Where has every-one gone?

[NoelC]

I think it's also a generational thing.  I still use email for most stuff, but that's considered very old school in social terms.
Facebook is now considered Fogeybook and twitter is for bored politicians.  I tried WhatsApp, but people couldn't understand why I took a month to reply on occasions, the explanation that I don't have a mobile signal was received with complete incredulity.  I don't know what the young connected people use now, but social media is evolving at such a rate it's leaving sections of society disconnected.

I wonder how many of our members regularly log in and use websites and forums? New members are quite likely to use other forms of social media, and not be familiar with forums. If we were to migrate to another platform (not suggesting we will) - it would potentially isolate existing members.  Strikes me there is a market for bridging media to provide a universal forum.

[Rick]

Yeah, the social media world has gone through at least three generations of complete overhaul since this forum was started. Back in Net pre-history (or at least well before this forum started) there was USEnet. Then came web BBS/forum systems like this. Then came social websites like LiveJournal and MySpace. Then came FaceBook, and after it G+, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram, and off to the side came WhatsApp, Telegram, SnapChat, Discord, and who knows what else. It's impossible to cover them all, and many of them simply don't provide the kind of focussed communication a web forum can. Even there, within our relatively specialised technical niche, there are more generally accessible places (like Cloudy Nights) for wide-spread discussion with like-minded folk. You can't cover them all, but plenty of folk will try to cover at least a few, and the more you try to keep track of the less time you have for any particular one. When there's one place everybody's there. When there are dozens (or hundreds, or thousands) the folk are far more scattered...

As for the signing-up process being complicated; well, we just ask folk to request access, and then we add them to the system manually. We turned off the normal registration process years ago because we got many many sign-ups that way, but only a very small fraction of them were genuine.

[Carole]

I use some of the other social media, but I don't feel it works for serious astro discussions and once the post is a few days old it's buried under loads of other posts.  At least with forums you can ask it to show you stuff you've not read before, or new posts since you were last there, and it is fairly easy to find a post you want to look at again.

I do spend a lot of time on SGL because it is so big and there are lots of astro people to talk to on there, but there is nothing like having a good discussion with the local group you belong to. 

As for some of the other astro sites, I will name no names but there are a few that are not particularly friendly or too far up their own backsides.  I tried some of them which is how I found out.

SGL is heavily moderated, which sometimes can be a bit OTT, but you never end up having unpleasant or political arguments on there as a moderator will quickly either slap your wrists in a private message, or issue a thread warning and if need be shut it down.  I use it a lot particularly in the absence of much activity on here.  I have only ever had my wrists slapped for being too helpful and accidentally breaking their for sale board rules.

Carole

[MarkS]

Are you watching Brian Cox`s "The Planets" on the box? Not bad ... quite interesting.

Doug,

Following your comment, I watched it on catch up - the Barbican Concert with Brian Cox introducing each planet and showing fantastic images that Gustav Holst would not have imagined in his wildest dreams.

It wasn't until a week later that I discovered there was a whole new TV series by Brian Cox with the same title.  Doh!!

Mark

[RobertM]

Are you watching Brian Cox`s "The Planets" on the box? Not bad ... quite interesting.

Following your comment, I watched it on catch up - the Barbican Concert with Brian Cox introducing each planet and showing fantastic images that Gustav Holst would not have imagined in his wildest dreams.

I went to that concert !

BTW. Sometimes I'm on a shared computer so deliberately do not log in to the forum for security reasons but nearly all the time do log in (phone/home etc.).  The closest I get to social media is visiting about four Astro forums and Flickr... would only use Facebook etc. if you paid me and even then probably not.  I have tried to get my account sorted on astrobin but my emails are always ignored.

Must admit after the 'reprocess overload' that happened a few years back I generally (and perhaps wrongly) give reprocessing threads a wide berth.

Robert

[Carole]

I have tried to get my account sorted on astrobin but my emails are always ignored.

What's the problem in Astrobin Robert?  Always works well for me and the administrator is normally very helpful, though I admit overworked at times.  Runs it on his own, has a full time job and many demands from many people on the site.

Carole

[RobertM]

First of all Carole password resets don't work (my account exists or rather it tells me the account exists when I try to reregister) and then when I use the contact form to register the problem I get no response.

Robert

[ApophisAstros]

I have only ever had one problem with them when the site went down and my payment went through while it was down so it shut me out as it got lost , only needed one email to the owner to sort it out. Otherwise it is what it says on the tin , a pretty good image sharing site.
Roger

[Ross]

Hi Carole, I haven't read all the replies to this so apologies if this has been suggested already.

In other clubs I belong to, the forum is on the homepage e.g. bigfootcc.co.uk. This makes it easier as all the clubs information is in one place as apposed to separate sites.

You said that it used to be busier. Why was that? What were people talking about that they don't now?

[Rick]

Mostly, yes, folk don't spend as much time or type as much as they used to, but back then there were fewer places to congregate online. There are other reasons pretty well covered in previous replies.