WrongPlanet’s Pageview Count hits a Profound All-Time Low

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Due to a Lack of Common Representation, WrongPlanet’s Pageview Count hits a Profound All-Time Low (Measured from January 2008)



*To view the data on Quantcast, select “all” under “Date Range”, “Month” to the right of “per”, and “Global” under “More Options”. The two tabs used are Page Views and Uniques.

According to direct (actual, not estimated) measurements from Quantcast (https://www.quantcast.com/wrongplanet.net), WrongPlanet (http://wrongplanet.net), which claims to be the largest forum online for people with Autism and Asperger’s syndrome and their relatives, has hit an all-time low count of website pageviews, as measured from January 2008. A pageview doesn’t represent a unique user, but rather an instance where an onine user visits a website, so a single user can have several pageviews. This is despite the fact that WrongPlanet’s membership has dramatically increased from 2008 to 2012. Additionally, from the same statistics on a different tab, the unique visitor count has also declined by 50%. This is most likely because more and more users are feeling alienated from the site and its goals, and do not feel represented.

WrongPlanet also once ran a web series called Autism Talk TV (https://www.youtube.com/user/theWrongPlanet/videos). The series featured Alex Plank, Jack Robison, and Kristen Lindsmith, Jack’s girlfriend. Again, only a limited number of autistics were featured. The series was partially funded by Autism Speaks, which many WrongPlanet member considered to be controversial. There hasn’t been an update in two years, and the WrongPlanet Youtube channel hasn’t been updated in over a year.

Because there is scant evidence that Autism/Asperger’s leads to special talents, many less-functioning members have abandoned the site in frustration, and the higher-functioning members have lost interest over time, as it doesn’t affect their lives much.

Mod Edit: Moved to WP.Net Discussion since topic corresponds to the website, rather than GAD topics.

I think you're trying to apply a narrative to the data without justification.

I would attribute the decline in WrongPlanet's userbase to three factors:

1) Frustration with technical issues
2) Inadequate moderation
3) A well-documented general trend away from specialised forums and towards social networking, microblogging, and Reddit.

The first two have been frequently cited by users leaving the site in the past two years, although hopefully they're both mostly sorted now. On the other hand, I rarely see users complain that Alex doesn't think autistic people are second class citizens.

Ultimately, however, most users don't complain when they leave, they just go quietly, and they go to the big names - Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, tumblr. Forums are increasingly irrelevant, and there's not much that those who run them can do to reverse that.

Some discussion of this:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... ards-past/

It's too bad that forums are losing users, I much prefer forums to facebook, tumblr, etc.

I prefer forums by a million miles. I don't even have Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr accounts etc. I avoid that type of social media like the plague, and forums are my speed.

Reddit is basically a "mega forum" rather than a social network. You've got forums dedicated to all sorts of special interests on one site, needing one account. If WrongPlanet ever stops being viable, I would recommend jumping to one of the autism sub-Reddits. Not sure that will happen though - seems to me that there will always be a portion of people who prefer forums.

Oops, I didn't know that about Reddit -- that shows how oblivious I am of what's out there these days! I need to get with the times!

Now, I'm just off to trade in my 1980s brick phone for one of those new fangled Nokias.

Pageviews in general have gone down across the Internet. The problem with using quantcast is that it requires people to use javascript to be counted so anyone with a JS block or adblock will not show up. In reality the traffic has not declined significantly when you look at the server's analytics.

Hope to hear your response, but I just looked up the "Quantcast Asynchronous Tag" and it ensures that the javascript file loads in the background. Do you use this? And is there a way to or even do you measure analytics without this interference?

If you block javascript, a javascript file won't get loaded.

I do have analytics that are significantly more accurate and the figures are more than double what Quantcast is showing which means that we're still getting tons of traffic, it just isn't being reflected in those stats.

I see... but are those stats publicly available?

Not surprising, this place looked more active in early 2014.

I wonder why page-views have gone down...plenty of other sites I go to seem quite dead or certainly less active, even facebook, actually.

Hmm maybe because contrary to your signature, summer is coming (for the larger part of the world's population), could it be that some people are rediscovering meatspace?
A couple of other forums that I visit (about completely different subject matter) have been pretty quiet as well lately.
Interesting what you say about FB. I mostly keep out of social networks myself.

As I mentioned before, our traffic has been increasing based in server analytics. The decrease you see in those stats is based on the fact that theyre an approximation of traffic based on JavaScript tags that many people are now blocking. Our actual stats are double to triple what quant cast is showing.

So any idea that wrongpalanet is less popular than before is completely wrong. The opposite is true. ( in terms of people accessing the site ) I have noticed that there is slightly less engagement in posting but that has been more than been made up by an increase in people who are lurking which contunues to increase.

And pageviews shouldn't be looked at because we have made upgrades to decrease the amount of pageviews to improve the user experience. Facebook has a similar strategy. The visits metric is what you should look at. But keep in mind that isn't sccurate because of the fact that it relies on people accepting the 3rd party js tags.

http://www.autismdailynewscast.com/wron ... 665/guest/ - This is where I meant it to be published

Alex - I might have sounded harsh. I understand that you started this site with good intentions. But there is no evidence that autistics have special talents that neurotypicals do not. If there was a place here where I could also question neurodiversity, that would be great and have me coming back more.

You are probably right about the pageviews (I have more hardware than software experience). Yet I would still like to see those stats. If you were right, wouldn't every site on quantcast be declining?? Autism Speaks is rapidly increasing. The_Walrus, the mod, has also agreed with me above that people are leaving (though his reasons are different). I still believe that this is the largest social place for those on the spectrum.