Note the correlation between Posts, & New Topics.
A few of us made a real effort in September to rev the place up, & it worked, we had the best month in years.
Most of the new threads in September were made by 3 individuals, well over half of them at a guess.
Fair to say that Tighty & I in particular, & to a lesser degree, the Mods as a whole, have a responsibility to keep the place fresh & buzzing.
It's also fair to say - imo - that as a Community, rather than a business run for profit, it behoves everyone to make a bit of effort, & I don't think the effort should be restricted to direct stakeholders. If people want blonde to continue - if - a bit of effort is required from everyone.
My input in October & November certainly lessened, due to a variety of circumstances, mainly my work Next Door, lack of time, &, in truth, I felt we were pushing too hard, trying to force the action. I got a bit down about it all, too, sort of the internet & social-Media have changed, & we are peeing into the wind.
It's almost a managed decline I suppose.
I'll explain shortly how we are all interacting differently these days, but here's a great example that was sent to me this morning. And this was not on blonde, it was on Facebook.
Alex Goulder barely has an enemy on earth, he's almost universally liked, admired & respected.
So on Facebook, he announced his engagement.
Inside 24 hours, it got (I'm told - I don't have Facebook) 364 "LIKES", you know, you press a little button & a "LIKE" symbol appears. And less than 30 actual replies. It's so easy these days to just click an icon & move on.
We have some great threads here, such as "
The Week as I saw It", "On This Day", &
"Too Much Information". These get much higher Views per post than most threads. But very few Members actually Post on those threads, almost all the Posts are made by a small regular group of contributors. So people find them interesting, but don't feel able or wish to post stuff themselves. If we had a "LIKE" Button, I bet it would get clicks galore, but we don't, & I don't see the point of one.
It's fast & easy to "read only", actually Posting takes more time, & most of us have full lives & better things to do.
Not a criticism of people, it's just how things are these days, we are all busy busy busy.
If I had the time, I would bet good money that I could start a lot of new Threads in December, along with a few others, & we could get the Post Count back up to 10,000. I just don't have the time though, & to be honest, I think if the Members want blonde to thrive, then more of them need to share the load.
Fred was quieter than usual in November, too, for a variety of reasons, & I was debating whether it was time to call it a day, but it sprung back to life in the last week. Tighty has always sweated that very hard, but he was getting nowhere, but the uptick in the last week was broadly based, so that was nice to see.
Incidentally, Camel is superb at starting threads that endure, & people enjoy - such as Fred, & "Whatever happened to?".
Such threads are pure gold, as they create genuine, un-forced, interaction.
And anyone can start them.
Author