Is this website dead or something?

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How about if you lead a mule to water?

yes,
now it's the wee hours in NY 3.09, LA 0.09 London 8.09 Paris 9.09
and counting on

ooops! Yes, I had it backwards. Evening in the U.K. = afternoon in the U.S.A.

That being the case, it puzzles me why Joe would perceive this site as dead, when viewing this site in the U.K. evening. Doesn't seem dead to me at all.

Joe, how many new messages per hour would you need to see in order to not consider a site "dead"?

Controversial topics always create new life.

I'd be delighted if the "show recent posts" feature could, optionally, be configured to ignore the forum games threads.

^ I've never used "show recent posts" - it's far too blunt a tool.

Instead, starting at the "Forums" page here https://wrongplanet.net/forums/ I choose something I might want to have a look at - say, "News and Current Events".

Right-click on that and select "Open link in new tab" (or words to that effect) then, select that new tab.

Looking down the list of topics in News and Current Events I do a "right-click | open link in new tab" on each topic title that looks interesting. It's easy to see the threads receiving new posts because they'll be at the top of the index page and the date/time/who of the last post is shown on the right.

Having now created a series of tabs, one per thread of interest, I can select a tab and read or reply to any thread of interest and having done that, close the tab and move on to the next one.

Eventually all tabs will have been closed, leaving the forum list displayed.

Rinse and repeat with another forum from the list.
If it takes some time to get through them, refresh the browser page on the tab currently open to include any new posts made in the meantime.

Et voilà - no irritating games threads or anything else you haven't specifically chosen to see.


Note that this works best when the "Open link in new tab" is done in the background - that is, the browser isn't switched automatically to that new tab and they stack up to the right (ideally with the newest at the extreme right).
IIRC this is the default with Firefox; other browsers will probably have the same option.

Well sometimes a section can go days before a new post or thread gets added. Even the GAD can have the same 2 or 3 threads bobbing about at the top of the first page for a few days.

Like I said already, the only forums that are buzzing with life are the political sections and the off the wall section. The random discussion is mostly dominated by the "the last thing you ate" threads (it's a wonder there isn't a "last time you burped/farted" thread -- actually that would be pretty funny ).

These days I tend to avoid any political discussions because I have trouble with my understanding of politics and news items so I often find myself writing something 'wrong' that everyone objects to even if I know that wasn't what I was trying to say. It can be embarrassing.

'Random Discussion' isn't all superficial nonsense. Check out the 'Interview The Person Below You' thread for example.

Also, one person's superficial nonsense is another person's amusement/word game.

It may be more referring to the fact that the front page - and the articles linked from it - haven't been refreshed in three and a half years. They were all written by the site founder, whose own blog has only had a few lines added to it in that time (and even then, nothing in the last year and a half).

As far as I can tell, the board does not have "last logged on at" or "view all posts by this user" functions, so I have no idea how active Alex has been recently.

Especially in a forum for people with autism ist would be very helpful to at least know a few weeks before this happens


More and more people seem to prefer other platforms to a forum.
But I like reading and writing in a forum, because you can take enough time for both.


Yes, one can get to know each other quite well in all these games.

Click on the poster's avatar (or empty space!) shown on the left of each post, or just click the poster's name there/as seen on a forum index page.
The results are sometimes a little quirky, but generally accurate enough.

Ah, right. Looks like the site categorizes "article authors" and "forum posters" as different things and there are different things on the relevant profile pages.

Honestly, I'm not a big fan of monolithic social media platforms like Reddit or Discord either, but that's where people are nowadays. I can't really blame them, because a lot of people use smartphones as their main internet devices these days, and oldschool forums like WP don't usually work as well on a smartphone as something that has a dedicated app.

I won't lie, a small Discord server can definitely have a similar tight-knit community feel to what a forum might have, but the pace isn't as relaxing as what you'd find on a forum.

Reddit is weird because it's not as fast paced as a Discord server, but it's also very, very impersonal because the different subreddits are essentially subforums on this massive website. The various subreddits aren't as closed off from one another as a Discord server or a discrete forum like WP would be.

Tbf, if I wanted to, I could roll different accounts to use on different subreddits, since Reddit allows you to make multiple accounts, but it also really discourages it since subreddits often have minimum karma requirements to ward off spammers.

It would be nice if WP had some new blood, and people talked more about things other than politics or current events.

This site is as dead as the dodo. So boring. I want exciting new material to read.

1,300 posts and 58 topics created per day doesn't look like a dead site to me.
They can't all be going to PPR.