It feels like it’s dying. Just anecdotally it seems like there have been less threads lately, less quality threads, and less discussion overall. More anecdotally I feel like the last couple of federation / defederation slap fights ended with many users leaving as well. I can think of a few who left because we were federating, some who left because we then subsequently defederated from lots of the fediverse, and then even a few who said they would leave if we didn’t defederate and then left anyway when we did.

I feel like mostly overall I have seen very few new posters, and have seen less and less of some certain power posters.

Is this just a illusion or is this really what’s happening. What is to be done?

  • pooh [she/her, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    53·
    4 months ago

    Having been here since basically the beginning, I feel like it’s only gotten better. Some good changes I’ve noticed:

    1. Far more explicitly pro trans than it was initially
    2. Generally seems like more of an effort is made to be welcoming
    3. More activity and fun community events like movie nights
    4. Struggle sessions are more or less a joke and angry struggle sessions seem much more rare

    Some things I miss:

    1. Posters like tervell, brookebaybee, UlyssesT, and others who aren’t as active or no longer around at all. If you’re out there reading this, come back and say hi!
    2. President Parrot has also disappeared from the public eye following the last scandal that was in the news. I think it was the one where President Parrot was naked or something.
    3. Also, this was kind of always an issue, but there are lots of smaller commas that could use more love.
    • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      37·
      4 months ago

      Tervell posts all the time, mostly to videos and guns. He posted to videos 2 hours ago in fact. Perhaps he blocked you or vice versa (which, sorry to hear if that happened…reminder to everyone that if you blocked other Hexbears you should go through periodically and unblock them to see if you still want them blocked). But yeah, there are plenty of posters who have dropped off over the years never to return. It’s sad.

      • pooh [she/her, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        20·
        4 months ago

        You’re right! And I can see their posts which is great news. Not sure way, but I just haven’t been seeing them as frequently. Maybe it’s the comms I browse or time of day I pop in.

        • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          30·
          4 months ago

          I have been posting somewhat less, since I’ve just already posted a lot of the stuff I had - it’s only really /c/guns that I regularly post to now, and /c/videos & /c/games to a lesser extent. My supply of sword pics was a lot smaller than the one of gun pics, so /c/history’s pretty rare, although maybe enough time has passed to repost some stuff, I dunno.

          I think with the Lemmy updates there were also some sorting algorithm changes - I think Active got changed, then Scaled was introduced which was supposedly closer to the original Active, but then I think maybe Active got changed again, and I’m not sure how things sit right now, I’m still on Scaled myself. And finally, it could just be timezone differences.

    • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]@hexbear.netEnglish
      22·
      4 months ago

      i was goin back through my early posting history here and i’ve noticed this site’s become way less aggressive. i think we’ve come a long way since the transition from chapo.chat

      second missing those users. some really great posting.

    • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      12·
      4 months ago

      Far more explicitly pro trans than it was initially

      The transgender communist cabal will seize power all across the globe, it is only a matter of time sicko-fem

  • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    32·
    4 months ago

    Your experience on the site is largely determined by what sorting algo you use by default, IMO. (or what mega you browse if you primarily hang out in the megas)

    If you use Hot sort you will see mostly new posts, but comments sections will be pretty empty. If you use Active, you’ll see the posts with the most active comments section, but they’ll all be like 12h to 2 days old. Etc.

    So using Hot (or especially New), the comments can feel really empty: but you have the opportunity to be the one who starts the interesting discussions in the comments, or gets first dibs at the cheap jokes. Using Active you’ll see the fullest comments sections and most struggle sessions

    You can try both of them out using the selector on the front page, but if you want to change your default that’s on your user settings page (in case it wasn’t obvious)

    I switched to Hot after we migrated and federated, but it took me a while to realize how drastically different the site experience was on Hot vs Active. I still default to Hot but sometimes I switch to Active to see slapfights or good posts that I missed

    EDIT: Also to provide some data, our monthly active user count is actually up ~200 since 6 months ago. That’s something like 10% growth? These things are hard to really judge precisely but I don’t think there’s any sign we’re dying

  • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netEnglish
    27·
    4 months ago

    This is making me think of that “the fandom is dying!!” disc-horse I was constantly exposed to in my brony days… By all means that still hasn’t happened, even though I and all the people I know are far less preoccupied with cartoon horses than we used to be; and by all means Hexbear is not dying either.

    It would appear that online communities are only truly dead when people stop asking or debating if they’re dead/dying. As long as people are still asking or arguing about that, then that signals that there are people who want the community to live, and as long as there’s even two people who want that, then the community is not dead. And when people stop arguing, then, well, so what? Nobody wanted the community to keep on living, anyways. All those people who were previously worrying about the death of the community have stopped worrying by that point, and it’s exactly that which allowed them to leave.

    It’s like getting a Twilight Zone oracle’s vision of your own deathbed, and seeing that you will die feeling fulfilled, like you have achieved more or less everything you ever wanted to do, made peace with everything you couldn’t do, and have no unfinished business remaining. You see that you will die painlessly on a day when you’re ready to die, and you see that people are going to miss you but that life will go on nonetheless. The oracle tells you that all of this is going to happen no matter what you do, and that it might be a year from now or half a century, that’s for you to figure out…

    …And then you spend the rest of your life worrying about the day you stop worrying.

    It may be natural, but it’s also a bit silly, isn’t it? Like, you aren’t really fearing death at that point.

      • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netEnglish
        23·
        4 months ago

        Back when I was a brony, there was neigh-verending disc-horse about whether the herd was on the verge of being put out to pasture, as it were, but all equus-perience hath shewn that this has not yet hay-ppened, and likewise for Hexbear. Online communities in fact remain in stable condition so long as ponies whinny about how “the end is neigh”: the community can never be in its tail-end as long as even just two ponies worry, for worry shows a desire for the community to keep trotting. Therefore, any online community will end only when it behooves all its members.

        It’s like a Twilight Sparkle Zone oracle of one’s deathbed, showing that one lived a foal life fulfilling mare or less all one’s de-sires, leaving one ready for a painless canter to the Pearly Gaits. Though one made a cutie mark on the world, and one will be missed, life gallops on. The oracle neighs that all of this will happen regardless of one’s own actions, but whether it’s in a year-ling or half a century is for oneself to find out.

        …And then one spends the rest of one’s life mule-ing about the day one stops mule-ing.

        Natural, perhaps, but also a bit foal-ish, neigh?

    • bigboopballs [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      3·
      4 months ago

      …And then you spend the rest of your life worrying about the day you stop worrying.

      why would you do that, if you know you’re going to die fulfilled?

      • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        4 months ago

        That’s literally my point: why would you do that? — And yet that’s exactly what’s going on when people ask “Is Hexbear dying?”.

        Hexbear will only die when Hexbears want it to, because as long as people want to use Hexbear, people will use Hexbear. Therefore, Hexbear will only die when everyone collectively feels fulfilled, and so it’s ultimately irrational to worry about the site dying.

  • cricbuzz [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    26·
    4 months ago

    personally, things feel bleak in the world. doomer when things feel bleak, i don’t feel like posting, i just feel like passively consuming

  • CliffordBigRedDog [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    22·
    4 months ago

    yea sorry about that, the bureau is in sort of “transitional phase” or so the higher ups tell me and that means we can only get 2 agents on this place at anytime which means its me, or some boomer asshole in DC or some dumbass intern fresh out of harvard, which means we cant post as much

  • ComradeVark [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    22·
    4 months ago

    As others have said, you’re not the first to feel this way. I logged on yesterday for the first time in several months after thinking the same and I was pleasantly surprised at the level of activity. I’ve had mixed feelings about federation but feel like it paid off, though I mostly keep my feed to ‘local’. Hell, 2024 might even be the year I finally make a post.

    • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      11·
      4 months ago

      Don’t let your dreams be dreams. This is what the badposting comm is for. No posts are bad posts but for folks who don’t believe in themselves yet, that’s a place to start.

      But you can also just post directly the the chapotraphouse comm too like I always do. If my posts belong here everyone’s posts belong here

  • copandballtorture [ey/em]@hexbear.netEnglish
    19·
    4 months ago

    I feel you. I hate scrolling through page after page of threads that are just a news article link with no commentary, no posts.

    A lot of our content is essentially “hexbear reacts to [current event]” and then “[current event] meta posts”, and current events are in a lull or we’ve exhausted all there is to say about Trump, Biden, Palestine, climate change, etc.

    At some point, hexbear probably will die. Think of how many forums you’ve posted on before here, how many are still around? I don’t want it to, I have nowhere else I want to post, but it’ll happen. And then we’ll logout and do something else

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      21·
      4 months ago

      “Current event”

      I’m not really posting much because there isn’t really anything funny happening, there isn’t anything left to say about most of the major geopolitical problems, we’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel for novel expressions of horror and irony poisoning, and i’m not doing anything local to be angry about.