22 replies to this topic

[adamh]

I've seen other forums that were vibrant and year by year they lost members and lost activity. And then at some point they went dark. I've watched longecity forum over the years and at one time it was going strong, much stronger than today, but now seems to be succumbing to the same process. The same thing happened to newsgroups, most have died out.

 

A few years back, the supplement forum was always hot. We had multiple posts per day and lots of discussion. I just looked and the last post was 6 days ago. The rest of the forums is about the same, not much going on and more and more members who don't post anymore.  

 

Where are they going? Some go to reddit and other large forums. Then you've got telegram, signal, facebook, X twitter, and others. Some prefer to watch videos than to discuss things online. 

 

The solution? There may be no solution, but the site receives income from advertising, it could place ads on other platforms. Any other ideas?

[Avatar of Horus]

It seems so, yes.
But it may only take one forum topic / thread / project that goes viral to turn things around in this regard.

Apart from this, the longevity / anti-aging / LE startup and investment sector started to expand rapidly in the recent years,
with billions of $s and hundreds of companies. And I imagine the people go into that, the business side.

So IMO the overall situation is not so bad, but rather promising.

[Mind]

You have identified a couple of issues with growing a forum: The fragmentation of media and the miniscule attention span of younger generations.

 

Even with these challenges, there are plenty of people willing to engage on a forum like this. Traffic could be much higher - especially since LongeCity is so lightly moderated and so many other platforms are heavily censored.

 

The main issue is manpower. Every time I ask for help, even paid positions, it is difficult to get contributors. We could use more active directors as well.

[Dorian Grey]

I was group leader on a busy forum on MDJunction, & I'll never forget the Google MEDIC algorithm update that shut us down almost overnight.  This update shadow banned any and all alternative health sites.  I know Mercola used to be one of the giants, and he said his traffic dropped 90 percent in the blink of an eye.  

 

We used to have strangers popping up almost daily on my old site, acutely Ill, & begging for help with their specific medical issue.  After a few years of this, I was actually thinking it was getting to be too much, coming home from work and having a new guy/gal who was very worried, and very glad to have found us.  

 

The death of anything other than allopathic medicine due to Google shadow banning has been one of the hardest things I've felt as I grow old.  Alternative medicine & supplements are  what kept me alive for a quarter century, when I lived on junk food, beer, & cigarettes.  As I grew older, I became a disciple of Ferrotoxic Disease and have been an avid bloodletter (donor), which I truly believe has been my fountain of youth. 

 

When this site went dark for...  What was it, a week?  I actually thought the site owner had abandoned ship, & I almost deleted the link from my favorites.  I'm glad to see we're back, but I fear we may have lost a lot of regulars.  Hope they get curious and find us back on the air again.  

[adamh]

I was group leader on a busy forum on MDJunction, & I'll never forget the Google MEDIC algorithm update that shut us down almost overnight.  This update shadow banned any and all alternative health sites.  I know Mercola used to be one of the giants, and he said his traffic dropped 90 percent in the blink of an eye.  

 

 

Google is an evil company. Its antidemocratic, it censors and distorts, and pushes an agenda. Ironically, when it first started its slogan was "don't be evil"

 

There are forces that would like to see longecity and alternative health sources like mercola shut down. The pharma industry for example would like that very much. They can't have people fixing their own problems and not buying overpriced drugs with all their side effects. 

 

Other players include the major media which has become the propaganda arm of the democrat party. They can't have people finding out the facts, they might not buy into the narrative anymore and might vote for the "wrong" person. Or might find out that a new drug is really nasty and not buy it.

 

Advertising on forums with related content might reverse the outflow. Free advertising is available some places. People could post links to a thread here on an interesting topic. If nothing is done then we can expect the present decline to continue. Once it gets to a point that there are one or two posts per day or less then it may be too late to alter the outcome.

 

We could hold contests for the best new post and give away a years membership for free. 

[Mind]

I am planning a virtual meet-up for September. I hope we can get a few members to show up.

 

You mentioned some good ideas thus far.

[Pecksniff]

Well, here's one who's hoping the site will endure for some time into the future, as I have just, today, joined the group. As a fairly fit nonagenarian, i may hopefully be able to contribute some useful input from time to time. Here's hoping.

 

[Dorian Grey]

Welcome Pecksniff.  I'm an old timer here, and we have plenty of regulars here, but new members are few & far between, as Google likes to pretend we don't exist.  

 

The site went down for around 10 days in early August, and I think some of our members thought the site had just gone bust, as it's been quiet as a mouse here since the site came back up.  

 

There is a ton of valuable info archived here, and any searches should uncover gold, though Google tends to bury the actual longevity posts under half a dozen Google preferred sites.  

 

Hope you enjoy our little group here, and I look forward to hearing what you feel is your fountain of youth.  

[Pecksniff]

Thank you for the welcome. As for my reaching my nineties, I have a host of things which might well be of interest, but am not sure it would be appropriate to hijack this thread. What I would like to say is that I went for a check-up, last year, and the doctor said I was the fittest person he’d seen so far, that day! 

[forever freedom]

 

 

There is a ton of valuable info archived here, and any searches should uncover gold, though Google tends to bury the actual longevity posts under half a dozen Google preferred sites.  

 

 

 

I'm also a long time user here, and it's a shame that recent google updates have prioritized shallow results such as posts from reddit (with which unsurprisingly Google has a partnership) over higher and deeper quality content.

 

I know quite a few bloggers and website owners that have outstanding and informative content on their websites that say their traffic has taken a severe hit from these recent google updates. I imagine it must have been the same with Longecity.

 

As someone above said, Google has unfortunately long abandoned its "do no evil" logo.

Edited by forever freedom, 02 September 2024 - 03:13 PM.

[johnhemming]

I am planning a virtual meet-up for September. I hope we can get a few members to show up.

 

You mentioned some good ideas thus far.

 

This week Weds-Friday is British Society for Research on Aging conference in Birmingham and I have a gig on Saturday, but otherwise I would be happy to attend a virtual meet up.

 

I have my own personal priorities at the moment, but am happy to engage with others.

 

I participate in a number of virtual forums.

[adamh]

Dorian Gray wrote:

 

"The site went down for around 10 days in early August, and I think some of our members thought the site had just gone bust, as it's been quiet as a mouse here since the site came back up."

 

We may have lost a substantial percentage as those who couldn't find it may have deleted their bookmarks or just gone elsewhere and forgot about LC

 

Google is one of the most corrupt businesses in the world. It uses dirty tricks to influence elections and uses those tricks to demonetize businesses and websites it doesn't like. If you are using google as your search engine, you are supporting those creeps. Use ddg or yandex or almost anything else.

 

A virtual meetup is fine but collecting suggestions and strategies can also be done via threads like this one. it gives people a chance to read over and comment on various ideas. Who owns LC? is it one person or a corporation? Who makes the decisions, the mods and administrators or someone in an office somewhere who has many other things to do?

 

If we do paid advertising, where should we put it? Not on google certainly, lol. Maybe reddit, maybe on scientific and health related sites? Including body building sites, don't laugh, those people are very concerned about safety and effectiveness of their supplements. Ok there may be a few who will take anything and everything and don't care but they are interested in supps too

 

I suggest having a working group brainstorm sites to place ads and how to word them. You don't want a generic ad for each and every spot. A scientific american reader is much different than a reddit reader and has different interests. Drug related forums are a good place also, even those that lean toward getting high. Send links to articles on various drugs and they may want to chime in. Do we want mostly intoxicating drug seekers? No but maybe we can interest them in ways to get healthy and not to kill themselves while using.

 

The scientific types want more technical pieces and not so much written for a dumbed down audience. We can supply that too. And dummies want simplified articles written for them or they might comment asking what something means and they get involved in the community

 

Are the people who call the shots  here and who pay the bills onboard with this or do they care?

[Mind]

Perhaps we can partner up with some of the other high quality content creators who have been attacked by Google.

 

We still make money here - even after the Google suppression. We just have to find the advertisers ourselves.

 

I am eyeing a virtual meeting during the second half of September. Maybe late next week or the week after.

[Nobrainer]

I have registered a long time ago before the google ban, but rarely visit the site. Somehow I got the impression LC is kind of a secret place. Maybe because I never see any mention of it elsewhere and then I just forget about it. It just does not have any exposure.

 

Many people nowadays flock to substack which is very popular. Popular authors with independent websites like Mercola and James Corbett have also started a substack, giving their own private websites much more exposure. I suggest you do the same, publish a few articles and write some comments on other popular substacks so they can find yours. Its like free advertising.

Edited by Nobrainer, 06 September 2024 - 10:49 AM.

[adamh]

Mind wrote:

 

"I am eyeing a virtual meeting during the second half of September. Maybe late next week or the week after."

 

We are discussing in this thread ideas to reverse the decline we have all noticed. I'm not sure what a zoom call will add to that? Are you bringing in some outside people with ideas? Will we be given more info on the workings of LC? I've asked who owns it, is it the paid membership? Who makes the decisions or are they all voted on. No answers to any of that so far. Maybe its secret but I know you know.

 

Nobrainer is giving ideas, we need to discuss the things brought up but so far there has only been some suggestions from members and no real input from any of the managing persons in the organization. Which is why I asked does anyone care? Its a reasonable question. It will take effort to turn things around but its easier to do nothing so that is often the default option. 

 

Another small thing is the fact that when you write a post, if you hit enter, instead of going all the way to the left, it goes part way to the left so if you wanted to write a new line you have to manually move your view over. I mentioned a little glitch on the front page with the forums, will anything be done on these and other things? It was mentioned that people like a sharp easy to use website and little things like that put them off

[Pecksniff]

As one who ran a successful genealogy site for many years, I would like to put in my ten pennyworth. One of the problems, in fact I would go as far as to say the main problem, here, lies in the title of the group. After all, what is a person seeking information of this nature going to type into a search engine? Highly unlikely that it would be ‘Longe City’.  This is important if you want to encourage visitors. You’re probably familiar with SEO procedure, but here’s a link anyway.     https://moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-seo    Best of luck and let’s hope all goes well.

Edited by Pecksniff, 07 September 2024 - 11:52 AM.

[adamh]

SEO is an important factor in keeping a site going. I doubt there will be support for renaming the site but another possibility is to rename the forums. We might call them "health and longevity forums" or something and link to that. The site or org could still be LC but links would go to the forum which has a different title. 

 

Advertising has not been talked about much. We really should have someone or a small group working on that. We want the most bang for the buck in terms of eyeballs per dollar and the ads need to be targeted to the theme of the other site and perhaps even looking to correlate with popular discussions on that site. If its a site about knitting they are not likely to be interested in an article about lowering homocysteine. They will say "what is that?" but if its an article about arthritis in the hands and how to treat it, that might be of some interest. Body building sites want to see articles about using androgens and general health tips. 

 

Will any of the secrets be revealed on the zoom call or whatever it is? Mind has been tight lipped about financial arrangements, advertising and so on. 

[Mind]

Mind wrote:

 

"I am eyeing a virtual meeting during the second half of September. Maybe late next week or the week after."

 

We are discussing in this thread ideas to reverse the decline we have all noticed. I'm not sure what a zoom call will add to that? Are you bringing in some outside people with ideas? Will we be given more info on the workings of LC? I've asked who owns it, is it the paid membership? Who makes the decisions or are they all voted on. No answers to any of that so far. Maybe its secret but I know you know.

 

Nobrainer is giving ideas, we need to discuss the things brought up but so far there has only been some suggestions from members and no real input from any of the managing persons in the organization. Which is why I asked does anyone care? Its a reasonable question. It will take effort to turn things around but its easier to do nothing so that is often the default option. 

 

Another small thing is the fact that when you write a post, if you hit enter, instead of going all the way to the left, it goes part way to the left so if you wanted to write a new line you have to manually move your view over. I mentioned a little glitch on the front page with the forums, will anything be done on these and other things? It was mentioned that people like a sharp easy to use website and little things like that put them off

 

A good and lasting community is built by people who know each other. When Imminst/LongeCity started, we all new each other personally. We met online, chats, at conferences, etc... That is how it grew into a very popular non-profit that did a lot of innovative things. In addition, if we are going to have new people start to do some work around here, paid or unpaid, it is the responsibility of management to properly vet people who will be doing software changes, speaking on behalf of the org, handling money, promotions, etc... We can't just let someone from some text chat have control over critical aspects of the org.

[Mind]

Is there a preferred calendar/meeting APP I should use for scheduling the confab?

[adamh]

"We can't just let someone from some text chat have control over critical aspects of the org."

 

Has it already come down to a matter of control, is that the most important thing? Of course money being spent has to be carefully watched. I asked a few times how will the decisions be made but no comment so far on that. I suspect that only paid members will have any vote on it. Will the directors make the final decisions? 

 

There are plenty of people who will do some volunteer work and not ask for money. We first have to decide if its important to recruit and do things to bring in new members since the site has clearly been losing ground over recent years and with google's knife in the back things don't look so great heading forward. If there is a consensus that we should do something then the next step is what to do and when to do it. Your online meetup, even though not yet scheduled, might lead to a consensus.  

[Nobrainer]

I think "longecity" is a perfect name when one already knows the site. I just entered "longecity ashwaghanda", got 4 hits on duckduck and 2 on google. A unique name is easy to find and I often enter a search like this if I prefer getting info from a particular website.

The problem is not in Longecity, the nature of the internet is changing and people just dont do oldfashioned fora anymore.
Obviously search engines are guilty too. Remember when Google had a "discusions" search option? It searched only in fora and other social websites. Very usefull when you were looking for people's opinion on something. They removed it because, i am guessing, they do not like independent platforms that they do not control. They want you to find 'suitable' content only.
So the solution is simple, get on one or more of the big platforms and create some exposure there. Substack for example has minimal sensorship and authors can get paid by subscribers.

[Mind]

I will have a good amount of time on my hands from September 18th through the 22nd to have a meet-up. Just a heads up. Check your schedules. I am on Central time US.

[adamh]

I think "longecity" is a perfect name when one already knows the site. I just entered "longecity ashwaghanda", got 4 hits on duckduck and 2 on google. A unique name is easy to find and I often enter a search like this if I prefer getting info from a particular website.

The problem is not in Longecity, the nature of the internet is changing and people just dont do oldfashioned fora anymore.
Obviously search engines are guilty too. Remember when Google had a "discusions" search option? It searched only in fora and other social websites. Very usefull when you were looking for people's opinion on something. They removed it because, i am guessing, they do not like independent platforms that they do not control. They want you to find 'suitable' content only.
So the solution is simple, get on one or more of the big platforms and create some exposure there. Substack for example has minimal sensorship and authors can get paid by subscribers.

 

I agree that having a unique and easy to remember name is a help. Longecity is unique and I still am not sure how its pronounced but it should be easy to remember.

 

"he nature of the internet is changing and people just dont do oldfashioned fora anymore."

 

A good point and we have discussed the appearance and layout of the site. Suggestions have been made but not yet implemented. We are struggling to build up a head of steam enough to make the decision that things have to be changed. SEO has to be optimized and the site, particularly the lack luster front page, needs a face lift

 

@Mind when we have the online meetup, will you answer questions? You have dodged most of my questions so far. If some things are secret, ok, but secrecy does not foster cooperation.

 

Inertia is the default mode, always. That is true of any organization large or small. The larger the group that makes the decision, the harder it is to get a consensus. The thing is, the end is in sight if we keep on going as before, this is an existential crisis. We just had a big drop apparently because of google dirty tricks. We had a week or so outage, no explanation has come forward for that so far. Its not a matter of will the site be doing well in 10 years, its will it even still be going in one year or will activity have fallen off a cliff?