Forum dying?

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Nah, there's always been the trolls.

Personally I think it's a bit more recession related. People are probably working more hours etc and/or their boss is expecting more from them so they have less time and less inclination to do the fun hobby projects for forums.
 

You are an optimist.

In Ohio, the recession has meant more people not having jobs. Such people probably spend more time on the forums. I don't have a paying job (retired), but my Summers are very busy with outside projects.

John
 
The home page reports
Currently Active Users: 1397 (67 members and 1330 guests)

By my thinking that is a decent indication of health. Forum uses ebbs and flows to a degree as does interest in each sub forum.
Click to expand...

I am am not so sure about that given those numbers if you break them down by the overall numbers given for this site. Right now the numbers stand at at 53 active members 1161 guests and 165,805 total members.

53 out of 165,805 total members is not much and why are 1161 people looking but not feeling the desire to log in or create a membership here instead?

To me this says we have a church the size of stadium but only 53 people that actually walked in the door and took a seat while another 1161 choose to stand out out in the parking lot and look through the windows instead. Plus there is a whole city that are considered members because they just walked in the door once and signed the guest book.

Out of the 165,805 members I would be curious to see a breakdown of how they sit in regards to things like,

Number of visits.
Number of posts.
Length of time as a member.

Sadly I suspect that out of that 165,805 people about 100,000 are going to fall below the less than 20 posts and visits to the site level.
 
Gr8 no. calculation tcmtech, but you are right 53 out of 165,805 is not much.....
I hope the no. would increase to lot more out of 165,805, may be someday....
Lets hope for the best....Try to do the best from what we are having currently...
 
I suspect those usage data are fairly typical, at least for electronics forums. I just checked EDA Board's data: 884 individuals online, of which only 40 are members out of a total of 459,165 members.

John
 
TCM raises some interesting points regarding the membership numbers.

Bear in mind that ETO has been running for about 10 years, during that time there will have been people who have registered here and then:
Lost interest in ETO
Lost interest in electronics
Had changed circumstances, eg student starts work, gets a girlfriend, gets married etc
Never post a question or reply but are just happy to read the various goings on.
Post a question relating to a one-off problem, and then never return. That question may have been answered fully or maybe not replied to at all.
Some post a question and then never return to read the answer.
Some, post meaningless reples to existing threads (this seems to be quite a popular activity recently, is it the same lame brain registering several times with different user names?).
Some people may die.

I myself am a member of a couple of fora (?) where I regularly just read the goings on, but have never posted.

Overall I think that ETO is quite healthy.

JimB
 
[MODNOTE]Deleted , Moderation is not to be discussed on the Forums[/MODNOTE]
 
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All electronic repair forums I believe are taking strain..

We are becoming a throw away society...thanks to the rubbish being sold to the "masses". All originates from China in one way or another. Most of the stuff is easier to just replace than repair....So fewer questions on Forums.

Take for example this particular TV I had to deal with today:

PCB is well designed. PCB Copper thickness however is such that no matter how carefully you work...pads lift and as hard as you try to prevent this, you simply cannot. Rubbish of note.

The pads are so weak they break up when a solder sucker comes anywhere near them. And I have only been doing this for 20 Years or so.

My thoughts: not meant to be repaired. Customer throw away when faulty. Start again. Buy a new one every year. No point in a Tech trying to repair something that was not designed to be repaired.

South Africa is a huge dumping ground for all Chinese crap right now. Anything and everything from China is welcomed by the current ANC.

Makes me mad.

Cheers friends,
tvtech
 
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tvtech said:
We are becoming a throw away society...thanks to the rubbish being sold to the "masses".
Click to expand...


Far from becoming such, we actually are a throw-away society now, much more than ever before in our history.

The mass-manufacturing capacity of global companies which churn out not only the current cutting-edge tech, but other familiar products which are deemed essential to improving our daily lives, has to be realised and the medium through which this is achieved is advertising.

We have been increasingly bombarded with suggestions to "upgrade" like nothing we have seen before. TV, newsprint, billboards, the internet, peers & co-workers, flyers through our own letter-boxes to name just a few sources, all competing for our hard-earned money and telling us that the products we bought a few years ago are rubbish.

We are constantly pitted against one-another and made to compare, in an attempt to gain one-upmanship and higher social standing because of the new stuff we have.

Stuff which is made to meet a minimal price and designed to barely outlast the introduction of a newer, more feature-packed model.
 
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Does TCM ride a motorbike?

If so this could be a "Mods and Rockers" * thing.

JimB

* A bit of 1960s social history from the UK.
 

So it's not endemic in America. That's both relieving and depressing.
 
Same in Australia.

It's not entirely depressing, there's good an bad in all changes. I like being able to buy a 100MHz digital storage scope with big (800x600) screen for a fraction over $500.

And if all the Sheeple rush out and buy Chinese flatscreen TVs it's not a problem for me, I saw this coming well in advance and got out of the TV repair industry years ago.

A friend was telling me at the local dump they have always collected appliances in a special area (for possible recycling) and he said now the "TV pile" has become a "couple of mountains" of CRT televisions, mostly working according to the dump guy, people just take them to the dump because every room in their house now has a huge flatscreen TV with all the digital and internet features etc.
 
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What do the statistics means when 'high end' posters are getting bored and get the same kids posting the same high school grade college questions on a known periodic basis?

I haven't seen any really good discussions in the last few months.

At least one of the better posters and more decent human beings (as I see it) has been banned for almost four weeks (not currently)

I could throw a half dozen words together in a heartbeat that would get me banned or my posts erased.

What does this say?

Who are we serving what are we doing?

I don't think this forum is dying, I do think it's lost.
 
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I haven't had the time to post much here or any where really had to work 7 days a week but it looks slowen down to me .
I'm hopeing to get back at the things I love doing!
 
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