What caused this drastic drop in activity on allkpop forum the past year?

Quote from SooYoung

It's start by J and it end with Y

I genuinely don’t know what this is and it’s killing me because it looks obvious.

Jay? Joy? None of that makes sense but it’s all I can think of (ngl thought of jyp but that’s another level of not making sense)

There is hardly any activity on this forum outside of the kpop section. That is the major reason.

Quote from versatile

You're referring to the mass bans? Thing is the activity didn't drop drastically after that. It was still at the usual 5k posts some days a little lower. So it's not like he banned people the post count drops 500% that alone wouldn't have caused this if had to be something overtime during that 23-24 period I wasn't active.

What is the word Sooyoung was referring to?

Quote from Yumeku

I genuinely don’t know what this is and it’s killing me because it looks obvious.

Jay? Joy? None of that makes sense but it’s all I can think of (ngl thought of jyp but that’s another level of not making sense)

akp admin

Because akp is full of digital success stans and gg stans who shits on bgs for daily basis. Around 2019 I still saw some bg stans here and there but they’ve vanished into thin air. Leaving only army and big 3 stans (esp sm stans). It’s becoming too homogenized

Quote from versatile

I have some data from when I was staff still and these are what the daily post count was.

Anyway.. this was around 2022 and that peak post count is when we had anons

Screenshot_20220801-204617-296-1-1.png

And this is the year 2024

Screenshot_20240512-113807-1.png

As you can see there are some days when it's barely over 500 posts and a great day is 2k..

Now I was absent for a year. From 23-24 and this huge drop happened. Why did this occur?

If the forum was let's say at 5k daily average in 2022, why is it in 2024 1k?? That's a drastic drop.

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Quote from versatile

Yes although army still rule it is nothing like before but like even majority of once and blink are gone too so in general the user base is just lower.

I wonder if anyone can provide any reasons why.

K have my opinion but i want to hear others first.

You've already been given the reason by multiple people. Don't overthink it. He sure didn't.

Quote from versatile

Johnny banning users did not decrease the post count 500% I was still here several weeks after that monitoring activity... It went a bit lower but not that drastically...

You greatly underestimate the lasting effects of bad management on a website.

Quote from versatile

Good point. Not enough bg stans

Quote from paradis

I actually totally agree with this...bg stans have totally disappeared and let me tell you even the active Armys are 5% of what they were a few years back.

Now what are various the reasons behind bg stans leaving needs to be determined.

I will try to elaborate seriously:

I guess mostly because it’s become mentally draining to hype bgs here. Kpop success metric are digitals, sales, tours, merchs (might be more but that’s the main parts)

Quote from Popper-of-Ks

You greatly underestimate the lasting effects of bad management on a website.

I agree with this. Banning large number of the most active nice users (bans were often very random and unclear) might not lead to an immediate drop but will fizzle out over time. Also give some of the most toxic user a pass for equally unknown reasons will make people lose interest in the long run

Also since the revamp the forum is a PAIN to use from your phone. The old forum was way more user friendly.

I think theres a death by a thousand cuts

Kpop as THE NEXT BIG THING that it became a few years back is receding. It's still popular, yes, but I think the influx of new fans to the genre as a whole is scaling back. Sales numbers and other stats are showing that as well. So theres a lack of new blood.

The lack of BG stans is one as well.

The general dying of forums in general as online meeting places. Forums have their work cut out for them in general in attracting new, particularly younger, audiences. They are drawn to discords, twitter, tiktok etc. Forums are a more "long form" medium. This is a much harder thing to overcome.

Lack of knowledge of forums. These days you need to actively seek them out, battling with Googles busted search engine to find them. Compare to twitter, tiktok etc where you find your people much easier.

Negative, disingenuous non fans infesting the forum and brining negativity. Said it before... if you're a new kpop fan, or even older one, looking for a new "home" because you are passionate about some groups, idols etc and really just want to have fun, you stumble on here and see most threads are from the non fans with bad intent making threads like "Your faves really fell off", "Isn't it sad that your faves couldn't sell 4 million albums, why did they flop?", it just feels gross. Unless you're a fighter, it doesn't look like a place to stay. It's the equivalent of looking for a nice bar to have a few drinks, maybe become a regular and walking past a rough biker bar where people are yelling at each other.

Not everyone wants to constant fanwar, nor do I think MOST kpop fans want to numbers wank with weird nerds that treat kpop like it's the stock market/sport stats. These users tend to (not always though) not be truly active engagers on the forum. They don't make friends with others, they usually don't even have avatars, they don't buy badges, they exists to fight and be downers. They only attract like and then threads just become cesspits of those types fighting each other.

Otoh, you can't ban that behaviour... Otooh, another very active forum I'm on for a totally different hobby effectively bans certain non-fan and negative type of behaviour and thrives.

Quote from Demon_owl

Also since the revamp the forum is a PAIN to use from your phone. The old forum was way more user friendly.

Oh THIS

The forum software and how it works on phones needs a BIG look into. Fact is many younger people these days dont even use a PC regularly, everything is done through phone. If a browser based forum has a poor user experience, it does NOT give incentive to return... especially when a generally well working dedicated mobile app for alternative places exists.

Personally, I rarely post from mobile. I only come here and mobile to check replies and stuff, and even then it sucks because of the broken notification system.

Lack of competition.

There aren't many boy group stans here discussing boy groups. Maybe that changes in the next year when BTS all return.

BP and Twice are doing their own thing, so far ahead of everyone else with their concert tours, so their stans cant be pulled into any who is better discussions. No other group was at the same level as NJ, so what can you debate.

At least on the girl group side now it is much more open. You have 5 competitors, and you could bat for any and hold your own.

Quote from versatile

Now I was absent for a year. From 23-24 and this huge drop happened. Why did this occur?

If the forum was let's say at 5k daily average in 2022, why is it in 2024 1k?? That's a drastic drop.

As you might know, I've been tracking forum activity over the past couple of years.

In addition to looking at the number of members/guests online at a given time, I've also compiled data on the number of threads and posts on the forum, starting on April 7 2022. I've charted my complete data set below:

AKP_ThreadPosts_Count_20240601.png

Take a look at the slope of the orange line. It was quite steep when I began collecting data, but something happened at the end of December 2022. Numerous posts/threads were deleted, and when those deletions stopped, the rate of new posts was drastically lower, as evinced by the flatter slope of the line following.

So what happened on December 29 2022? That's the date when things changed.

Kpop fans having life and being less interested in active participation/support in general. This is why youtube views are less now and spotify is thriving because its more passive.

aside from the server,

the answer is positivity leads to boredom and negativity leads to more interest. It is what it is

which one of these threads do you think will gain traffic and replies:

How did X decline in sales and streams ?

or

X receiving praise because of abc?

people in here don't want to admit it but actually they know the answer.

my suggestion is not baseless actually

Quote from ThePhantomThief

Oh THIS

The forum software and how it works on phones needs a BIG look into. Fact is many younger people these days dont even use a PC regularly, everything is done through phone. If a browser based forum has a poor user experience, it does NOT give incentive to return... especially when a generally well working dedicated mobile app for alternative places exists.

Personally, I rarely post from mobile. I only come here and mobile to check replies and stuff, and even then it sucks because of the broken notification system.

Yeah, I think the younger generation using mobile phones instead of PC are a big reason for decline of forums like this. I only use PC, my phone is for well, calls ans text messages, and some apps. Never use it for surfing the web.

Agree also on the maybe a small decline of kpop, or I think the competion from other contries like China and SE contries with their own groups have increased the competion a bit.

Final nail to the coffin was when that Johnny guy or whatever went on banning spree

Quote from versatile

Let say that contributed.. but it still doesn't explain 500% decrease. That likely happened overtime. I did not look at this forum so I can't say what it was.

It does lol, it is literally result of mass banning. Do you forget that entire fandoms have left? For example nct guild at that point was more active than exotics guild + he banned many users who bought really good engagement and made good threads.

When people you like get banned and there is less fandom representation there is less motivation to visit, post and engage.

Quote from Neurotic02

I will try to elaborate seriously:

I guess mostly because it’s become mentally draining to hype bgs here. Kpop success metric are digitals, sales, tours, merchs (might be more but that’s the main parts)

Rants

Around 4th gen rise, gg’s digital was soaring up into the sky while bg continues to be fandom driven BUT still with much more sales and tours and merchs than ggs (svt, skz, txt, nct etc). Though svt still have strong digital presence on melon (but still below gg) and txt still have “presence” on melon top 100, the rest were STRUGGLING to break into top 100

Gg stans only worship digitals, but completely stomp on all other metric when most money generated by sales, tours, merchs. Good digital = gp recognition, sales tours merchs = buying power. Even if you have strong digitals it’s such a waste if it cannot translate into spending/buying powers (buying albums). I didn’t say strong digital is worthless or less than the others but they are all an important metric. And I would even say bgs are actually richer and gain more money than ggs that’s why agencies still debuting new bgs every months despite “bg digital winter”

But here tho, if a bg stan make posts about their achievements it’s all “worthless”. Or if a bg have good digita performance it’s “weird” or “not good enough” because they dont have better number of PAKs or RAKs compared to ggs and it’s just not fun to continue the discussion

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I would agree with this if ggs don't also tour like crazy. Be it album sales, tours, festvals, brands, fandoms... girls have it all.

Quote from K-PL

BP and Twice are doing their own thing, so far ahead of everyone else with their concert tours, so their stans cant be pulled into any who is better discussions. No other group was at the same level as NJ, so what can you debate.

At least on the girl group side now it is much more open. You have 5 competitors, and you could bat for any and hold your own.

I would guess the decline and less activety of the older 3nd generation groups like Twice, BP, G-idle and so on playes in. I mean, do anyone talk about G-Idle anymore? Also feels it mostly only post about groups from the bigger companies, not much about new groups from smaller companies. But maybe there is not many groups any more from outside the big ones.....

Quote from Ves

I am of this opinion too.

Many people come here and stick around because of the community. In KPOP, that means fandoms most of the time. If active/prominent members of the fandom leave or are banned, the likelihood of less vocal members sticking around is low.

Sure people can say well positive threads are less interesting and less likely to get traffic, but negative threads need to target users that care to argue - otherwise they won't gain any traction either. And most of these negative threads encourage you to pick a side. If your side isn't well represented, you're not going to interact and the negativity will drive you away.

In essence what I think we've lost is enough diversity to balance our discussions. And how would making making more negative threads bring the levels back to balanced?

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I agree with you Ves. I am an exol and we had extremely active guild. We went from almost 50 active users to barely 5! Exo threads barely get any engagement, I of course don't care if exo threads are successful or not but I do care that I have almost no one to discuss with. I am sure many here remember, for example, how many posts exo comeback and bside threads were getting, I would dare to say engagement was almost on current MHJ and Hybe level but with more threads.

And it is not just exo, there are no nctzens and I don't even see txt fans when they also used to be very active... WAIT users who preach about lack of bg fans may be on to something lmao

So yeah... chain reaction post mass ban is real.

Quote from versatile

I was monitoring activity a month and a half after that banning spree.

The activity did not decrease a big amount I was looking at post count every single day... The stats don't back up that reason. The NCT guild was starting to become less active in general even before he banned them and they deleted the guild.

Guilds were already dying at that point. Like I get that it matches the timing but a lot of other things that happened in the same time.

For example anons were removed, I quit as well as thread making team that I created to make the forum active. But the major change that I feel was it was the forum update. It's unusable on mobile and that's what I feel is the activity dropped a big amount. Even I couldn't use it when I didn't have allkill.

That's for me the major reason. Haha I was just wondering if anyone else figured it out.

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I don't think you understand lol