Cool charts! It's always helpful to see a visual of things. It makes me wonder what was going on around the time of the biggest drops. One of them I know. The drop at 2022 is the year that Curious Aardvark passed away. Not too much surprise about that drop as he was such a central figure here. Some might say he was this forum. I know I would (at that time).
This topic (meaning forum activity) comes up in discussion every once in a while. It's usually tied to other related topics. I believe the last time it came up was during a discussion of how many users the Worldwide Slinging group gets on Facebook. This forum definitely has its ups and downs. One of the things I always bring up is that an old school forum like this is (in a way) more difficult to take in and enjoy that other social media types. The bulk of the forum is just pages of text. So you have to want to read, respond, and then possibly wait days before someone else responds or reacts to you. That doesn't exist in things like Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, take your pick.
Then there are other guys who just reach their finish point here. Some get away from slinging, some move on because the folks they interacted with moved on, or one of a thousand other reasons. It's definitely sad to see people go, or to notice that someone who was around for a long time isn't anymore. But on the flipside it's great to see new people here, especially when a year later they're still posting. The forum will keep cranking away. There are always slow times. Even if they last a couple years.
kairo wrote on Dec 5
th, 2025 at 10:15am:
On a side note, apparently the forum software is more than 13 years old, and YaBB doesn't seem to be developed any more.
Would migrating to another forum software such as phpBB be possible without loosing the old posts? There's so much information hidden in the old threads
A guy name Chris holds the keys to the forum. If there are problems or whatever that need his attention, I reach out to him. But outside of that he's not here much. To be honest, I don't know how often he pulls up the forum just to take a look at things. Anyway, he's a tech guy, and definitely very aware of the forum's technological age. I don't know what plans he has for the future, if any. But it will be up to him. I'd imagine there would be quite a few issues with a migration. I know updates in the past have caused havoc. I assume one day we'll be going through it, and then we'll find out.
And since there were some stats given in the first post, I'll add one. I was going to post a total for everyone to see at the end of the year, but now is fine. As of today, the forum has had
100 new members sign up in 2025. Which I think is great. Somewhere around the mark of 2 new members per week. The unfortunate part is the majority of them have 0 posts. Very common to see no posts, or new members post a 'hello' in the Introductions, but never post again. I don't know why it's so difficult for people to go all in and dedicate their lives to slinging.