The Pub

[Pale Rider]

As you can see, I’ve grown fond enough of Pale Rider – it’s the avatar that does it – to let him stray from NACA-watching (if you don’t know what NACA is, clearly you haven’t lurked enough).

I’m enjoying my sojourn, length of stay tbd, in YACF’s Pub.

A typical day in the neighbourhood

I know people go to forums to blow off steam, particularly when steam is all you have…

An exaggeration of course, but a certain sourness does permeate the atmosphere. Wearing a mask helps.

[close]

Ah, the company we keep. I keep to myself in the corner, back to the wall of course, occasionally welcoming those who didn’t get the memo.



I see the views are piling up; given the large number of bots in gen pop, doubtless the vast majority of them come from electric sheep. S’alright, I don’t come for the validation of stats, either.

Time for some cross-pollination.

Having watched the rise and fall of several hobby fora it seems that a forum follows a life cycle. Initially the forum forms around a small number of members wishing to discuss a single interest. This attracts specialists and soon the forum develops a reputation as a solid knowledge base. That quality knowledge base then attracts a larger audience who initially come for the information and then stay, but in doing so often widen the discussion and sub groups form. What happens at this point seems to then vary but frequently seems to involve a migration of the original core to a new home. This is triggered by items such as technical issues around the forum software, ownership of the forum changing or just the general nature of the discussion moving to far from the original concept,
I wonder if there has been any studies on forums and the membership data over time analysed?

Where've you been, pardner? I've been living in Westworld for ages.

Barkeep, another glass of lemonade.

Spoiler

Somewhere in this long thread there's a post about turning lemons into lemonade, but I'm not actually made of time, and besides, this is the second time I've used the proverbial phrase today.

[close]

PS. I'm breaking what turned into an unwritten rule of Lurk; usually this board is reserved for forum talk about places where I can't actually post. I don't plan on making a habit of it.