What happened on 12 February 2020?

[Axe Man]

The landing page for WOOF states the following:

Most users ever online was 1,020, 12-02-2020 at 09:44 AM.

This date rings no bells for me. What on earth happened on a Wednesday morning a few months back that caused such an influx of traffic?

[bornadog]

That is a lot of people, especially for a morning

[GVGjr]

The landing page for WOOF states the following:

Most users ever online was 1,020, 12-02-2020 at 09:44 AM.

This date rings no bells for me. What on earth happened on a Wednesday morning a few months back that caused such an influx of traffic?

Unfortunately it's not people that are causing this level of traffic. They're actually 'bots's that scan websites and try to join
We get a number of bots joining the site and I clean that up each week. Our simple security measures block 99.5% of it

The biggest day I can recall in terms of posts being generated in recent years was around the Brendan McCartney sacking.
I think we had something like a 1,100 posts on the one day and 3,500 to 4,000 for the week.

We used to regularly get more than 200 posts per day every day but those days are unfortunately long gone

[Axe Man]

Unfortunately it's not people that are causing this level of traffic. They're actually 'bots's that scan websites and try to join
We get a number of bots joining the site and I clean that up each week. Our simple security measures block 99.5% of it

The biggest day I can recall in terms of posts being generated in recent years was around the Brendan McCartney sacking.
I think we had something like a 1,100 posts on the one day and 3,500 to 4,000 for the week.

We used to regularly get more than 200 posts per day every day but those days are unfortunately long gone

Thanks GVG, I thought that it may be something like that.

I seem to recall at one stage our most users online was the night of a national draft, which at least made sense.

[GVGjr]

Axey is right about drafts we normally get a kick in contrbutions

Here are some numbers by day by contributions (posts) from Oct 2014 when McCartney was being moved on

October 05, 2014

226
October 06, 2014

333
October 07, 2014

338
October 08, 2014

366
October 09, 2014

980
October 10, 2014

1070
October 11, 2014

369
October 12, 2014

423
October 13, 2014

568
October 14, 2014

478
October 15, 2014

969
October 16, 2014

655



And now for the month of May 2020

May 01, 2020

54
May 02, 2020

69
May 03, 2020

72
May 04, 2020

111
May 05, 2020

50
May 06, 2020

19
May 07, 2020

21
May 08, 2020

21
May 09, 2020

20
May 10, 2020

38
May 11, 2020

55
May 12, 2020

76
May 13, 2020

70
May 14, 2020

38
May 15, 2020

33
May 16, 2020

30
May 17, 2020

26
May 18, 2020

64
May 19, 2020

32
May 20, 2020

36
May 21, 2020

39
May 22, 2020

49
May 23, 2020

19
May 24, 2020

17
May 25, 2020

85
May 26, 2020

65

[mjp]

May 26, 2020

65

To be fair, I usually try to post a bit (and still have been) but there hasn't really been much for me to say.

I could complain ad infinitum about the AFL, WAFC and my suspicions about whether anyone actually WANTS to have a season or rather think that even though there is ZERO community infection in the entire state they would rather just keep everyone on JobKeeper and reload (reload without any innovation mind you) for 2021 but, seriously, that is going to be a bit boring for everyone and wont exactly generate much comment!

[GVGjr]

To be fair, I usually try to post a bit (and still have been) but there hasn't really been much for me to say.

I could complain ad infinitum about the AFL, WAFC and my suspicions about whether anyone actually WANTS to have a season or rather think that even though there is ZERO community infection in the entire state they would rather just keep everyone on JobKeeper and reload (reload without any innovation mind you) for 2021 but, seriously, that is going to be a bit boring for everyone and wont exactly generate much comment!

Of course there has been a significant effect to the site from the Pandemic and I guess there are number of people that aren't as interested in this season as they would otherwise be. That explains why we are quieter at the moment but the tren has been heading south each year for a while
We have some terrific members and obviously we would like to the site to be vibrant going forward. Getting there is the challenge

[The Bulldogs Bite]

Interesting that the number of posts are down so much.

Have we not had an influx of new members in recent years? Wonder if it's something we could pose to the club, almost as their 'official' fan forum to try and generate new contributors.

I know that personally my contributions have dropped significantly over this time and it's predominately due to time - though I still check the site daily.

[GVGjr]

Interesting that the number of posts are down so much.

Have we not had an influx of new members in recent years? Wonder if it's something we could pose to the club, almost as their 'official' fan forum to try and generate new contributors.

I know that personally my contributions have dropped significantly over this time and it's predominately due to time - though I still check the site daily.

That's been the problem, plenty of people have joined in the last 3 years but less than 12 of them post regularly. I try and contact all the new members and some are very blunt that they have only joined to read what others are saying and are very unlikely to contribute to discussions. We've picked up some good contributors but we are losing vastly more than are joining and participating each year

It's will be interesting to see if the numbers improve once the footy returns but for the site to going to be into the 2021 season we would need a decent bounce to happen this year.
There are some other options I can look at as well but participation is everything to a site like this

[Bulldog4life]

That's been the problem, plenty of people have joined in the last 3 years but less than 12 of them post regularly. I try and contact all the new members and some are very blunt that they have only joined to read what others are saying and are very unlikely to contribute to discussions. We've picked up some good contributors but we are losing vastly more than are joining and participating each year

It's will be interesting to see if the numbers improve once the footy returns but for the site to going to be into the 2021 season we would need a decent bounce to happen this year.
There are some other options I can look at as well but participation is everything to a site like this

In regards to losing posters G. I have been here for over 10 years and have seen a lot of "regular" posters leave in that time. Any thought to reaching out to these G or is it finito!

[GVGjr]

In regards to losing posters G. I have been here for over 10 years and have seen a lot of "regular" posters leave in that time. Any thought to reaching out to these G or is it finito!

I've done that as well. I contacted 25 posters earlier in the year with more than 500 posts on the forum since they joined who had stopped contributing and got 3 responses all pretty much to the negative in terms of coming back in any meaningful way

One of the challenges for discussion forums like this is when it started 80% of members had their own desktop PC and the other 20% posted when they could from their work PC with proper keyboards for typing and a lot of members put in a lot of effort.
Years later society, and therefore many of our members, moved to tablet style PC's and ditched the desktops. Terrific convenience but harder to type more detailed responses and more aimed at reading and viewing than contributing so while the numbers of members dropped slightly actual contributions took a bigger hit
Contributing to Facebook and Twitter was vastly easier because the members there expect short and brief messages. A click onto a like or dislike button or a brief response here or there isn't like having to detail why a player should be promoted or dropped and providing some reasons for that thought on a discussion forum. That is their market and they're very successful at attracting members and it's most of all bloody easy to read and you don't have to put a lot of effort into any contribution

By the time iphones and android phones became the more convenient option but significantly harder to type detailed messages then discussion forums like this turned into more or less newsboards where people prefer to log in and read the thoughts of others rather than. For many it's a question of why should I contribute to a discussion forum when I can send 100 text messages a day to an audience they control.

We still have a lot of dedicated members but the numbers of contributions to discussions are down

But for many it's clearly a time issue

So there you have some of the reasons why it's such a challenge now. I'm also more than open for anyone to contact me if they think we could be doing something else and I can confirm my inbox isn't anywhere near full.

[Bulldog4life]

I've done that as well. I contacted 25 posters earlier in the year with more than 500 posts on the forum since they joined who had stopped contributing and got 3 responses all pretty much to the negative in terms of coming back in any meaningful way

One of the challenges for discussion forums like this is when it started 80% of members had their own desktop PC and the other 20% posted when they could from their work PC with proper keyboards for typing and a lot of members put in a lot of effort.
Years later society, and therefore many of our members, moved to tablet style PC's and ditched the desktops. Terrific convenience but harder to type more detailed responses and more aimed at reading and viewing than contributing so while the numbers of members dropped slightly actual contributions took a bigger hit
Contributing to Facebook and Twitter was vastly easier because the members there expect short and brief messages. A click onto a like or dislike button or a brief response here or there isn't like having to detail why a player should be promoted or dropped and providing some reasons for that thought on a discussion forum. That is their market and they're very successful at attracting members and it's most of all bloody easy to read and you don't have to put a lot of effort into any contribution

By the time iphones and android phones became the more convenient option but significantly harder to type detailed messages then discussion forums like this turned into more or less newsboards where people prefer to log in and read the thoughts of others rather than. For many it's a question of why should I contribute to a discussion forum when I can send 100 text messages a day to an audience they control.

We still have a lot of dedicated members but the numbers of contributions to discussions are down

But for many it's clearly a time issue

So there you have some of the reasons why it's such a challenge now. I'm also more than open for anyone to contact me if they think we could be doing something else and I can confirm my inbox isn't anywhere near full.

I am using my phone at the moment and yes it is so much harder than a pc...for me anyway. Looking forward to using the pc again soon.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

I've done that as well. I contacted 25 posters earlier in the year with more than 500 posts on the forum since they joined who had stopped contributing and got 3 responses all pretty much to the negative in terms of coming back in any meaningful way

One of the challenges for discussion forums like this is when it started 80% of members had their own desktop PC and the other 20% posted when they could from their work PC with proper keyboards for typing and a lot of members put in a lot of effort.
Years later society, and therefore many of our members, moved to tablet style PC's and ditched the desktops. Terrific convenience but harder to type more detailed responses and more aimed at reading and viewing than contributing so while the numbers of members dropped slightly actual contributions took a bigger hit
Contributing to Facebook and Twitter was vastly easier because the members there expect short and brief messages. A click onto a like or dislike button or a brief response here or there isn't like having to detail why a player should be promoted or dropped and providing some reasons for that thought on a discussion forum. That is their market and they're very successful at attracting members and it's most of all bloody easy to read and you don't have to put a lot of effort into any contribution

By the time iphones and android phones became the more convenient option but significantly harder to type detailed messages then discussion forums like this turned into more or less newsboards where people prefer to log in and read the thoughts of others rather than. For many it's a question of why should I contribute to a discussion forum when I can send 100 text messages a day to an audience they control.

We still have a lot of dedicated members but the numbers of contributions to discussions are down

But for many it's clearly a time issue

So there you have some of the reasons why it's such a challenge now. I'm also more than open for anyone to contact me if they think we could be doing something else and I can confirm my inbox isn't anywhere near full.

Time and circumstance are issues for me. However I check in at least 5 times a day. If something notable occurs, I'm confident that I'll both find it here, and obtain a decent evaluation of it.
By comparison, I check Bigfooty only during the trade period.
Short answer. If I MUST know something I check here. I'd be disappointed if this site were to disappear.

[Eastdog]

Hopefully that will pick up soon once the season gets underway again.

[soupman]

Could the gradual decline be due to something bigger, like the maturation of most of the posters on here.

I mean if you consider the vast majority of the regular posters have been posting on here for 10+ years, maybe we've just seen a lot of posters change from enthusiastic posters who just want to be part of any discussion to older posters who are more inclined to only post when they feel they can add to the discussion? I know that's certainly a change I've gone through having joined here as a teenager and now being in my 30s.

This could also be combined with a change in mindset since the premiership. After 2016 perhaps a few of us have "lost the hunger" as such and are more relaxed supporters now, and maybe even our poor performances since the flag that would have previously riled us up and gotten us making more posts pre premiership now just leave us a bit flat.

We've also potentially struggled to bring in an abundance of new "talent" potentially because a) we seem to spread through word of mouth more than anything and everyone has exhausted their Bulldog friends already and b) as a new poster there aren't a bunch of topics you can ease your way into, aside from some of the post match threads.

Having said that this is still the best forum in terms of well thought out discussion I frequent and still has a fair bit of activity so the bar is still set pretty high here.