Hey, I've wondered this for awhile. How come this site isn't very active? Specually on the forums of my favorite shows like "I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show" and others? I come visit this site everyday almost and go to one of the forums for one of those shows and I aways see the same threads in the same way. There are barely any new threads made every few days and you barely get replies to your own threads every few days. Usually people just reply to existing threads and barely there are any new ones.

I visit some gaming sites such as for The Sims if anyones heard of that game. And I go on those boards and they're constantly busy? People make new threads and respond existing ones every few minutes. You post something on one those sites and you go back maybe two or three minutes you'd find you may have a one or two replies already or maybe just a lot of reads depending on what you post.

But, on here if you post somthing you usually don't get very many replies for several days. Please let me know. Thanks.

Hey, I've wondered this for awhile. How come this site isn't very active? Specually on the forums of my favorite shows like "I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show" and others? I come visit this site everyday almost and go to one of the forums for one of those shows and I aways see the same threads in the same way. There are barely any new threads made every few days and you barely get replies to your own threads every few days. Usually people just reply to existing threads and barely there are any new ones.

Latest Sitcoms Online Message Boards Statistics:
Threads: 263,461, Posts: 4,396,110, Members: 48,436

You still want to make a case about the board not being very active?

I visit some gaming sites such as for The Sims if anyones heard of that game. And I go on those boards and they're constantly busy? People make new threads and respond existing ones every few minutes. You post something on one those sites and you go back maybe two or three minutes you'd find you may have a one or two replies already or maybe just a lot of reads depending on what you post.

You can't expect everyone to reply to certain posts every few minutes. There are many threads that get no replies at all and griping about it won't help matters any.

Like said in another thread, the site has significantly slowed down (from what I see, especially in Chit Chat) in the past couple of years, especially in the last year. The show boards seem slower than they used to be, IMO. :(

Like said in another thread, the site has significantly slowed down (from what I see, especially in Chit Chat) in the past couple of years, especially in the last year. The show boards seem slower than they used to be, IMO. :(
Yea a lot of members have moved on. It's sad but it's life.

Hey, I've wondered this for awhile. How come this site isn't very active? Specually on the forums of my favorite shows like "I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show" and others? I come visit this site everyday almost and go to one of the forums for one of those shows and I aways see the same threads in the same way. There are barely any new threads made every few days and you barely get replies to your own threads every few days. Usually people just reply to existing threads and barely there are any new ones.

I visit some gaming sites such as for The Sims if anyones heard of that game. And I go on those boards and they're constantly busy? People make new threads and respond existing ones every few minutes. You post something on one those sites and you go back maybe two or three minutes you'd find you may have a one or two replies already or maybe just a lot of reads depending on what you post.

But, on here if you post somthing you usually don't get very many replies for several days. Please let me know. Thanks.


I'm a fan of I Love Lucy & The Lucy Show, but I don't always have enough time to read & respond to those threads. Hang in there & maybe things will pick up for those categories.

Hey, I've wondered this for awhile. How come this site isn't very active? Specually on the forums of my favorite shows like "I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show" and others? I come visit this site everyday almost and go to one of the forums for one of those shows and I aways see the same threads in the same way. There are barely any new threads made every few days and you barely get replies to your own threads every few days. Usually people just reply to existing threads and barely there are any new ones.

I visit some gaming sites such as for The Sims if anyones heard of that game. And I go on those boards and they're constantly busy? People make new threads and respond existing ones every few minutes. You post something on one those sites and you go back maybe two or three minutes you'd find you may have a one or two replies already or maybe just a lot of reads depending on what you post.

But, on here if you post somthing you usually don't get very many replies for several days. Please let me know. Thanks.



That's why the Site is no longer FUN like it was in 2002-2006 because the Game Threads are ACTIVE and the TV threads are DEAD.

And it always bothered me that a certain message board is always active and the show has not been on cable the last 10 years. That show is Chico and the Man.

While other shows that are on cable right now and the board is dead like the Jeffersons, Good Times, Three's Company , and Laverne and Shirley

I have a couple of theories.

Quite a lot of younger people posted on these boards in the past. It looks like they have moved on with life. I think, that for the most part, that the posters that are still around are the older ones.

Second, and I sincerely mean no harm when I post this. I wonder if all the drama the Chit Chat section has had caught up to them. The Chit Chat board up until recently has always been very active.

Also, this person asked a very ligitimate question, and someone calling themselves a moderator griping about this doesn't help.

Also, this person asked a very ligitimate question, and someone calling themselves a moderator griping about this doesn't help.

I don't call myself a moderator as you put it, I was appointed one but not on this forum and that status can be removed just as easily as it was given to me. If you have an issue with my reply then take it up with TJ or Janice. My comment was in response to the complaining about threads not getting replies not the question itself which as you said was legitimate.

Because culture has shifted and most young people hate sitcoms. Also, social networking. Bboards are sort of on their way out and being replaced with things like anonymous image boards.

Because culture has shifted and most young people hate sitcoms. Also, social networking. Bboards are sort of on their way out and being replaced with things like anonymous image boards.


So Facebook is the cause of this?-lol

^^^speaking for myself, I find myself playing Farmville and am on Facebook more than I am on here (not that I don't love this site).
Also, people have something called lives, jobs, families, ect.

Possible reasons:

1. Teenagers became adults, moved on.

2. Some moderators are friends/close friends and are biased (not trying to start something here, that's just my take on it, and no, not talking about you Zoneboy).

3. This board is outdated for the viewers and members it had. I don't know if money is an issue, the features on this site are lacking compared to other big boards.

4. In my area all we have is Nick@Nite and TV Land, so if a lot of other areas don't get it, maybe people in their early teens are not even aware of the shows I was when I was a kid and teen so they might have found a much more populated message board/web group to post on that's of more modern shows.

5. A lot of things restricted to talk about on here, but I highly doubt that has anything significant to do with it since it was very active a few years.

6. This site is slow with a few people online, imagine it being active.

Alot of people just got older and moved on, and young people these days aren't as into sitcoms as the kids of the 90's and earlier were.

I don't come here as much as I used to back in the day, but this site will always have a special place in my heart after meeting some of my best friends here. Some of which I've even met offline.

There are some valid and some not so valid reasons that people have listed for less activity.

These boards have been online for over 10 years. How many have lasted this long? The lower amount of people posting and total number of posts is not something that has happened overnight. The decrease in activity has been gradual over the last few years. We don't even have fewer people visiting and lurking as guests. It's the amount of registered people that participate that has declined.

I can address a few of the issues that have been brought up as possible reasons.

Facebook - There's no doubt that this has hurt a lot of forums out there. I think it has affected our Chit Chat area more than the TV shows. I don't think a lot of people go to Facebook to discuss classic TV. Facebook will never replace forums (especially niche ones like SO) because you can't have the same kind of discussions with the public.

Older members leaving - A lot of people that were fans of The Facts of Life and Happy Days grew up and moved on. They weren't replaced in the same numbers. There are a lot more alternatives out there than there were a few years ago. We used to be the only game in town, but then other larger more known sites started adding them.

Number of daily active members - We used to have 600-650 registered members that would log in daily 3-5 years ago. Now we have only 300-350. When you lose half your active membership, you will lose half the amount of posts. I remember when we used to have 300 daily active threads. Now 150 would be considered a good day. Less active, fresh topics will always mean fewer posts.

Moderators - We have a great team of admins and moderators. This shouldn't be a factor. We can't allow members to ignore moderators. We have to have rules. This is a family friendly board. We can't allow R-rated topics like other sites out there. If anybody has a problem with a moderator, you should bring it up to me. I'm always willing to listen. I also hate the fact that people have left because of one board when they had the option to be blocked from it if they requested it. I don't miss the drama of the past years. The people that were causing the most trouble have long since left.

Outdated software/speed of the site - The speed of the site and downtime has definitely been frustrating at times. Hopefully that will be fixed when we move to a new server and host tomorrow. I will admit that it's long overdue, but it's a bit a logistical nightmare moving a site of this size. It's hard to pay the bills when so many people are blocking ads these days. We haven't been able to upgrade the forum software because we have been on the same server for over 7 years. That will change and the speed will improve. It's been a major struggle at times to keep everything running and online, but we're still ticking and things will get better.

Features - What features do you think we can add that would increase activity? I don't think people go to message boards for a lot bells and whistles. They go there to discuss and exchange ideas. I look at the IMDB and TV.com boards and they have a lot less features, but many of them are much more active. An active board with less features will always beat one that may have a better look and more options. Nobody wants to post on a dead board and get no response.

Thanks to the people who have remained active here over the years. I'm open to ideas for increasing the activity and encouraging people to register and participate. I'd love to see the boards have the same activity as they did during their glory years. We have grown our Facebook page from 1000 fans to nearly 3000 in the last few weeks, so hopefully some of those people will drop by and become active here. If we had double the amount of daily active members, things would definitely pick up.

TJ,

This is a minor thing I'd like to see added.

Notification (like Facebook) when someone has posted in a thread you have posted in/started.

An icon somewhere (with a number and a drop down) telling you that a thread you are involved in has new messages (and from whom) would definitely keep them going.

Threads that I have posted in I have to search to find and check if someone has responded. And you can forget about them after a bit, but seeing a little number notification that there is something you haven't read would certainly prompt more responses and more activity.

There is the subscribing to the thread option but doesn't that just send you emails everytime someone posts in that particular thread?

The notification to be e-mailed when somebody replies to a thread you have started/posted in has always been an option. You have to turn on the thread subscription to instant email notification at the bottom when you are posting. You can view your subscribed threads in the User CP - http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/usercp.php . You can edit the thread subscription options here - http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/profile.php?do=editoptions . You don't have to post in a thread to subscribe to it. You can follow any thread you subscribe to in the User CP. The instant email notification has automatically been turned off for new members in recent years, but it used to be turned on when people registered. I will probably change it back to how it was originally.

There's also an http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/images/statusicon/thread_dot.gif next to threads you've posted in.

This option was turned off. It has been turned on. We've had to turn off a lot of options in the past, but once we are on a new server we will hopefully be able to turn everything back on.

Check Thread Subscription
If enabled, this option will notify the user that they are subscribed to a thread by displaying a small icon when viewing forumdisplay and search results. It will also change the "Subscribe to this thread" text on showthread to "Unsubscribe to this thread". This can have an effect on performance.

Features - What features do you think we can add that would increase activity? I don't think people go to message boards for a lot bells and whistles. They go there to discuss and exchange ideas. I look at the IMDB and TV.com boards and they have a lot less features, but many of them are much more active. An active board with less features will always beat one that may have a better look and more options. Nobody wants to post on a dead board and get no response.

Well recently we got the YouTube thing. That kind of thing.

Picture sigs would be nice too. Just little things. Plus, it would make the younger teens happy. It's not a big deal to me anymore, but yeah.

I've posted on message boards for about thirteen years now, and Sitcoms Online is the only one I can recall that has ever allowed pictures in signatures. We all know how disastrous that turned out to be.

I think avatars are enough.