[Rhodes22-list] The List Seems to be Fading Away

[Peter Nyberg]

Thank you to those who shared their thoughts on this topic.

Clearly it's true that people sell their boats for whatever reason, and the former owners generally no longer participate in the list.  But if a boat has been sold, there's now a new owner, and a new potential list member.  It seems though that fewer new owners are choosing to join our community.

Several people mentioned their age as part of their decision to sell their boat, which underscores the point that boat buyers will generally be younger than boat sellers.  This may be a factor in the list's declining participation numbers.  I've read that kids these days (probably meaning anyone younger that around 60) don't like to use email much.

So, that's really the questing that's been rattling around in my brain lately: is the size or level of engagement in our community declining due (at least in part) to the fact that it is based on a technology (email) whose popularity is also declining?

I offer one point of evidence for this proposition: Nabble.  As you may recall, Nabble was a 3rd party website that provided a web interface to the Rhodes 22 email list.  There were never any hard numbers about how many people were using Nabble to participate, rather than using an email client app, but it was clearly pretty popular.  On the downside, we never had any control over what Nabble did, and towards the end of June of 2021, it just went away.  That month had a total of 384 posts.  The most active month since (October 2021) had 230 posts, and that was something of an outlier.  As I pointed out in the post that started this thread, in 2023 our average posts per month was 86.

Thoughts?

On a related point, I don't have a Facebook account.  Can someone comment on how active the Rhodes 22 Facebook group has been lately?

Thanks,

Peter Nyberg
Coventry, CT
s/v Silverheels (1988/2016)

> On 2024-03-08, at 17:17:49 EST, Peter Nyberg wrote:
>
> If you've thought that traffic on the Rhodes 22 email list has been a little on 
> the light side lately, you're not imagining things.  Message volume has been 
> declining for some time.  Below are the figures for average monthly posts for 
> the last few calendar years: 
> 
> 2020 - 229 posts/month
> 2021 - 216
> 2022 - 126
> 2023 - 86
> 
> 2024 has not exactly been off to a roaring start with 38 posts in January and 35 
> in February. 
> 
> Back in 2008, there were over 1,000 posts/month, but things fell off to only 
> around 400 in 2009 after political posts were discouraged. 
> 
> I'm hoping to start a discussion about possible causes and possible remedies.  I 
> have a few thoughts, but I don't want to start by steering the discussion in any 
> particular direction. 
> 
> So, what do you think is causing the decline, and what do you think we might be 
> able to do about it? 
> 
> Peter Nyberg
> Coventry, CT
> s/v Silverheels (198/2016)
>