From what I’m seeing the “New” crowd of traditional bowhunters spend most of their time listening to podcasts about saddles and lightweight climbing sticks etc. or high tech water proof pants lol. They are not interested in wood arrows or the history and adventure of the hunt.
Yes, so it seems. Not many telling stories like before, not many group hunts like before, not many how to posts as before. We have always had those types of posts mentioned above, but we've always have a lot of posts as those that are slim as of late as I mentioned in my 1st sentence.
So the audience is there, but it is up to TradGang to learn to adapt to the modes of communication that appeal to it.
There is only so much we can do as we are a totally different platform than mainstream social media. We are much for functional as a resource for information, and much easier to find said info. Also, much easier to follow existing posts, and much more user friendly.
nobody tells their hunting stories anymore, just look at the highlights page, 24 posts!
used to be 2 full pages of pics and stories.
Yes, and lots of those that use to do that have 'retired' and aren't asking to have their post copied to the highlights after the thread ran its course. I could search out a few and copy them over and the numbers would rise quite a bit.
Most of those folks (you can fill in the blank of who you think they are for you) haven't been replaced and I think that is a big thing we see... I don't know these men personally and have only shared their adventures through their writings here, but the Giants like Charlie Lamb, Ron LaClair, and countless others can't be replaced.
Yep, they aren't being replaced, along with a lot of other hardcore hunters that shared their stories and info.
I think less traffic on this forum started when the classifieds started charging to list an item for sale.
No, not at all accurate. We actually shut the classifieds down once as it was so bad, and I'm sure a few people left, but the new members never slowed down. Instead of closing it a 2nd time we just made it a perk for Contributing Members, up until then they were just Contributing Members.
Here are the new members that have joined since this thread started....
We gained over 1400 members in 2020.
What happened is folks’ attention became split between special interest forums such as TradGang and other feeds like Instagram and Facebook and what not. There are still people here and still people talking online, they are just dividing their attention between more platforms.
Yes, absolutely. We were here 1st.... 2003. There was no facebook, instagram, youtube. Attention is being shared with a lot of other outlets. However, there are still a lot of people coming here daily, but they are not 'living' on Tradgang like they use to.
If there was a "like" button here you would better gauge the amount of interaction that a post generates.
Pay attention to the views numbers, likes will only be reflected by those that actually click the button, but the views a post gets is the true number of activity a thread gets. Lots of folks that view aren't going to take the time to 'like'.
When I lost access to the classifieds, I no longer had a motivation to go to TG so often. I'd start with the classifieds, and then end up all over the forum.
The Classifieds are an accessory to Heart of Tradgang, i.e. Traditional Bowhunting.
More in a bit......