where did everybody go !!!

is it just me or is DD seem to be getting less traffic lately ? the forums seem about 50% less active . also my comic is still in the top 100 and it's getting way less hits than when it was in a similar position , i'm talking like a 50% - 80% reduction in hits and its still there in the top 100 , just makes me wonder ..

does anybody else notice this ?

It always seems to happen around the holidays. Some people apparently have family and friends or money to go on vacation or other strange things like that.

Most of the posters here are school age or work company jobs that are their main reason for being online. Others just have social lives to attend to. With the holidays and everyone being away from work and school, the amount of traffic is going to be drastically reduced.

The people posting during the holidays and weekends are usually those like myself who work from home, the kind that don't have much in the way of social lives or have nothing better to do at the moment.

I usually come here when I'm bored with video games, my friends are elsewhere, etc.

But yeah, I noticed the lack of traffic as well. it seems lower than last year to me for some reason. Could be a part of perspective. Maybe it's also because a few more popular comics have left DD. Maybe DD does have less people.

As lba and usedbooks said, people could be on vacation doing other stuff, but maybe there are a lack of people coming onto DD to check out the comics. Also, a few comics aren't updating because they're on vacation, causing less people to have a reason to come to DD.

Oh well, whatever the case, vacations are ending soon, so by the end of this week or maybe the next, we should have everything back to normal

lba
The people posting during the holidays and weekends are usually those like myself who work from home, the kind that don't have much in the way of social lives or have nothing better to do at the moment.

hey. hey. hey.

he's right.

- Nothing interesting ever happens.
- There are no real marketing for the site.
- Most people are fed up with certain aspects/large leve of bugs and have left or do not visit as often.
- General moral is low due to varrying factors, both listed above and otherwise.

All-in-all, DD has just lost a key level of appeal. Personally I go away for weeks at a time because I can only take so much of certain people, and eventually posting with one set of people gets bland, so I move to another site and then move back.

I've noticed the lack of traffic myself and I hope that we can reverse the trend. It's annoying really how this can snowball. People leave because they're fed up with something/someone. Traffic drops and as a result more people leave because the forums are too slow.

It's a bit of a team affair actually…

The deal is his: I'm mean and arrogant in the forums, which discourages people from posting, and Custard Trout is mean to them in the welcoming area, which discourages new people. :)

ozoneocean
It's a bit of a team affair actually…

The two of you have done a wonderful job together.

ozoneocean
It's a bit of a team affair actually…

The deal is his: I'm mean and arrogant in the forums, which discourages people from posting, and Custard Trout is mean to them in the welcoming area, which discourages new people. :)

Yeah, and lefarce has been sadly out of work since the shut down of TD. He can't be mean to drive off those who make it through you two.

We should get TD up and running again. That'll get plenty of people in….

… not the people you want but still…

I guess I'm weird. I hardly ever look at my stats, and most of the people I am fairly familiar with are still around. I miss Marine and “Penis” but he's been off doing the wolfie thing for a while and not posting in forums or anything much…sad. However, I'm still enjoying my time here! :)

Maybe skoolmunkee should make a newpost on ‘interesting goings on in the forums’ and pick a few threads for people to look at/post in :stache:

That's a good idea :) I will endeavour to do something like that this week! (beyond the small net/comm plug I just did today)

Honestly, the forums have been slow ever since the fall of TD. After it shut down, most the big posters(who often posted elsewhere) left the forums. Of course, we all drop in from time to time, but there's no good place to shitpost anymore.

This also creates an issue. Since the TD is gone(which served as a place to move useless threads/shitpost/flame) shitposts litter the forums, and without an subforum to post nonsense/take out your aggression in, people get bored faster and end up being hateful for no reason like Custard, Skullbie, or Myself.

In all honesty, the site needs TD. It was a bit of a dark subforum, but it was the necessary evil, the yin to the yang so to say.

As for the general popularity of the site, it kinda fell after it was taken over by Platinum. I don't know if this has any direct correlation with the site's downfall, but the change in the main page layout, along with countless other changes, have pushed me away from the site for quite some time.

Lastly, as for the comics, I don't even read them any more. browsing through comics on DD is like trying to find buried treasure in a sea of piss. More often than not, comics are abysmal, and usually go on indefinite hiatus before they get anywhere(mine included), that is usually a major turnoff for new “authors”, and less people posting comics means less people reading them.

The solution? Get a better front page, Bring back TD, and create a system that only display comics that have finished properly, updated within the past 45 days, and deletes comics that have went over a year or so without updating.

Oh, and we could use some ADVERTISEMENT as well.

Well, TD is never coming back, sorry :) We actually had more trouble with ‘asshole leakage’ when the TD was around (people didn't understand that what was acceptable in TD wasn't acceptable in other forums, the TD became an elitist/exclusive and mean place, etc- it's all been explained a dozen times). Useless threads/shitposts/flames should never have been kept around in the first place, we just delete them or stow them in a hidden forum now. So I think DD will be just fine without a shitpost subforum. There are plenty of other places on the internet to fill that niche and about a million different ways to take out aggression that don't even involve the internet. If people decide they are going to be bored and hateful on the forums, that's a problem of their own that they need to address. It's not up to us to cater to some peoples' need to be an ass.

lol
why do people keep mentioning TD?
give it up already…

as long as the current Mods and Admins are still here it will never evar nava evar come back :D

skoolmunkee
trouble with ‘asshole leakage’

Oh gods that sounds horrible -_-

psst: …Adult sanitary pants… seriously.

I usually just lurk in the forums, but I'm still here…
>_> I think I left the house once in the christmas break, so I'll have been on DD pretty much every day…

TD's revival would be cool, but there are a few people who just went there to complain about how much they hated it…

): I think it's best we just let it be dead…
Permanantly.

However, a feature to allow us to see the old archives would be nice, I mean, so we can see it, but not post in it…

But I doubt that would ever exist. D;

DD traffic is about right, actually. No real decrease in page view activity. Hoever, yeah, the forums are getting less traffic. Chalk it up mostly to the holiday season, I guess. ;)

I lost a lot of interest in participating in the forums myself. I still find it painful rooting through all of these threads when a PHPBB system would be so much better. Plus, we'd be busy taking care of all of the spam! :D

subcultured
lol
why do people keep mentioning TD?
give it up already…

as long as the current Mods and Admins are still here it will never evar nava evar come back :D

'

You mean you, skool, Oz and Spang? I haven't seen some of the other Mods or Admin in forever. I think myxo might be dead somewhere.

Some are around more than others, they all seem to log in regularly and as long as the forums are staying in order I have no complaints. :)

Forums activity has been declining in the last couple years, it was happening before TD went away. I'd guess it has to do with platinum and the new forums- a lot of people left because of all the plat problems, and a lot of people find the forums hard to use because they're used to phpbb, things like ‘search’ etc and these unpolished forums are kind of a deterrant. Ozone and I spent some time trying to dream up special forum days, maybe we should get back to that and see if we can lure people into posting more.

I wouldn't mind people being able to read old TD stuff, I just have no way of doing that… same old complaint about coding needs. :[

(well we were talking about shitposts, I was trying to keep up with a theme…)

Subcultured
lol
why do people keep mentioning TD?
give it up already…

It's hilarious!

What most people want to post under the Top Drawer umbrella, they could quite happily post here anyway without it being locked or deleted, if they could just get on with posting and stop raving about the Top Drawer every other sentence - Jeez, they've even got me at it now.

I think it just has to do with the comics community spreading out over the internet as a whole. It's a lot more widespread these days than it used to be.

And on a unrelated kinda dumb question note: Did your SN change Ironscarf? I vaguley remember it being Ironscarf's ghost at some point. Maybe I'm just going nutty or something.

Iba
And on a unrelated kinda dumb question note: Did your SN change Ironscarf? I vaguley remember it being Ironscarf's ghost at some point. Maybe I'm just going nutty or something.

You're right Iba: I started off as Ironscarf actually but they killed me off in the ‘welcome’ sub-forum. I decided to dig up my own corpse for new year, to boost the forum traffic.

If we all get two or three alts going, these forums will be buzzing again!

Or really crappy.

i died.
but i got better.

lba
You mean you, skool, Oz and Spang? I haven't seen some of the other Mods or Admin in forever. I think myxo might be dead somewhere.

I actually do pop in everyday now but yeah I'm a bit of a lurker nowadays. Semester is wrapping up too which means marking up the wazoo for me. @__@

Black_Kitty
up the wazoo for me. @__@

All these nasty bottom references. I swear, the admin ladies are obsessed o_O

Ironscarfs Ghost
If we all get two or three alts going

BAD BOY!!
Sorry man, that sort of thing is frowned upon here.

ozoneocean
All these nasty bottom references. I swear, the admin ladies are obsessed o_O

Or you're just a perverted wallaby of an Aussie.


Good to know our illustrious BK is still hanging around though. :) I can sympathize with end of semester work. Doing all my paperwork for the sculpture studios is likely to drive me to insanity.

ozoneocean

Ironscarfs Ghost
If we all get two or three alts going

BAD BOY!!
Sorry man, that sort of thing is frowned upon here.

Doesn't mean we don't all have one though, sometimes two or three. Alts are nothing to be ashamed of, and I don't understand why they're so taboo in our society. They're natural, ordinary things that we should all learn to stop covering and wave around proudly.

Hold on. . . I think you might have meant something else.