Every site we reach is DEAD

Vogons's cert has issues starting from the beginning of October; may have something to do with it i'd think.

leileilol wrote on 2021-10-28, 06:40:

Vogons's cert has issues starting from the beginning of October; may have something to do with it i'd think.

You've mentioned this elsewhere but I didn't understand the importance - it keeps the people using retro browsers away? It shouldn't affect anyone with reasonably up to date browsers... and can't be a huge percentage of our traffic. Can it? Or is there a problem with modern browsers too?

Works fine on this old fashion 32-bit computer operating system using a "going nowhere" web browser in the slow Xwindows uning XFCE on this obsolete P4 computer.

Stiletto wrote on 2021-10-29, 03:36:

You've mentioned this elsewhere but I didn't understand the importance - it keeps the people using retro browsers away? It shouldn't affect anyone with reasonably up to date browsers... and can't be a huge percentage of our traffic. Can it?

It certainly kept my geckos away until I had to manually add a cert to replace the expired one. The way the expired cert was handled can't be trust bypassable.

held wrote on 2021-10-27, 19:11:

I find the parts I visit frequently to be somewhat less busy.
Is this me or are there less posts than usual?

Maybe I'm loosing interest. Let me know 😉

we'd need stats over the last few years to see what's actually happening with

new accounts set up
number of logins
number of new posts
number of replies
number of hits overall

that kind of thing would reveal whether traffic is growing or fading

either way it's busy enough still to have momentum

it hasn't got the characteristics of a dying forum in my view ( the signs that a forum is dying )

what i find is that after a week of not visiting the topics seem the same - some long term topics and others that are just meandering along, but actually the underlying pace is fairly consistent i think.

each person's interest may vary greatly over a given period though, leading to differing views on whether a forum is changing

From the perspective of someone who mostly browses "Active Topics", it looks like the emulation sections are a bit quieter now while the retro hardware and software forums are seeing an uptick.

That's just my impression though. I don't have any stats to back it up.

BETTER DEAD THAN RED!

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-10-29, 08:56:

From the perspective of someone who mostly browses "Active Topics", it looks like the emulation sections are a bit quieter now while the retro hardware and software forums are seeing an uptick.

That's just my impression though. I don't have any stats to back it up.

Ahh.. thats it then, you formulated it perfectly. Those parts feel less populated imo. I'm a bit of an active topic browser for emulation and Dosbox. So stuff is moving more to the hardware section. I didn't pay much attention to the software tbh.

Great, that solves it for me 😀

One way to measure forum activity could be to see when a milestone forum reply was made.
For instance, I tried to see the dates of the 100000th, the 200000th, 300000th, etc all the way to the 1000000th.
The dates I got are:
2007-02-16, 21:07 (had to use the 100001th reply since the 100000th was inaccessible to me)
2010-10-08, 17:38
2013-03-28, 18:46
2015-01-16, 23:57
2016-05-25, 18:06
2017-07-24, 02:20
2018-09-18, 19:21
2019-11-08, 06:33
2020-10-06, 21:47
2021-09-11, 19:29
If this data is correct, then I could conclude that (since time between milestones is decreasing (they are reached faster)), activity on Vogons seems to be increasing since 2007 at least.

I put this together in a hurry, so feel free to chime in on this 😜

leileilol wrote on 2021-10-29, 07:45:

Stiletto wrote on 2021-10-29, 03:36:

You've mentioned this elsewhere but I didn't understand the importance - it keeps the people using retro browsers away? It shouldn't affect anyone with reasonably up to date browsers... and can't be a huge percentage of our traffic. Can it?

It certainly kept my geckos away until I had to manually add a cert to replace the expired one. The way the expired cert was handled can't be trust bypassable.

have you been able to browse the lightweight version and still manage to login from anything SeaMonkey/Firefox2 level?

It's a small scene and creating quality content is hard work. Fun but hard.

I would argue that retro computing is starting to become mainstream. Retro consoles certainly already are.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2021-10-29, 21:11:

I would argue that retro computing is starting to become mainstream. Retro consoles certainly already are.

Retro consoles have been mainstream for quite a while now.
I think the whole covid situation facilitated the spike in retro computing since people had to stay home more. More time on their hands, more time to watch youtube vids and more time to order stuff online 😜
And during lockdowns people couldn't spend any money on outdoor activities anymore, so more money to spend to buy old gear on ebay with 😜