Is MLP Forums Dying?

[Splashee 28,563]

9 hours ago, Fluttershyfan94 said:

Oh yes lately I think the forum is in fact doing so there are like maybe ten people who keep it active so strange given just how many visitors we have. People who don't have an account that is well in the hundreds. 

There are more people active if you check the entire forum and not just the one you follow:
https://mlpforums.com/discover/

Also, weekends are always slower for some unknown reason. It used to be the same back in 2019 while Season 9 was still active. There are definitely more than 10 people active. There are even some I don't know that have been here since dawn of time

[Fluttershyfan94 5,742]

13 hours ago, Splashee said:

There are more people active if you check the entire forum and not just the one you follow:
https://mlpforums.com/discover/

Also, weekends are always slower for some unknown reason. It used to be the same back in 2019 while Season 9 was still active. There are definitely more than 10 people active. There are even some I don't know that have been here since dawn of time

Perhaps, typically when there weren't new episodes people posted less but overall I still think it is interesting as there are many visitors that don't make an account although ten is a random number I do often think though there are less people participating. 

[Clawdeen 12,191]

It’s definitely no where near as active as it once was. I feel like each time Ive gone on a hiatus and come back more and more people who were once active are gone.

[Treeglow Flicker 13,621]

I've seen forums die.

This one is far from dying.

[Evil Pink One 13,506]

.... a little stab here and there would probably do the trick

[Iforgotmybrain 5,618]

Not dying, more like in its golden years. Maybe if G6 ends up being a hit like G4 we’ll see some sort of revival.

[Octavian 5,420]

if anything, the forum is shipshape. Because the only way something could be right and well, is if it was shaped like a ship.

 

 

actual answer - same as Treeglow, I've seen forums die (inc pony ones) and *prods this forum* yup, it is still shipshape. breathing like a ship, heart beating like a ship. all ship

[Sparklefan1234 170,273]

We're very active even during the MLP "downtime" so, I don't think MLP Forums will go away for a long time.

 

On 2023-09-29 at 4:31 AM, Treeglow Flicker said:

I've seen forums die.

 

Because Kirin don't communicate on forums, right? 

[Astralshy 26,531]

We are still here and there is a lot of activity here. Maybe it was once more, but these forums are definitely not dying soon

[ZiggWheelsManning 10,172]

At its 12th Birthday?  Not a chance  

[Clawdeen 12,191]

R.I.P. Sorry you died. I didn't kill you though.

Edited October 4, 2023 by Clawdeen

[Rainbow Cloud 17,938]

I don't think the forum's dying, the forum seems to be having a bit of a revival in activity the last few months.

[Steve Piranha 29,421]

On 2023-10-03 at 7:17 AM, Astralshy said:

We are still here and there is a lot of activity here. Maybe it was once more, but these forums are definitely not dying soon

While now nearly as active as it was about S5 when I’ve joined, it has been much more active by the first year of G5 than what it was when FIM ended 

[ZiggWheelsManning 10,172]

It's alive because we're still here.  We've also picked up new ponies  

[Hadrien 950]

I hope not, I just joined and have 12 years to make up for.  It's also the only place for me to talk ponies, so I'll stick my foot in the door for as long as theres a gap to not let it close. Even if I have to screen into an empty room, at least my echoes will agree with me on everything 

[Savy 5,077]

Nah I don't think it's dying, we're still here after all! 

[Sparklefan1234 170,273]

3 minutes ago, Savygriffs said:

Nah I don't think it's dying, we're still here after all! 

 

MLP Forums shall live as long as my Bestie, @Savygriffs has avatars to change! 

[Evil Pink One 13,506]

Usually on weekdays...

[ZiggWheelsManning 10,172]

Another day and more new ponies coming  

[Jonny Music 3,407]

As long as there are members still active here at least once a day or so, the forums are far from dying.  I'm still here, lol. 

[EpicEnergy 23,215]

As the author of this topic, I think the forums isn't dying after all. 

On 2023-09-29 at 7:31 AM, Treeglow Flicker said:

I've seen forums die.

This one is far from dying.

Have you seen EQD Forums before it shutdown? I joined it awhile before it went offline permanently. It was a ghost town on that forums when I joined. The EQD site itself is still alive though, so I'm happy about that.

[Starlight Serenade 3,111]

Mmmm the forums is still somewhat active as I recall from when I came back a little while ago. However, some of the people I used to know are not here anymore while the other regulars are still out and about.

There are periods where it seems dead as a lot of people that I met here are fellow adults who most likely have jobs, families, school, other hobbies, etc. So on one hand, it's totally understandable that some people can't sit down for too long on the forums with other things going on IRL. 

However since I look at the business side of things due to school- my only concern is that if G5 had  several hundred million to a billion social interactions across all social media platforms just a year ago, why wasn't there that much of an uptick in people joining here?

Here are just some other thoughts:

- The forums seems more G4 centric than the current generation. This could make some new fans coming in feel not included/out of the loop as a majority of things on the forums are more G4 than anything. It's understandably so with how popular it was in comparison to the other generations. The forums have recently done more events that are G5 centric, but I recall there weren't that many before when I joined last year. I love G4 as it's what got me into the series a few years back, but it would be nice if G5 was embraced more and that it got some more attention at the forefront. With the news that licensing and TYT possibly being finished up in early 2025, G5 could almost be over in a year and not much has been done here. Maybe there could be more events, banners, backgrounds, rps, etc. (I love the current banner though).

-No accompanying app. It would be great to have an app for the forums similar to what Reddit has, but I understand that is a complex situation with a lot of overhead and can understand why the owner(s) of the site would not maybe want that. Maybe even copyright issues as well, idk? With an app on the apple store/google play store, I would imagine thousands of people joining here.

-A lot of inactive accounts. One thing I noticed is that accounts shown here for birthdays and such show inactive accounts from a few years ago to over a decade ago. Honestly there were some days recently where it showed a wall of people who haven't logged in for years and people telling them happy birthday. That could come across several different ways to new people. There should be a new way to program or set it up so that it captures more recent/active accounts. One idea that I think should be included is that older threads should be retired and maybe use AI to generate new topics that are used for 6 months to a year then retired completely.

I had a few more thoughts, but I need to get studying for school XD

 

 

 

 

 

[Luna the Great of all the Russias 2,984]

16 minutes ago, StarlightSerenade said:

Mmmm the forums is still somewhat active as I recall from when I came back a little while ago. However, some of the people I used to know are not here anymore while the other regulars are still out and about.

There are periods where it seems dead as a lot of people that I met here are fellow adults who most likely have jobs, families, school, other hobbies, etc. So on one hand, it's totally understandable that some people can't sit down for too long on the forums with other things going on IRL. 

However since I look at the business side of things due to school- my only concern is that if G5 had  several hundred million to a billion social interactions across all social media platforms just a year ago, why wasn't there that much of an uptick in people joining here?

Here are just some other thoughts:

- The forums seems more G4 centric than the current generation. This could make some new fans coming in feel not included/out of the loop as a majority of things on the forums are more G4 than anything. It's understandably so with how popular it was in comparison to the other generations. The forums have recently done more events that are G5 centric, but I recall there weren't that many before when I joined last year. I love G4 as it's what got me into the series a few years back, but it would be nice if G5 was embraced more and that it got some more attention at the forefront. With the news that licensing and TYT possibly being finished up in early 2025, G5 could almost be over in a year and not much has been done here. Maybe there could be more events, banners, backgrounds, rps, etc. (I love the current banner though).

-No accompanying app. It would be great to have an app for the forums similar to what Reddit has, but I understand that is a complex situation with a lot of overhead and can understand why the owner(s) of the site would not maybe want that. Maybe even copyright issues as well, idk? With an app on the apple store/google play store, I would imagine thousands of people joining here.

-A lot of inactive accounts. One thing I noticed is that accounts shown here for birthdays and such show inactive accounts from a few years ago to over a decade ago. Honestly there were some days recently where it showed a wall of people who haven't logged in for years and people telling them happy birthday. That could come across several different ways to new people. There should be a new way to program or set it up so that it captures more recent/active accounts. One idea that I think should be included is that older threads should be retired and maybe use AI to generate new topics that are used for 6 months to a year then retired completely.

I had a few more thoughts, but I need to get studying for school XD

I am assuming also that forums as means of communication is not nearly as prevalent as it used to be. Discord and Reddit seem far more the norm today (I think one could describe Reddit also as being a forums, but, from what I know of the site, the visibility of posts is more strongly dependent on voting, and the site is part of Reddit instead of being an independent site as is the case with MLPF).

[Starlight Serenade 3,111]

18 minutes ago, Luna the Great of all the Russias said:

I am assuming also that forums as means of communication is not nearly as prevalent as it used to be. Discord and Reddit seem far more the norm today (I think one could describe Reddit also as being a forums, but, from what I know of the site, the visibility of posts is more strongly dependent on voting, and the site is part of Reddit instead of being an independent site as is the case with MLPF).

Yes I am assuming that since social media is more popular than ever, using the forums as a means of communication isn't as prevalent as it used to be. It doesn't help that the fandom hasn't been as popular as it's early years in G4. I think G4 was lighting in a bottle as it was around the early years of when social media was beginning to rise which helped boost it's popularity.

Just to clarify, I used Reddit as it's the most similar to a forum in comparison to the other big social media sites. Discord is good for gaming/groups(some ideas from it could be used on apps), but is limited in some aspects. Adapting some ideas from different sites would be good for the app.

[Iforgotmybrain 5,618]

1 hour ago, StarlightSerenade said:

Mmmm the forums is still somewhat active as I recall from when I came back a little while ago. However, some of the people I used to know are not here anymore while the other regulars are still out and about.

There are periods where it seems dead as a lot of people that I met here are fellow adults who most likely have jobs, families, school, other hobbies, etc. So on one hand, it's totally understandable that some people can't sit down for too long on the forums with other things going on IRL. 

However since I look at the business side of things due to school- my only concern is that if G5 had  several hundred million to a billion social interactions across all social media platforms just a year ago, why wasn't there that much of an uptick in people joining here?

Here are just some other thoughts:

- The forums seems more G4 centric than the current generation. This could make some new fans coming in feel not included/out of the loop as a majority of things on the forums are more G4 than anything. It's understandably so with how popular it was in comparison to the other generations. The forums have recently done more events that are G5 centric, but I recall there weren't that many before when I joined last year. I love G4 as it's what got me into the series a few years back, but it would be nice if G5 was embraced more and that it got some more attention at the forefront. With the news that licensing and TYT possibly being finished up in early 2025, G5 could almost be over in a year and not much has been done here. Maybe there could be more events, banners, backgrounds, rps, etc. (I love the current banner though).

 

Tbh even on other platforms it really seems like G5 just doesn’t have that big of a fan base either. On the MLP subreddit it’s basically non-existent save for the almost daily posts of someone asking “is G5 good?” followed by arguments in the comments, because it’s Reddit.

Twitter is definitely a lot better, popular G5 artists and content creators usually easily crack several thousand likes. And there’s just a lot more G5 content posted there in general. Definitely not as big as G4 once was but it’s something. YouTube is in the same vein, I've seen G5 fan animations get into the 6 figures pretty easily.

I do agree that leaning more into G5 is needed, and I feel we're kind of heading in that direction with the recent events which I like!

Quote

-A lot of inactive accounts. One thing I noticed is that accounts shown here for birthdays and such show inactive accounts from a few years ago to over a decade ago. Honestly there were some days recently where it showed a wall of people who haven't logged in for years and people telling them happy birthday. That could come across several different ways to new people. There should be a new way to program or set it up so that it captures more recent/active accounts.

Making it so the birthday wall only shows more active accounts is a really good idea imo. Have it be like a year or more of inactivity for the cutoff. Seeing a huge list of accounts that haven't been online in years as a new user can definitely give off the air that the forum is empty or abandoned even if that isn't the case.

1 hour ago, Luna the Great of all the Russias said:

I am assuming also that forums as means of communication is not nearly as prevalent as it used to be. Discord and Reddit seem far more the norm today (I think one could describe Reddit also as being a forums, but, from what I know of the site, the visibility of posts is more strongly dependent on voting, and the site is part of Reddit instead of being an independent site as is the case with MLPF).

Yeah, Discord servers really hit forums hard. Which I personally dislike just because I'm not a fan of the Discord server format, it just gets so busy once you're past a few dozen users. Not to mention it's impossible to search for information from Discord servers via something like Google. Reddit at least has that going for it.

38 minutes ago, StarlightSerenade said:

Yes I am assuming that since social media is more popular than ever, using the forums as a means of communication isn't as prevalent as it used to be. It doesn't help that the fandom hasn't been as popular as it's early years in G4. I think G4 was lighting in a bottle as it was around the early years of when social media was beginning to rise which helped boost it's popularity.

It really was lightning in a bottle. The first half of the seasons especially. I think I remember stats from somewhere that said the fandom, popularity wise, has been on a decline since season 6 or so. Which I think makes sense. Even with G4's later seasons the fandom just wasn't nearly as big as it used to be.

Edited March 25 by Iforgotmybrain