Does anyone do anything here?

I was active online a few years ago, moved to being active in the community. With the current political climate I remembered my roots here.

So my question is - doesnt anything happen here? Or is it just a place to show red flags?

A few of us are members of PSL, SWP, and other parties.

The advent of Facebook, Twitter, and the like pretty much killed off old fashioned forums, such as this one.

But if you want to see SE become more active, please feel free to post. We could definitely benefit from having a few of the old timers come back.

Please begin by telling us a little bit more about your participation in the movement. Of what sort? Which party?

I do not know if face book ‘killed’ forums. Many I know are doing well, going strong in fact. Unfortunately I have the experience here that when I want to rejuvenate a topic or add something to the discussion hardly anybody bothers to play along.

Anyway even with little activity this place is a treasure trove of info on the USSR, communism and socialism and I sincerely hope that for this reason alone it will be kept alive even by token activity.

Last but not least. Should the admins chose to call it a day and close the shop – hope they won’t but let’s prepare for the worst case scenario – they will let us know in advance for there is a lot I would like to download / save should it not be available any more.

Quote:

I do not know if face book ‘killed’ forums. Many I know are doing well, going strong in fact.

This. I'm a member of several forums and they're all active and full of discussion.

Someone did bring up the possibility in the past that this forum is simply too narrow, marginalised, to sustain long-term interest.

I do not think the forum is too narrow.

USSR & (former) socialist countries + communism & socialism is a broad spectrum of subjects as illustrated by the many sections of this forum each containing numerous interesting topics with many posts.

The thing is that even long time members hardly care about engaging into discussion anymore. Even when a subject is brought and the join the discussion they hardly care to give more than a token answer.

It is not that I do not appreciate them – in fact I do and am thankful for all their input.

When trying to diagnose the problem one facto may be, that even those in the know have reached their limits i.e. there is not much more they can add. POVs have been stated, arguments to support them brought up and knowledge shared and the forum members have just run out of thing to say – that is write.

Yet not all hope is lost as demonstrated by our exchange. Plus I will take the liberty to repeat myself. This place is a treasure trove of info on all things USSR / communist / socialist and related and if for no other reason it is worth to maintain it and frequent it from time to time to keep up even token activity.

Krzysztof wrote:

I do not think the forum is too narrow.

USSR & (former) socialist countries + communism & socialism is a broad spectrum of subjects as illustrated by the many sections of this forum each containing numerous interesting topics with many posts.

The thing is that even long time members hardly care about engaging into discussion anymore. Even when a subject is brought and the join the discussion they hardly care to give more than a token answer.

It is not that I do not appreciate them – in fact I do and am thankful for all their input.

When trying to diagnose the problem one facto may be, that even those in the know have reached their limits i.e. there is not much more they can add. POVs have been stated, arguments to support them brought up and knowledge shared and the forum members have just run out of thing to say – that is write.

Yet not all hope is lost as demonstrated by our exchange. Plus I will take the liberty to repeat myself. This place is a treasure trove of info on all things USSR / communist / socialist and related and if for no other reason it is worth to maintain it and frequent it from time to time to keep up even token activity.

Thank you! I cannot agree more! This forum is what we make of it. If we put energy in, we get energy out.

Just when I think I have reached a limit, I come up with a new approach or new insight. Necessity is the mother of invention. We don't have to let our struggle be limited by apparent limits!

Hello. I am Arsen....I am a new member here )) thanks for your post , nice to meet you all here, in this web site

@szabo - I'm kind of getting that exact same feeling just by skimming over the forum sections. Not only does the forum seem that way, but how it's being handled and some of the "rules" are not only silly but it in my opinion has the potential to push people away. For instance all first posts must be approved, well the forums are not that active and there's only one mod, so the wait for approval is enough to make people give up on the site and move on. Also the rule against one liner posts is sorta silly. I'm also not too fond of the attitudes I've seen eluding from the admins and mods.

S-E is a dinosaur space. It's not for everyone. I barely post here anymore.

It's just not a very happening place, it seems really cold. If SE was a little more open and accessible it would help a lot.

Reform is possibly necessary but mostly our problem is a lack of youth membership. Invite your friends here. It will wake up the old members.

I just remembered this site and came by to check if it was still around, not been here for maybe 15 years? I guess most people use Reddit now, surprised but glad to see SE is still going! Will take a look around.

Lenina wrote:

@szabo - I'm kind of getting that exact same feeling just by skimming over the forum sections. Not only does the forum seem that way, but how it's being handled and some of the "rules" are not only silly but it in my opinion has the potential to push people away. For instance all first posts must be approved, well the forums are not that active and there's only one mod, so the wait for approval is enough to make people give up on the site and move on. Also the rule against one liner posts is sorta silly. I'm also not too fond of the attitudes I've seen eluding from the admins and mods.

Well, Lenina, remember what I had told you some time ago about the reasons why this forum was totally killed and is now deserted for the 2nd year already?

I think forum needs some arranging in order to get more active

George1 wrote:

I think forum needs some arranging in order to get more active

Probably.

Oh man. I just did the same thing again. Spent ages scanning through old posts trying to remember my user name, only to realise after I figured it out that the first post I’d looked at was mine, asking this questions 4 years ago.