[Serious] Future of the Forums (Discussion)

[Tiberius]

The big "support us on Patreon" image links to: https://www.patreon.com/atheistforums which loads in my browser. Not sure why you are having an issue. Try clicking the direct link I just posted.

[Duty]

Oh, yes THAT page worked fine last night, but then it stuck part way through my trying to register as a user of patreon, as I wasn't before. NOW however I think patreon has remembered me as the next page is the "donation amount/account details" screen. I'll try and set up $2 a month now...

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OK I think that's worked! Purplefy my username when you have a moment Admin : D oops no, I see I should send Tiberius a PM, will do.

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ETA - hmmmm, I think perhaps I should have pledged a higher amount....as, from yesterday, I'd gathered $1 was the going rate, I thought increasing that by 100% was generous, but it's actually still hardly any money so...hmmmmm

[Shell B]

Any donation is generous. Don't worry about that. I'll shout up to him to purple ya.

[Drich]

how do you give a one time lump sum? i don't know if i can do monthly given how shakey things are at the moment?

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patreon wants to do a monthly subscription i cant seem to figure out how to just give one single donation.

[DodosAreDead]

Just saw this thread and skimmed through it. I'm not particularly attached to AF, having joined relatively recently and not even being that active, but I do think that a lot of the very active members who frequented this place when I first joined in 2018 are no longer here (for a variety of reason, I know), and I think I feel the effects of that. 
It seems like forums, overall, are on the decline and have been for years now, due to a combination of social media, increasing smartphone usage, and mega-forums like reddit. 

A different forum I've been a regular at for years has declined dramatically, having less than a half of the traffic it did when I joined in 2012, and not gaining any new regulars since 2018, I believe. It makes this place seem like a hub of activity, lol, and the mods and admins post approximately once a year. Yet somehow the few regulars who still pop in now and again manage to keep it a welcoming and interesting place. I donate there and until I stop, I don't think I will be able to donate here while not earning. I wish forums still flourished, because I feel like their user model and experience is far different than social media or reddit. Forums create communities of users you recognize. 

I can see that the future of AF is no longer in immediate jeopardy as of now, so these are more like some random thoughts I had related to this. I do hope I can start donating sometime soon, which seems fairly likely if normal life resumes by fall.

[Shell B]

how do you give a one time lump sum? i don't know if i can do monthly given how shakey things are at the moment?

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patreon wants to do a monthly subscription i cant seem to figure out how to just give one single donation.

We don't want donations when people are on shaky footing. We appreciate the generosity very much, but we want people to take care of themselves and their families first.

Only time will tell what will happen here. I don't think many forums stay busy for decades, so I'm sure AF has a shelf life. I don't think it's expired yet, though.

[Violet]

I don't really come to the forums very often anymore. I want to say there are multiple reasons for that, and yeah, work has been keeping me busy, but the main reason is that the forum is just not very fun for me anymore. In fact, the whole "forum" concept isn't very fun to be honest. I've been the admin of a Discord community (basically a server with a bunch of chat rooms) for most of 2019 and I find myself spending more time there than anywhere else online. The community isn't atheism related, it's related to my career, which is probably another reason I enjoy it there so much. However, having chats rather than threads makes things far more enjoyable in my opinion, but maybe that's just me.

In any case, I find myself less and less concerned with the goings on of AF. I also notice that the forum just isn't as active as it once was, so perhaps it's not just me.

On top of those things, our Patreon money has plummeted which means the server is once again costing me money to run. Paying to run something that I don't find enjoyment in anymore isn't really where I want things to be.

So I guess I wanted to have a discussion to see where the community stands, and what they want to do. If you want the forum to continue, with the same staff team at the helm, we need funds to make that happen. Alternatively I might be open to selling the forum to someone who has more of an interest in it. Or, if people have a similar attitude to me, we could simply let the forum die and move on; we made it 11 years, maybe it's time to move on.

I'm not going to make any snap decisions like owners at other forums; you're not going to suddenly wake up one day and find that everything is closed and have to scramble to find somewhere else. However something has to change, and I want the community to decide what that should be.

- Tibs

I don't have any real reason to be here. I was just curious as to how the forum did without me these last few years, and it would seem the answer was 'beyond poorly'.

Not that I was having much positive interaction towards the end, I'm on a lot of ignore lists probably, but that's always been the case since I was first active here.

Obviously, it's not my decision to make. I'm not active here for innumerable reasons. That said, I'll have my say anyways.

This place was amazing when it started. Not even kidding, Tiberius. It was amazing. It was worth giving much of my time to, for there was something around every corner in debate and discussion, and I learned so much over the course of those first few years.

That said, the beginning of the end as I see it was always 'no personal attacks'. It started a downward trend in behavior where established members alone were able to engage in mockery, and it slowly gave way to an extreme cliquishness between established personages and moderators/admins. When I came back after that first lengthy time away, I was actually surprised that although the forum had taken a *huge* hit in the interim: it also was beginning the seeds of growth again. I truly thought at the time, 'perhaps I was wrong about this', but I rather don't believe I was.

It was followed by more rules, and more rules, and more stringent moderation of those rules (not to mention that many of the people who became moderators after that first set of wonderful admins were the sorts of people who rather thrived off of creating rules and enforcing them). People were permanently banned for being 'ever so slightly' too far out of line, whereas the older forum pretty much only banned extreme examples of behavior and spammers.

From my perspective, Tiberius, you haven't enjoyed this place much since that one 'april fools' didn't go at all well. From my perspective, you went from an avid and excited user who fervently enjoyed debating to... well, it was a fucking bitter pill, that event. Your posts never had the same frequency as they did before that. Your posts never had the same length as they did before that. Your posts never had the same energy as they did before that.

From my perspective, I clung to this place even as every possible source of engagement in discussion and debate were banned off, and the 'trolls' besides. All three of those things were a necessary piece of the forum as it used to be: trolls who went too far would be banned, but the ones who toed the line or did things in a clever manner stayed and continued to post, and at times even seriously fascinating topics of debate were started by 'trolls'. This forum was lesser without its Dotards (not anyone's fault there), without its Fr0d0s, and... I can only expect that it was a lesser place without me as well.

I'm honestly *incredibly surprised* that the integrity of the site has remained in these last few years such that I haven't been retroactively banned. That honestly impresses me, actually, because the way the site seemed to be going: I was sure the place was going to go through three places: AF.Hearts -> AF.Gross -> AF.Grave

Religious sorts almost disappeared as soon as they entered by the time I'd had enough. Most of the site's content was forum games and really disgusting flirting. As for devils advocacy (the thing I liked to do a lot of), this place has been dead for actual debate IMO since I was enabled to say 'childhood is slavery' and by people's argument against that: I walked them back to being unable to stop a ruthless descent into as extreme as pedophilia can be on an argumentative stage. Some ridiculous person wore my end-quote from that thing like a badge of honor for years (as if the argument had gone their way... but it most certainly did not O___O). It was officially the point for me where I stopped treating these forums with so much decorum. It was the point for me where playing the devil's advocate wasn't fun anymore... 

There was no more good debate to be had by then: anyone around who was any good at debate from the start had either left, or didn't care enough to engage in the same tired things... but this is where the rules came into horrible effect: nobody new could come in and post a link to something that interested them enough that they sought out a discussion site to talk about it anymore (30/30, which was just silly on both counts honestly: there never needed to be a rule for spam removal, and one person posting something that isn't their own thing just isn't spam). When people would make new threads, they would be told to go participate in 'the other' thread (or to look up old threads), which was either full of nasty flirting, or was already 30 days old, and then any 'necros' were instantly shut down.

These things stymie growth *terribly*. The introduction of A69 was perhaps the forum's biggest foundational mistake. It went poorly (as has probably been indicated by the sheer lack of posting), and it bred entirely the wrong sort of attraction in the forum.


If there is to be a resurrection of AF.org, I honestly don't believe it can happen in the face of these elements.

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how do you give a one time lump sum? i don't know if i can do monthly given how shakey things are at the moment?

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patreon wants to do a monthly subscription i cant seem to figure out how to just give one single donation.

We don't want donations when people are on shaky footing. We appreciate the generosity very much, but we want people to take care of themselves and their families first.

Only time will tell what will happen here. I don't think many forums stay busy for decades, so I'm sure AF has a shelf life. I don't think it's expired yet, though.

Time has told its story, Shell B: the current model is not working.

I don't have it in me to take over a site that hasn't been in 'working order' for years. From a foundational standpoint of if I ever hit it big: the forum dying is *probably* the 'best' thing that can happen for me, since its prevalence would then sink to archive sites, and thus anything interesting I might have ever said on this platform would be *poof* gone.

But I don't believe that's the best answer. There's valuable shit here, this place was a fucking goldmine of actual debate and discussion, and I dare say it's heyday is unrivaled to this day. The environment it spawned here was utterly unique, and was caused by the participants: they created the atmosphere, and from there it was simply seeping with the ability to draw interest: a site that is active breeds activity.

A site that is inactive dies. This is the case here: lack of activity by the right sorts to drive further activity.

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In all fairness I can understand losing interest in a site, even one you’re the owner of.  I’ve seen it happen numerous times, unfortunately.

I’ve seen the number if posts drop quite dramatically, but they have recovered somewhat since a whole group of members got hissy fits and moved on.

Part of the problem, as I see it, is that we are not attracting new membership as we once did.

I would hate to see the forum close down, my preference being to perhaps switch it over to a team of responsible people.

I don’t know.  Let’s discuss it.

If it truly comes down to it, I'd purchase the problem from Tiberius, leave it to run until it died completely out, and only then pull the plug.

I'm certain that I can't be the only one who liked this place enough to bury it right. Probably: enough people do still like it who would be able to sponge 56$ a month potentially forever.

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That said, if I did hand the site over to someone it wouldn’t be to just anyone. As someone mentioned, there’s privacy issues involved and I would also want to know the person had a hold on things and could understand the backend systems.

Welp, that rightly rules me out fam. Glad to hear that it's not quite so dire an issue as it looked to be though (if you're really willing to just keep her chuggin, I mean).

Seriously though, I AM going to bed if it kills me.

"And I suspect I shall not return."

[Violet]

what makes you think i haven't?

It maybe the real reason I am still around.

So how do we patreon donate?

Shit, Drich, you’re actually alive! O___O

For a while there, I thought you’d had cancer. I thought you’d gone the way of old padriac. To say nothing of the banana stuff.

What an absolute rush it is to see you’re still kicking! Not dead at all! You probably didn’t have cancer then I guess? If you did: I hope you kicked it’s ass, if you didn’t: well shit I’m glad you haven’t gotten cancer! *___^

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The earth had been shown to be round centuries before Galileo, there was even an experiment done to determine it's circumference.

He did kind of make it popular though. It’s like Tolkien didn’t start Fantasy as a genre or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t start crime drama: technically true, but completely missing out on the fact that success breeds awareness in a way nobody can ‘technically’ manage by being right all the time otherwise.

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Wait, did someone revive this old thread just so he could continue the thread he just started elsewhere on the forum? Honestly, I thought that there had been some new development threatening the forum.

I’m glad he did. Might not have seen this thing otherwise.

Frankly I was gonna link my profile as an example of what happens when I finally get fed up, but when I got here the site looked so depressing that I just didn’t have it in me to poke fun anymore.

Phone is hard to post with in bed. But yeah, if it weren’t for this thread being even close to near the top: I would have just let this thing slip away from me forever.

Not sure you could say it’s fortuitous or not, but I’d like to think my opinions and activity still has even a negligible degree of value to it.

[WinterHold]

This is sad for some reason; I grew up here and found for me a place to post my ideas freely; so I hate to see this place close.

I'm speaking about myself now; integration of different people with different faiths in one place, letting each display their views for discussion is a great thing, maybe even one of the important aspects I used to grow myself.

IDK, I never was a good leader with a good leading ideas. So my best advice is to try keeping the place running because it is useful beyond price. Nobody knows the future for certain; but I don't want you -personally- or Shell B to abandon it and give it to someone else, because I suspect that the freedom that this place had once would vanish.

Stay safe Tibs.

[Losty]

I died at nasty flirting that you were most certainly a part of at one point but okay. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Is the forum the same? No. I still think it’s good though. I still enjoy checking in and reading threads and keeping up with people from time to time. The forum isn’t the same, but neither am I.