I'm honestly not too sure, and I only joined this site recently. I have only ever seen it struggle to reach 20. But I still try to remain active as often as I can, and I hope that more people will join and actively participate in the forums.
I joined a few months ago, and I rarely see large numbers of people active. The covens struggle to remain active as well due to the general lack of activitity site-wide. It's quite sad really, I used to visit the site from time to time a few years back before making an account, and there were alot more active users years ago compared to now.
Discord has given rise to allowing members to create covens much more easily, setting up roles and channels and such. WhileTikTok has its way of making it easy for practitioners to make money off of sharing information in relatively bite sized videos.
Forums become active and inactive. Such is the nature of the internet.
Another thing is how relevantsuch websites stay current with the rest of the internet. Certain forum boards are changing all sorts of things, keeping up with advertisements etc etc.
Also,SOM is relatively niche. When I first joined this back in like... 2016? Under an old account I no longer have access to, it took me a rabbit hole of trying to find information to get here, and it was active sure, (also with a lot of Role-players and scammers too) so I can still see it being a case where not a lot of people know this website exists.
Those who were here also have lives. Things happen, and sometimes we just drift away from places due to circumstances. I had that happen personally too.
Hi, so this December will be 1 year that i am on SOM. So obviously i will not relate to how the site has been over the past few years. However what i can say is, is that the quality of information on this site is incomparable to other information that i use to read prior to joining SOM. Meaning, that members in the past have put some really informative stuff together in the articles section and forums. And with that said, i know it doesn't answer your question. ' What happened '
So just a few reasons as to why i think that members online isn't even hitting 20.
We must understand that like this site, people stop at certain places on their journey or path, using it like a pit stop if that's the correct term. Or a place to rest, refresh, renew and continue. Like the one's that have been here, and now are no more here. People also come to vist to get what they need and leave. Sometimes it's simple as that. Sometimes people go to a place just to figure out what they need, or to find themselves or find like minded people. To find a community that accepts them. And when they finally figure out themselves, they part ways.
On the other hand of all the reasons i mentioned, some people decide to stay and call their new community 'Home'
Look, there could be numerous reasons as to why the site seems abit quieter than before. And when life happens, things change. Nevertheless, rest assured, that evey tide has to turn.
Hello! Just made a new account (I have known of this site for a good number of years), and the downgrade is definitely felt. At least according to Google Trends, its peak seem to be January 2004, with a dip in March of the same year. Between 2007 and 2011 took a curve, went up around 2013-ish and then has been on a steady decline/stabilization. I would reasonably expect it to stay around the same, or project it a little up based on what I'm seeing there.
I think the only reason which MAY have caused this is probably the fact that the majority of the users are based out of Ghana, Trinidad, Jamacia, Uganda and United States. Thus, I might theorize that world events might be contributing to the amount of time people spend online. But, I'm not totally sure.
Like what the other posts said above mine, forum based sites are not as popular due to other forms of sharing information and getting in touch with others. But here is a short list of what isn't helping this site get up there in member numbers.
1. Site hasn't been updated in a long time. It is clunky, hard to find the information you want, has too many useless tabs that distract users, and currently the live chat is being blocked by my browser as it is refused to connect (which means that the chat isn't secure and my browser doesn't like that).
2. A lot of the provided spells and articles are not very true and just too wild. I remember seeing a spell on how to change your eye color which you just cannot do. There are more like that across as making a spell doesn't really require someone to review it, test it, and say it is real magick. On top of that the site creator provided his own spells which some consider to be odd. Like how to grow your breasts which involves the caster to touch their breasts. On top of that, the site creator doesn't want to delete or remove any of the spells despite members protest.
3. There are more open and more used platforms like Discord and Twitch(x) to stay in contact with people of your same interests. Since this site has currently a couple of mods that keep watch it is easier to get mixed in with other role players, scammers, or of other paths that you may not be interested in.
This site still sees a few people come in. Most just read the spells/articles without creating an account and leave. I think if the site creator wanted to make this site a hit as it once was back in 2004-2008 then he will need to remake it into something more keen to Twitch. But even then I am not sure how popular it will be but hey, Reddit is still popular mainly because it has nearly everything in the subreddits.
