Evidence to the contrary:

A new record 711 people were on this forum last Saturday.

How many were telling us how awful it is and how they are going to leave?

What's a matter whiners? Not enough football or black friday deals?

Many still watch the Grammies- doesn't mean anything of consequence or substance happens during them.

I don't follow this board closely enough, and keep records, but my perception is everything is A-OK. For those who feel there are problems, how are you measuring success?

My general perception is the frequency and length of "relevant" posts and sharing has not changed. However, if you add many more new participants, and their posts are considered not so useful, is that evidence of decline? Are you measuring the volume of information posts, or the percent? If you measure the percent, it could decline even though the volume of "good" posts has not changed.

Which leaves the real question - how many of the 711 were MEMBERS and how many were Guests?

Members verse guests isn't a good metric. I'm not signed in here unless I post, but i check by here every day pretty much. I would not be suprised if others don't do the same

And how many "guests" were search engine and spam bots???

Sorry but that number is totally meaningless unless the admin pulls the logs and checks the IP addresses and determines how many were search bots.

In 1918 there were a record number of people standing in a field in Nashville Tennessee. Ironically it was for the same reason as RYPN's bump in visitors.

Have they all wanted a new moderator?

Where do you go to see this information - about the "record" number of guests? How do you know it's the highest number, I guess is what I'm asking, out of curiosity.

If you go to the Board Index and scroll down to the bottom, there's a little blurb about number of active guests and record amount of guests. Like right now it says:

"In total there are 111 users online :: 4 registered, 0 hidden and 107 guests
Most users ever online was 711 on Sat Nov 26, 2022 8:45 pm"

Huh - so there it is. I thought I had looked on that page before, maybe I didn't. Thanks!

I enjoyed Mr. Hahn's sarcasm greatly.

Last I looked, RyPN was not a site that valued increased numbers of eyeballs via clickbait and trolling tactics -- in fact, I expect more visitors translates into potentially greater server difficulty if, as I suspect, the server is small and its ISP connection limited in bandwidth.

Since no one is sending me free popcorn via Amazon... or even free virtual popcorn to enjoy with my Linux virtual beer... I don't see any reason to see traffic flocking to insultfests or other train wrecks as any indication of actual usefulness here. In fact, I'd be concerned that site usage 'after the party' might drop... especially if Kelly makes good his plan to remove his post history.

Is the real problem the forum, or the people?

In the end, this could be beautiful. All the RR historians/preservationists/mechanics/etc could get along. Share knowledge, history, records, technical info, connections with the current industry. Imagine the collective raw power we could wield! Sounds corny as hell, but really, it IS true. Someone out there knows how to do anything, find anything, fix anything, knows everyone.

In the end, look at reality. One large steam shop goes under and the owners in jail, and that's after leaving a trail of destruction. The only class 1 steam program had it's old heads declare war on the new guys, and more less vice-versa. Historical societies, museums, etc tearing themselves apart from the inside. Apparently there are steam locos, and historical RR's in general, that scare the bejebus out of people who are more safety oriented. None of this has anything to do with the forum.

Most of the most successful organizations barely show up on these pages at all.

One in every 3 or 4 topics goes to the dark side one way or the other.

I never had the feeling that RyPN is dead or dying. There are new posts every time I log in. The problem is that it has evolved from what it originally was and not for the better. At one time I considered other rail forms to be "railfan" forums while RyPN was the go to spot for in-depth discussions on preservation and technical discussions on historic equipment. I could ask a question and get answers from some of the who's who in the preservation world. Today I come here more out of habit than anything.