Is it just me or is PF dying?

[harrylin]

Go ahead and look at my profile, I've been around here for over 10+ years. Increasingly I find myself checking PF less and less. We've lost wildly popular and famous posters over the years. Why is this happening? Is it just me or does there seem to be less and less traffic on PF? I remember when the general forum (and many other subforums) used to have almost all new threads on the first page within a day or two, now there are still threads from Aug. on the 1st page and almost as many locked threads as ones still open.

I dunno, but personally I've found this place often times becoming too abrasive and too toxic. [..] why is there the need to close threads and give a verbal smack down?
[..] if a thread or discussion annoys or bothers you, why not just ignore it instead of locking it? As a long time member, lurker, and poster here, I just feel like rule with the iron fist is backfiring (and this is where I expect the deluge of posts from the PF upper echelon members to start giving responses tantamount to something like 'rules are rules, if you don't like it you can leave or be banned'). [..] if I got some of the responses to some of my posts then as what I see posted now, I would definitely be rubbed the wrong way and would never return to this place ever again or would be discouraged from even making a new account if I were a lurker. What can be done to improve traffic, thread creation, and discussion volume and for more people to check this place more often? I don't want to sound like a hate or anything, but I mean come on, it only takes 2 seconds to check what the webtraffic and the global website ranking history has been over the years and it has steadily declined. My $.02.

You are referring, I think, to what is visible for the public; however in addition to that, such things also happen invisibly for the public. My participation is slowly reducing and just now I am (again) considering to abandon PF entirely, simply because the mentoring process is flawed. It's too optimistic to assume that mentors will participate in discussions without abusing their powers. In reality, discussions are often(?) misleading as they are invisibly manipulated (edited) to express the views of participating mentors by means of deletions of inconvenient posts (even statements of facts!) and/or thread locking at a convenient point. In view of another fresh disappointment along these lines, I now think that it may be better to stop supporting this forum, regretfully. I know of several high quality participants who experienced the same but who were more assertive than I am, so they got simply kicked out. The end result is the same: less high quality participants.
My $.01...

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I'm afraid this thread is now in danger of being used as a platform for disgruntled members who receive warnings. That is not the purpose of this thread.

PF is flat out not dying, but there are natural ebbs and flows. PF staff and advisors are always working hard to improve our community. Which quite frankly is still the best Physics and Science community on the web by light years. This is due to our dedicated staff and excellent member base who all work together in forming our community. Communication is key so please continue reaching out to us with any thoughts and feedback you have by starting a new thread or PMing a staff member. Thanks!