HAF's future

[Vocaloldfart]

Forums across the board are in decline. Membership is huge but active participation is down to single figures in all the forums I have been associated with.
I propose we actively ask current non participating members what they see as hindering participation.
In short we need a S.W.O.T analysis done to determine a way forward that will allow future growth.
I do not think we can solely blame social media,as the boffins (ARS Technia , google, Meta ) have noted that social media itself is slowing / loosing traffic.
We are on the cusp of a brave new world! 
We must decide what to keep of the old world and innovate for the new one.
Forums are not a societal folly, but a species necessity.

[Tank]

Go for it. What do you suggest?

[Vocaloldfart]

firstly investigating why members have gone cold. An emailed survey should do the trick
Then a Strengths, weakness, opportunities and threat analysis.
   

[billy rubin]

members always go cold. the key is to continuosly replace them.

i think different kinds of forums have specific life cycles, depending upon the subject matter.

some subjects have a large number of potential participants, others less so.

one thing that i have observed will increase forum participation is dedicated spamming by a few individuals, advertizing the forum to a larger group. that works pretty well.

[Firebird]

Just noticed this post. I've been thinking about this too. I'm one of those members that used to be quite active many years ago, and now I just lurk occasionally.

I can only speak for myself, but my main excuse is lack of time. I started posting here before I had kids, and once that life change happened, I had little downtime. Now that I think about it, I don't remember many parents of young kids posting here either. Most people were either childless or their kids were out of the house. Claire and Ali are the few exceptions I can recall from back in the day. While I'm still very much an atheist, my day-to-day priorities have just shifted. And if I'm being totally honest, while I loved engaging with most of the people here, there were also times when I got fed up with certain members too. Sometimes I spoke up, sometimes I just refused to engage, but that didn't help. I know moderating isn't easy, so make of that what you will.

That being said, people come and go all the time. Sadly, some members also pass away (RIP Tom). But back when I was active around 2012-16, there was always a fresh infusion of new members on a regular basis. Based on what I've seen here, that appears to have dried up. You'd think that in this day and age where atheists are basically "the enemy" (at least in the US) that there would be more like-minded people seeking out community on forums like this, certainly more  than the previous decade when things were so much more hopeful. Yet that's not the case.

I don't know why. Maybe it's because forums like this are considered old-fashioned. Reddit, Discord, Telegram and Whatsapp are now the "in" thing now. Maybe it's because we're so demoralized that many of us are just struggling to stay afloat mentally, so exploring our atheism is low on our list. Maybe it's because a lot of the "new atheists" are either dead (Hitchens and Dennett) or have lost their minds (Dawkins, Harris, and Maher). Maybe there aren't many happy atheists these days.

I don't know what the solution is here, especially as I'm part of the problem. The world seems to be regressing, and if the predictions about climate change are true, it'll only get worse, and that often leads to people becoming more religious out of despair.

Or maybe things will shift again in a year or two and conditions will become more favorable to a forum like this. If we've learned anything over the past 9 years, it's that no one has the foggiest clue what's going to happen next.