Old Proboards

[bigballofyarn]

dustys,
Forum deaths intrigue me, especially if they were once very active. I was never a member here. This is just a forum I came across while hunting down the most successful forums. They have over 5,000 members and almost one million posts, but it's like everyone just stopped logging in, and that's weird to me.

silentgrief.proboards.com/

[silvermist]

Sept 24, 2024 2:50:11 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

dustys ,
Forum deaths intrigue me, especially if they were once very active. I was never a member here. This is just a forum I came across while hunting down the most successful forums. They have over 5,000 members and almost one million posts, but it's like everyone just stopped logging in, and that's weird to me.

silentgrief.proboards.com/

its kinda like walking through a ghost town and not knowing where everyone went! 

[Albireo]

I know a couple but recently died. One in talks of a revival.

[Kami]

Sept 22, 2024 3:50:06 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

Sept 22, 2024 2:59:32 GMT -8 Caajscot (John) said:

It dont look dead to me?


distanthorizons.proboards.com/

Users Online in the Last 24 Hours

0 Staff, 0 Members, 883 Guests.


I guess they only have scattered posts these days, but I'm not familiar with the forum.

eyyy someone mentioned DH. my forum was one of their earlier affiliates, haha. a couple things contributed to the die-down:

1. The time between ATLA episodes and new TLOK episodes was huge; ATLA's last episode aired in 2008, and TLOK didn't air its first episode until 2012. For an already moderately niche fandom, a four year gap is really difficult to surmount.

2. The format switch to v5 in 2013 messed up their custom skin and coding, and it was difficult to recover, especially with flagging membership & participation.

my forum is also one of the older ATLA forums on the internet, and we've been dead in the water after numerous restarts the last couple of years. we're still trying to get things kicked off (there's more animated ATLA content coming in starting 2025, so there might be a resurgence fingers crossed) but it's been an uphill battle. 

[DDude]

Edit: Oh my goodness sorry, I double-posted (I forgot I already posted in this), so sorry!

[dustys]

bigballofyarn

How did you get to over 1.3 million posts
What was it like in the beginning

[bigballofyarn]

dustys,

My forum consisted of friends I knew in person and online in the very beginning. My forum lost posts when I played around with the forum cleanup tool decades ago. It also lost posts during the ProBoards server fire. The initial 100K posts obviously took the longest. Now, my forum is a well-oiled machine. Don't misunderstand me though. It's taken since 2003 to get to where it is today. Forums can take a lot of time and commitment. When I created it in 2003, I didn't expect things to be where they are today.

I already had this on hand. We've kept statistical information the entire time.

Forum Milestones:

  100,000 Posts 02-08-2006
  200,000 Posts 12-25-2008
  300,000 Posts 11-07-2010
  400,000 Posts 04-09-2012
  500,000 Posts 09-07-2013
  600,000 Posts 07-14-2015
  700,000 Posts 12-20-2016
  800,000 Posts 07-20-2018
  900,000 Posts 12-04-2019
1,000,000 Posts 12-10-2020
1,100,000 Posts 03-26-2022
1,200,000 Posts 06-18-2023
1,300,000 Posts 07-16-2024

----------------------------

0000 to 100K took 1,117 days.
100K to 200K took 1,051 days.
200K to 300K took   682 days.
300K to 400K took   519 days.
400K to 500K took   516 days.
500K to 600K took   675 days.
600K to 700K took   525 days.
700K to 800K took   577 days.
800K to 900K took   502 days. 
900K to  1M  took   373 days.
 1M  to 1.1M took   471 days.
1.1M to 1.2M took   449 days.
1.2M to 1.3M took   397 days.

[Tix Mascot]

I co-founded Heretix Forum along with two other people in 2014. Incredible that we just celebrated 10 years! Still, we are toddlers in this great company...

I, too, had no knowledge of coding when I started, but I have learned a lot along the way, both from Support, our own members and study books.

I am surprised, though, about how many admins and users that have impaired vision, myself included. So yes, some forums have so small standard font size that it's hard to use. And the default theme comes with huge, glaring white fields that disturb our focus and motivation. So it could be beneficial to run all forums and their default themes by a person with poor eyesight, to get some useful feedback about how to make it more pleasant to use.

Just a thought..

Kudos to everybody for their great work on ProBoards and best of luck!

[willoberry]

See stats like this on "ghosttown" boards ....

"Users Online in the Last 24 Hours
0 Staff, 0 Members, 883 Guests."

Any ideas / theories about the story on the number of "guests" ?

[Tix Mascot]

In my estimate, the distribution on an average forum is more than 90% crawler bots and the rest so-called 'organic traffic'. Regarding the 'ghosttown boards', the percentage of bots is probably even higher.

[dustys]

bigballofyarn
Do you know any other ghost town forums that used to be huge

[bigballofyarn]

Oct 16, 2024 5:24:41 GMT -8 dustys said:

bigballofyarn
Do you know any other ghost town forums that used to be huge

goodbyecb.proboards.com/

Total Members: 12,211
Total Posts: 6,026,747



Users Online in the Last 24 Hours

0 Staff, 0 Members, 1,958 Guests.


All their recent posts are spam by guests. Where did the 12,000+ members all go? It's a mystery. Note that I was never a member there. I only came across it when looking for forums that had over one million posts. 

[Syko Nachoman]

Oct 16, 2024 5:26:12 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

Oct 16, 2024 5:24:41 GMT -8 dustys said:

bigballofyarn
Do you know any other ghost town forums that used to be huge

goodbyecb.proboards.com/

Total Members: 12,211
Total Posts: 6,026,747



Users Online in the Last 24 Hours

0 Staff, 0 Members, 1,958 Guests.


All their recent posts are spam by guests. Where did the 12,000+ members all go? It's a mystery. Note that I was never a member there. I only game across it when looking for forums that had over one million posts. 

It's really fascinating how you can see the rapid decline in activity just by looking at the post counts in the "Birth Months Boards" category:

2015 Board: 1.2 million posts
2016 Board: 441,000 posts
2017 Board: 160,000 posts
2018 Board: 565 posts 🥶

I can understand a forum's activity level declining over time, but the drop-off between 2017 and 2018 is massive, from over 160k posts to not even 1k. Wondering what happened to cause that.

[bigballofyarn]

Oct 17, 2024 4:56:14 GMT -8 Syko Nachoman said:

Oct 16, 2024 5:26:12 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

goodbyecb.proboards.com/

Total Members: 12,211
Total Posts: 6,026,747



Users Online in the Last 24 Hours

0 Staff, 0 Members, 1,958 Guests.


All their recent posts are spam by guests. Where did the 12,000+ members all go? It's a mystery. Note that I was never a member there. I only came across it when looking for forums that had over one million posts. 

It's really fascinating how you can see the rapid decline in activity just by looking at the post counts in the "Birth Months Boards" category:

2015 Board: 1.2 million posts
2016 Board: 441,000 posts
2017 Board: 160,000 posts
2018 Board: 565 posts 🥶

I can understand a forum's activity level declining over time, but the drop-off between 2017 and 2018 is massive, from over 160k posts to not even 1k. Wondering what happened to cause that.

Exactly! It's so weird. And now it's just scattered spam. How did 12,000+ people decide to stop logging in to their forum home? I don't know. The admin hasn't been active on ProBoards Support either, but her last posts here and on her own forum didn't indicate she was closing the forum. 

[Syko Nachoman]

Oct 17, 2024 5:09:30 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

Oct 17, 2024 4:56:14 GMT -8 Syko Nachoman said:

It's really fascinating how you can see the rapid decline in activity just by looking at the post counts in the "Birth Months Boards" category:

2015 Board: 1.2 million posts
2016 Board: 441,000 posts
2017 Board: 160,000 posts
2018 Board: 565 posts 🥶

I can understand a forum's activity level declining over time, but the drop-off between 2017 and 2018 is massive, from over 160k posts to not even 1k. Wondering what happened to cause that.

Exactly! It's so weird. And now it's just scattered spam. How did 12,000+ people decide to stop logging in to their forum home? I don't know. The admin hasn't been active on ProBoards Support either, but her last posts here and on her own forum didn't indicate she was closing the forum. 

Well, based on the forum's URL, it looks like they all just decided to say, "Goodbye, goodbyecb."