My bigger question is this is NSL! How many actually showed up? I had sport launches at Lucerne with between 1000 and as many as 4000 one time.

I haven't been able to do any long-winded posts or build threads for a while because of my work load at my regular job. Spring and Summer is our busy time at our company--plus customers are again ponying up the loot for our American made machine tools once they realized how poorly made the cheaper Asian stuff was. Yay!

I'll be in Austin, TX this week (helping to "keep it weird".)

__________________
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.

4 out of 3 people struggle with math.

Chemically, alcohol IS a solution.

NAR# 94042
SAM# 0078

For whatever it's worth, I dug out the following statistics using the Wayback Machine Archive for YORF:



There certainly does seem to be a significant year-to-year decrease in the rate at which new threads, posts, and members were added over the past six years.

For TRF it's not so clear what's going on:



There's much larger increases in all three quantities from 2014 to 2015, and then smaller increases from 2015 to 2016, relative to 2012 to 2014, and then between last year and now large decreases in the number of threads and members, while the number of posts increased at about half the 2012 to 2014 rate. I'm guessing the latter reflects administrator activity, purging members and deleting or merging threads for whatever reason. The threads/posts/members counts as of 2/23/2017 were 130734, 1641564, 24270 so whatever happened happened after late February. Compared to about a year earlier, 3/3/2016, these are increases of 6453, 113744, and 1161: comparable to, a little smaller than, 2015 to 2016. So it's not easy to be sure but it does look like decreased activity relative to about three years ago.

__________________
Rich Holmes
Camillus, NY
Secretary / newsletter editor
Syracuse Rocket Club

http://richsrockets.wordpress.com

I guess I'm reading it wrong. I see an increase in threads and posts each year on YORF. The spread between years decreases, but that has nothing to do with refuting the OP's perceptions.

__________________
I love sanding.

Unless the admins go in deleting posts, deleting or merging threads, and purging members, then these numbers should be cumulative totals. As such of course there will be increases in the totals every year. But if they (for instance) were to increase by 50% from one year to the next and 10% (of the first year's total) from year two to year three, that would mean there was 5x less activity in the second time interval than in the first.

__________________
Rich Holmes
Camillus, NY
Secretary / newsletter editor
Syracuse Rocket Club

http://richsrockets.wordpress.com

Witchcraft!!

Rich weighs the same as a duck!

__________________
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.

4 out of 3 people struggle with math.

Chemically, alcohol IS a solution.

NAR# 94042
SAM# 0078

I come and read every morning. Been busy working on my 100 year old house. Put a new roof, insulation, siding, plumbing, on and on. Soon as I have a free day to launch there is a 20 mph wind all day.
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TRF membership is dropping but post rate is up. The echo chamber is working just fine.

Got it...that's total posts over the lifespan of YORF, not posts per year. I've never paid attention to the stats at the bottom of the front page.

__________________
I love sanding.

There are several reasons why YORF post count has decreased.

1. We have had the same basic group of posting members from day one and we've covered about all there is to cover about old rockets without new folks coming in to ask questions.

2. Certain members have been banned, ex. JD, who brought folks like PO out of the woodwork and drove post counts up.

3. TRF has calmed down a little so folks aren't coming over here to bitch about it.

4. YORF caters to older folks that were into rocketry in the 60's - 80's mostly. There won't be much new blood to increase membership and post count. Those who were only involved in rocketry since the 2000 or even the 90's will tend to hang out at TRF.

5. Some folks get bored and move on to other hobbies, older folks retire to other activities.

6. See #4 above. We are old. Members have health issues, and even pass away. I imagine we had a boost in posting during those months that Mike Dorffler was posting. Carl and Sheryl made a huge impact on the forum, both in posting content, and with our excitement over SEMROC's rebirth and expansion.

7. Political stuff from just four or five members' rants have turned folks off to YORF.

8. TRF is bigger. Some folks love attention, the more the better. Even if they have membership at both places, they hang out over there for more attention. Especially those chosen few who get to say what they want when the rest of us get censored and scolded.

9. HPR. While it can be discussed here, it isn't in YORF's strike zone.

10. EX. See HPR.

11. No more Barry Tunick to ruin Estes (in us old folk's eyes).

12. We won the BATFE lawsuit.

13. Launch magazine came and went and has been gone long enough that it doesn't stir up much emotion here anymore.

__________________
I love sanding.