Where did all the BTers go?

Alien abductions, mostly.  Space visitors appear to have developed a fetish for multisport athletes.

The forum and training log updates that were done a couple of years ago killed the vibe.

The membership of any online forum is going to turnover over time.  Lots of reasons people come and go:  Some lose interest in the sport, develop other interests or have other more important things in their lives to deal with.  And some even get asked to leave.

There's also more competition from other online triathlon sites and social media.

 I've been around here since early 2004 and in that time the active core membership has probably turned over 3 -4 times.  That core membership is going to do a lot to define the 'personality' of the site at any given time.

Without checking, I would guess that 1/3 to 1/2 of the folks on my Friends list are no longer active here.   In the early days there seemed to be more of a sense of community and it wasn't uncommon to have BT meet-ups at races or other social get-togethers.   Not so much anymore.  Not saying that's good or bad, just the way it is.    

I miss many of my friends from the "old days", but still keep in touch with many of them through FB and ST.  

I still come here to use the logs and find many of the articles interesting. 

At the same time, I don't participate in the forums as much as I once did and very seldom visit COJ anymore.  

Mark 

I agree it's slow and I think the redesign kind of hurt the site.  It seems like more people are in training groups and post on their groups thread.  There was a thread awhile back about it, "the decline of BT".  I flip back and forth between ST and here.  On occassion it seems like a few days can go by without any new threads in Trianthlon Talk which I always considered the main page here.   I've only been on here a few years and maybe lurked a year before that so I could be wrong.

I have been around since 2005.  Met lots of great people over the years.  I think the re-design drove a lot of people away.  Its harder to be friendly and the loss of chat didn't help either.  I don't "talk" to nearly as many people on my friends list as I did a few years back.  Many people whom I started with don't do tris anymore and I keep up with them on FB.  I am way less active on the forums partly because I have no desire to answer the same question for the 100th time and partly because after 10 years I dont' have much to ask myself.  I wish the fun of the big BT get togethers still happened because that was really special.

big +1

I feel so bad for Ron and the gang too because the intent was obviously to improve BT and make it better.  I'm sure they spent a fair amount of money to boot.
Then to have it absolutely blow up in your face sucks.  As a user I still hate the new forum feel and its been here for years, lol

Mike, you may be thinking about Scout7 who used a glass of Guinness as his avatar.   

Mark

That's exactly what I was going to say-- ST still is thriving with activity. That's why I'm not buying the "Facebook killed BT" theory., And the redesign here didn't bother me in the least, so I don't get it. 

I think a large asteroid landed in the ocean and killed BT. 

I think ST has an advantage because you basically have just one forum where everyone hangs out.  Here the multiple subject forums dilute participation too much.  There's not enough critical mass of activity in some of the subject areas to sustain them.  That's an issue with the fundamental design of the site, even prior to the latest upgrade.

Mark 

Agree. But I don't understand why, even after 1-2 years of consistent feedback like this, they haven't made any efforts to tweak it to better fit what people are asking for. It's like they just shrugged their shoulders and said "oh well." 

There are also several prolific posters who were either banned (Rick, Bryan...), or who have become frustrated with the number of ill-informed people presenting bad advice who can't simply be told "you don't know what you're talking about.  Please stop talking and listen, because you're getting your stupid on other people." (Fred, myself to a degree...), plus those who have left the sport for various reasons (Newbz' cheating for example).

I believe that message board moderation is a double edged sword.  None, and people don't interact, because the a-holes drown out the voice of reason.  Too much, and the idiots drown it out.  IMO, a few years ago, ST wasn't as strict, so I avoided posting much there, because I didn't want to deal with the A-holes.  BT was very active.  In recent years, it seems that ST has gotten stricter with their moderation, making it a little less abrasive.

Also, there are now some good Facebook groups where topics are discussed.

Speaking for myself, all the above has resulted in me interacting here much less, and much more on ST and in FB groups.

I suspect that all the above combined with the site redesign that people don't seem to have adjusted to, have contributed to the apparent decline in interaction here.

I hope things revive here, because I'd hate to see this site decline to the point where it's activity levels are the same as sites like trifuel.

The banning of Bryan especially ended up being a big deal to me....started to lose interest in serious conversations to some extent when he was booted.  Guy was a wealth of information.