substantiated the claim I called into question prior to the Facebook reference (NOTE: not equation).

Unfortunately, and thankfully, there is no credible research or study that shows the decline of the forum. But if you honestly believe this place is growing you might want to get your head checked. Member attrition happens to even the best of forums, but the best of forums can replace those users fairly easily. We don't replace users here, not now and not ever. You can point to the 32 users in 2 months(read: a damn joke) that have posted at least once, but none of the members I recognize nor do any of them post with any regularity to call them active and engaging members.

The only reason the forum has survived this long is that we have allowed the trolls to generate content and branch out discussion from the usual "Oh I had a cheeseburger for lunch and probably will have one for dinner" to something more interesting like "Cheeseburgers are terrible for your heart and you will die by 30, and if not will drain the already aging and overworked healthcare industry causing millions(perhaps billions) in excess costs, Go Find Yourself". The former is FB, and a joke, the latter is interesting and sparks debate but that is deemed trolling because someone's feelings got hurt. QQ, grow the Fuck up.

sleeper;1242459 wrote:It has 25 posts. Trying upping your post per page limit to 50 like most mature and able bodied individuals.

Or like most individuals who actually care enough about the length of a page to take action to change it.

Sorry, but I'm apparently too apathetic about how many posts are on a page to do anything to change it.

As for mature, I wasn't the one who referred to a post under 400 words as a "book."

And the "able-bodied" part? You do realize that "able-bodied" refers to someone's physical ability, right? Not their preference on a message board.

O-Trap;1242462 wrote:Or like most individuals who actually care enough about the length of a page to take action to change it.

Sorry, but I'm apparently too apathetic about how many posts are on a page to do anything to change it.

As for mature, I wasn't the one who referred to a post under 400 words as a "book."

And the "able-bodied" part? You do realize that "able-bodied" refers to someone's physical ability, right? Not their preference on a message board.

You are physically incapable of upping your post per page limit? Sad. :thumbdown:

sleeper;1242463 wrote:You are physically incapable of upping your post per page limit? Sad. :thumbdown:

he's too busy jerking it!