Is Anybody Home?

[Grumpy Goat]

I've been on online fora and such for a very long time ... even before the Internet, and I believe the reasons for the ebbs and flows of traffic are varied and complicated. One thing that social media has taught us is that drama "sells" and is "popular". Ergo, when there is a platform that deals with / in drama there is lots of traffic. If you are an advertiser or somehow profits off volume of traffic, then that is a good thing. If you are looking for the wheat amongst the chaff then maybe not so much.

Then there are motorcycling fora ... in itself a niche segment, and then you start narrowing it down to brands, and then demographics, etc. Of course, where most of the people are located and the usage of the motorcycles (daily use / transportation vs leisure) also can have an impact on the incentive to post.

I too have wondered the same thing as you have, especially since I started this forum precisely for the reasons of being a meaningful resource for RS owners and those interested in RSs, as well as increasing visibility into this less popular BMW (itself less popular depending on where you live) model. I have watched other fora with more traffic and have (informally) analyzed the content of that traffic, and I can tell you I am quite happy with the level of content on this forum.

I have lived through the collapse of the original RS forum, and have led efforts to try and salvage the useful information from same to use as a seed for a replacement forum. I learned that (a) there was little cooperation (for whatever reasons) when it came to putting in the legwork to doing that, and (b) it was a lot of work to sift through all the BS posts to get to the good stuff. There was a heavy noise / signal ratio. Better to have it the other way around, but that translates into low traffic, especially if the bike is relatively reliable and the drama is low.