Successful forum proof?

[Randomnerd]

I’m a member of another forum relating to my profession; it’s a large group of disparate folk of all walks of life, ages, social standing and political colours.
The forum owner is involved in the active development, and gets quite “fingers on” in it, day to day.
Some time ago, a brain drain began, where, it appeared, many veteran participants, fed up with bickering and dreary threads, shipped out for good.
The owner got involved, posted all the data on membership - who came and went, how long they’d been involved etc, to steady the ship and offer proof that, on the whole, the forum was in good health. All the relevant figures on visits, members, advertising revenue, etc were free for all to see.
Is the carping here about Animal Farm just carping, and couldn’t the talk just be put to bed with some honesty about how successful the forum is for its members and their interests?

 

[MiK1138]

Is this not a successful forum?

 

[swee'pea99]

I haven't a clue what you're talking about. Does that help?

 

[Pale Rider]

Anyone bothered enough could make a note of the daily cumulative post count on the front page, do some arithmetic, and come up with posts per day.

Do that for long enough and you might be able to infer a trend.

'Visitors per day' is easier to keep an eye on.

From my occasional glances, I reckon that's holding up well enough, about 500 a day, fewer at the weekends.

As a semi-guess, forum busyness has been at about the same level since I joined in 2012.

I reckon that will be seen as a good result, given that forums are seen as rather old hat in the fast moving world of the interweb.

 

[Globalti]

This forum does better than two others I use, Singletrack and UKClimbing. The former is really slow nowadays, I think most members are now in their 40s and 50s and many have moved over to the cleaner subtler joys of road cycling.