Slow slow slow...…. I go to a few boards Muji and am also a CL on the BP board and they're all really slow unfortunately

I do agree though that the holidays do slow things down some

It's quiet on ours. I think it usually gets quieter on all the boards over the summer.

I did a survey of groups after we had the big make over and saw that many were dying off. I just had a quick look at some of the ones I remember were still going under "A" and see probably half of those survivors have now died.

I remember I was also looking at a site that showed the number of visitors to DS and more importantly the number of page views (which allows you to sort of work out how many are spammers) and that was going down too. DS said the figures on these various stats sites were wrong but wouldn't give any further detail.

But I think everyone can see DS continues to decline with perhaps a dozen boards still active but even some of those look a bit iffy - we have perhaps 10 people or less regularly posting threads I think.

SunCloud, fish, thanks for the CL feedback. We sure have hung in there since the big make over, haven't we? But thanks for the reality check, because to me, too, it seems there's been a gradual winding down process in general for us at DS since then.

And what I'm seeing on anxiety board is a rush of new ... then silence.

There are fewer people posting in anxiety as well.

I do believe the work all of us do is still important, Thank you to each of you for all you do!

Depression group ... MAYBE a bit slower than usual.

It's always slow in AA. The two biggest things that made membership drop was getting rid of the instant chat feature and the big migration.... The slower it gets, the less the regulars post. I am hearing members ask me why it is so slow here.

It normally picks up in the winter. People with Seasonal Effective Disorder, usually self medicate with alcohol but that's not the case this year.

These boards used to always be so busy.... I wish that DS could somehow bring back some of the older features that I believe worked better

What a few people over the last couple of years have written is that it's a hard site to understand

I think if some of the features could go back we may be able to keep some of the new people and heck some of the old would come back....

I think DS is an amazing site that is so relevant today.... I don't know how hard these tweaks would be but I hate to see more boards dying off

Me, too, I see DS as more relevant than ever, SC. We talked about it last night in the psych class I teach. People out there really need support.

I think DS is a pretty site and maybe easy for the younger folks who grew up in the computer generation but I think Doug was right on the money when he designed the original site to be user friendly. Like his new project, Goodrx.com is absolutely perfect! He is the best software engineer I know.'

I can just imagine people coming here with severe anxiety or depression or the shakes from alcohol withdrawal. They are not going to have the patience to figure out where everything is.....but.....if we had instant chat, I would be more then happy to gently, guide them through the process!

~~~Peace~~~

Meebo was a huge feature when we had it and I agree..... I thought we were supposed to get it but alas.....

That alone could bring back a lot of people

Hugs we could use as many words as we wanted and I don't know how many hug conversations I had but a lot and now that's gone as well

Those two features alone I think could make a massive difference and they could make DS money for advertising if they wanted

A lot of people loved the chat feature

bob, does it seem to you that the DS site's makeover brought about a general generational shift? That it brought us some younger DS members while it lost us a lot of older DS members in the process? That's my impression from being a CL on DS PTSD. I don't know if that's an accurate impression across DS in general.

My board - Widows & Widowers - gets busy then slows down again. I sense an influx of evangelicals again, but they're being very gentle this time. That usually changes around Easter, as they usually get a lot bolder around that time. We get sporadic spikes of activity now, whereas it used to be constant activity with 10 active threads a day. The site makeover killed that. The site has been optimized for mobile phones, which makes any real conversations unlikely. Tiny avatars, tiny Hugs, and hard to navigate. It's not that easy to use anymore.

If you can and are so inclined, cliffskat, could you say more about this that you wrote here?

"The site has been optimized for mobile phones, which makes any real conversations unlikely."

It's interesting, because I'm finding social media to be making us less social and less connected. For mobile phones, originally invented for talking, to making real conversations unlikely sounds like another contemporary irony affecting us here at DS. Where do you think this is headed? At any level--for DS, for social media, and/or just in general?

It is ironic. Phones are teaching an entire generation how to be unable to carry on a meaningful conversation, while also destroying their ability to write anything truly expressive.

It was highlighted on vacation last summer. Acuriousfish and I went into a cafe for lunch. A young couple came in shortly after and sat at the table near us. Fish and I talked about what we had seen and what we were going to do, etc., sharing the day. The young couple spent the entire time on their phones scrolling and thumb typing. They barely even looked at each other. Someday perhaps they will regret how they wasted their time together.

We've lived with the current format for 3.5 years now. It's hard to make friends, connect, follow threads, offer support. We do the best we can primarily because we remember how good it used to be. We no longer believe it will get any better.

Thanks for taking the time to explain further, cliffskat, and to give an example from real life. DS PTSD has meant a lot to me personally since coming to it in 2012. That year I collapsed from kidney failure and had to be taken off of all PTSD meds for the first time in the 17 years since I was diagnosed with PTSD in the first place. I took the approach in 2012 that daily strength would take the place of daily meds, and it worked.

Then the change in format 3.5 years ago altered the depth of the impact DS PTSD made on my recovery somewhat. By then I was proud to have been made a Community Leader on DS PTSD, thanks to SunCloud's advocacy.

As for my own personal PTSD recovery, it turned out I could indeed continue recovery without the PTSD meds I'd been taking, and that there was one I could take that was liver-processed and therefore kidney safe. So my needs were taken care of and still are.

It just seemed to me that I remembered how good it was for me in those first years after my arrival at DS PTSD in 2012, and that it wasn't as good for newbies to DS PTSD now. As CL I wish there were something I could do for them, but I agree that we just do the best we can now.

I appreciate your validating my sense of that. It's true where I teach community college, too, as I prepare to retire in 17 months. Over my 39 years of teaching, it seems that in the last 5 years of so my nursing students are just as earnest but less articulate in class. The timeline for that roughly matches the number of years during which cell phones have taken center stage in society.

Since I'm 61 I am of the first TV generation, and I recall hearing my elders talk about life before television became the centerpiece of most homes. Now I'm the elder who remembers a time before the center of society was the cell phone. It is what it is, just like the changes TV brought about, but it's real just like those changes were.

If you have any tips to pass on about how to be a Community Leader to folks socialized to participate uniquely on DS via cell phone, such tips are very welcome.