Not much participation in forums ?
daveso
Posts: 7,013
in The Commons
it might be my imagination, but it seems like there is less and less posting in the forums. Do you notice that or is it just me?
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I don't know about the other forums here, but yeah, this one has slowed down from "the old days". So many complaints, but after so many reincarnations of the "--Complaint--" thread, I think the complaints are complete.
Nothing new to be heard. Everybody's happy, without even any piddly first-world complaints to whine about. Yeah right!
it's the little snipes that we commiserate with, the aches & pains, the blinding stupidity of everybody but ourselves, the nuisance of unavailable products, the bee hive in the wall, the nails in your yard after the hurricane. You know, the annoying life stuff.
God knows we need a place to vent the little steams before they accumulate and pop our corks.
not much lightheartedness and silliness allowed these days in general
it's not just this forum
World events suck
everyone takes offense
the forum has no nudity or profanity filters so we cannot even render art and shoot the breeze
I'd say the Daz forums are quieter than they used to be, but less so than others I follow.
To be honest, endless iterations of the same arguments over and over do get wearing, particularly when they don't bring any new answers to the table. "There's not enough of X type of content!", "The latest base figure sucks!", "Sales are less good now!", etc - a lot of the time it's the same roulette wheel with no more options and the exact same regurgitated arguments.
Even in the comparatively short time I've been here (compared to others), it used to be that new release threads were full of people having fun with the new product and showing off what it could do, but now it's complaints about how many products you get in the bundle and the fact their skin is slightly similar to another character six months ago.
Too much time complaining, and scarce positivity.
I think participation in the forum was impacted when the forum wouldn't send any email notifications and people couldn't upload attachments. That is when I noticed it drop off dramatically, and it doesn't seem to have recovered. That period was preceded and followed by the server error scenarios, when people couldn't read or post in the forum while the error was happening. I think many people gave up and found something less frustrating to do with their time. Hopefully they are off happily rendering.
I think the decline started before the pandemic and only has gotten worse since then. I remember most days any posts in the morning would already be on the second page by the evening. There's probably multiple factors but one big one is previously when Iray and dForce were new there were lots of questions and experimentation threads. Mostly, these are now "solved" and there is very little new to discuss or explore. Daz hasn't added any features as big as these since then. I think another chunk bowed out when Daz went into NFTs.
The powers that be have little love or appreciation for the community so it's not surprising to see it wither over time.
Not necessarily related,I think it's more due to the fact the forums have been broken for too long, as hinted in previous posts. And it's not due to lack of patience among the users, it's because we are talking YEARS.
Personally I turn off email notifications to most forums I belong to, too much spam and DAZ is no exception to that rule. For me I just check the forums daily to see what is going on. I agree though on not as much activity as I would like. Seems like the majority of posts lately are either complaiing about pricing, I hate G9, or one of the million "what character is this" posts which I have started to ignore as it is easier than trying to explain why it's near impossible to identify a character. I do find myself looking at the commercial forum more since I love seeing what new products are coming.
I should be getting my Quest 3 in a couple of days and that will keep me occupied for awhile and away from DS......unless DAZ comes out with a VR option for DS, LOL
thats a pretty expensive set. Wow...we have a 2, but it makes me sick half the time.
To be honest, for me, I only come here if I have a problem with daz or a product that I can't figure out.
These forums don't feel like a social place or somewhere to call home to me.
When I want to have fun or "chat", I go to forums with like minded people in the genres that I make art in.
Not to mention that I run my own small forum for artists and collectors interested in the same adult genre.
Which hair product is this?
where can I find this outfit?
when wil Daz Studio be on Linux.
seems pretty normal to me. LOL. It's slower than norm. Like WendyLuv said world even at. Also school for kids. The regurgitation of product releases doesn't inspire much to talk about either.
The key question is if this lack of engagement has any correlation to sales.
It certainly isn't due to threads repeating things said before, because of how these forums tend to bury old threads, and the fact that has been going on forever. Newer people who haven't seen the old threads will almost always make new threads. It isn't unique to Daz, though the poor forum search does make it much harder to find old threads, which encourages people to just make new ones. Additionally, the madly confusing sales we have often have usually invite some discussion, too, as people try to figure out how these sales work. So I would be concerned about this drop in interaction. Many users might not post in forums, but you can generally bet that people who do are highly invested in DS in some way. Either through time or money, or often both. This forum used to move so fast that it was hard to keep up even when checking daily. Now threads that haven't had new posts for days can still be on the first page. We used to see threads with dozens, even hundreds of posts for every core character, no matter what the reaction was. Now core characters have threads that barely get past a few pages long.
Here are some numbers. "Zack 9" has 20 total comments and now sits halfway down page 2. It isn't just because he's a male..."Karmen 9 HD" has 27 posts and sits on page 3. Neither of these characters have enough comments to reach a 2nd page, that used to be rare.
Meanwhile Olympia 8's thread has 11 pages of comments, well over 330. Time is not a factor, because nearly all of those came within her launch window period. She released on July 2017, and you can find that on page 11 there are comments from August 2017, just one single month later. So 330+ posts discussing Olympia 8 happened in just a month. Olympia 9 only has 4 pages of comments hitting 108 posts. Amelia 9 is approaching one month but only has 43 comments. Minerva 9, who released last December 2022, has about 107 comments.
Just looking at Olympia 8 to 9, the level of forum engagement dropped significantly, as Olympia 8 drew more than 3 times as many comments. Even a late G8 release like Sahara 8 has 8 pages of comments and 241 comments, again within her launch window.
However, this is where it gets concerning, because Genesis 9 initially had a lot of interest in the forum. The Genesis 9 announcement thread, which also previewed Victoria 9, has 38 pages of comments, that is well over 1000 comments. Moreover, all of them happened in the one month window September 2022 to October 2022. This demonstrates that it is indeed possible for a recent thread to get a lot of attention. But by the time Minerva 9 launched in December her release only garnered 108 comments.
The Victoria 8.1/Genesis 8.1 thread has 59 pages of comments. Not all are in the launch window, so I looked. Going one month (January-February 2021) there are still 54 pages of comments. That is over 1620 comments in just one month about the new 8.1. However, Arcadia 8.1 has only 2 pages with some 58 comments. The final G8.0, Topsy, has 5 pages, though I'll note that page 5 is at the 30 post limit, so basically 6 pages. That's 180 comments on a rather niche character.
I can't find the thread for Genesis 8's initial release, I am probably overlooking it.
The forums have definitely slowed down. I started noticing it some 4-5 months ago, but I have also noticed the same elsewhere... Maybe related to situation in the eastern europe?
Renderosity forum is a graveyard
I also had the impression about this forum, but it still seems pretty active to me. Also, i am not soooo i interested in ai debates, and as that seems to be quite a hot topic, there is less for me to read
@WendyLuvsCatz: IMO the leadership of the other store is making so many questionable business decisions atm, i am not surprised at all about that - like the mice leaving the sinking ship - and i am also feeling unsecure about their future at the moment.
Some people moved to AI for creating pictures and are active in the AI forums.
Some people are spending less time in front of the computer and go out again.
Some people are not satisfied with Genesis 9 and the quality of props.
...I remember when the Complaint Thread was one of the most popular and more often than not near the top just under the "sticklies" Lately though sometimes I'll find there have been no response for a day on the thread and at times relegating it even falls to page 2 which in the old days was incredibly rare. I always considered this particular thread to be sort of a "barometer" of user traffic on the forums.
Lots of theories about why some make sense, but maybe it's also simply "forums burnout".
The one other source I can think of is the effect of social media, which has immensely risen in popularity over the last 10 or so years since I've been here. Unlike here and on similar "dedicated" forums, TOS rules tend to be are more "lax" on the social; media platforms, some more than others. Don't get me wrong I have no issue with the TOS and moderation here as it keeps things from degenerating into "flame fests" but that is not always the case elsewhere.
There is also a lot less activity in the Daz gallery I feel.
A gallery with no search function, broken forums, less users, do I see a pattern here?
No, it must be the situation in eastern Europe LOL
I am on everyday looking for answers (LOL) anyway the gallery is less functional than it was, I am still buying stuff in fact more than ever but my time is very sparse these days.
Other forums seem very quiet maybe thats a trend with the forum format?
On personal level, I have posted less than before because the ones asking questions, never come back or it takes several days for them to respond.
I am a naturally shy and quiet person off-line and find it difficult to socialize with others in the best of times, so when I make social blunders on a forum it makes me want to go hide under a rock. I've also seen a lot of negativity about DAZ and the DAZ forums and DAZ products. It's made me wonder if DAZ is going downhill, and if so, should I spend time and money on this hobby? If other users are so upset about the direction DAZ is going, well, it makes me wonder if it's the canary in the coal mine. I think there are some really smart, talented people on this forum, and the mods do their best to keep it safe and appropriate for people to post, but I'm not sure it's a "supportive community of artists." It can feel distinctly unfriendly at times, imho, but maybe that's just me. I avoid posting for the most part now and only check in occasionally.
Maybe it's because the rest of what's going on in the world is taking up a lot of attention at the moment. It may be that many are now visiting other forums where they can talk about these things. For a very good reason, it is not allowed to use the Daz forums for political discussions; then it is just quieter here in times of great political unrest.
I actually find this one of the most friendly and civil forums on the internet, I was pleasantly surprised by this when I started with Daz and definitely motivated me to keep going. I also feel that the Daz community in one of the most supportive on the internet, this goes too for the folks in the Gallery I find.
Most people only read posts in a few forums and forget about the rest. My opening page for here is the Recent Discussions page. I don't read all the new posts but I scroll through them and see if there are any of interest. I post help where I can and post images in my Art Studio thread and in the Show us your Iray renders thread. If you don't use it you will lose it is a well known phrase.
I used to work in software development and support back in the day (OMG LOL) and you learnt very quickly that say if you had 100 customers and something went very well one ot two would say thats great but if something had the smallest problem 90 of them would ring the phone to death compaining its human nature.
I think a lot of people have got tired of waiting for 'DAZ Soon', and have gone off looking for other ways to do what they want. For myself, I find being denied access to features the are 'PA only' reduces my interest in using DAZ Studio overall, so I'm less likely to come into the forum and talk about it. I also get the feeling people are frustrated with their concerns not being addressed, and are just not interested in being told 'product X is better than the old product because it's easier for the PA's' as a user I don't care.
I can only speak for myself. I'm reading and posting less lately because 1) I want to spend less money on DAZ stuff, and the less time I spend on any part of this site (or its competitors) the less money I tend to spend. Also, 2) I realised that I was using this forum in a low-key unhealthy way, to distract myself from work and other more important stuff.
Obviously this is all personal and doesn't really explain an overall slowdown.
I can only speak for myself, but I am posting less than I used to.
@outrider42 This clearly took you some time to do. Thank you for digging up the numbers, I see the trend you are pointing out.