being curious, I looked up Reddit Flashlight… it is presently #20 (I dont have its January data)
apparently much more traffic on Reddit, than BLF or CPF .
corona affected everyone, so whatever differences, I dont think corona is the primary variable to explain why CPF is sinking… I could speculate as to other reasons… but whatever they are… the ranking has shifted to favor BLF, over CPF… with Reddit eclipsing both CPF and BLF…
I have also started using Reddit, and have had nothing but happy interactions there, since CPF turned into a ghost town…
I feel sorry for the guy that paid Greta for CPF…
Im not on Facebook, so dont know if that accounts for some of the shift in participation
I don’t think the Reddit ranking is specific to /r/flashlight, it’s just the whole massive site, which is indeed mega popular. I honestly don’t understand why; I can’t speak to /r/flashlight specifically, but when I’m forced to use Reddit for some other non-flashlight related information it’s always a dreadful experience, both technically and socially. It’s an incredibly toxic and unfriendly place there for the most part.
I don’t pay too much attention to Alexa, because it’s an artificial metric that doesn’t really reflect the reality or the actual vitality of a given website, and I personally doubt even the sources and the accuracy of their raw stats. I also don’t run Google Analytics or anything like that, but I do have some limited stats that come with the Google Adsense that I still use here. The only external thing that concerns me is the Google search ranking, since that is what makes us discoverable online, and even influences how quickly the Google site search picks up on new threads for our existing users’ searches. I wasn’t too happy after we switched to using SSL (HTTPS) because it coincided with a new way that Google started defining or grouping websites that site owners declare (“domain properties” vs. specific http://example.com or https://example.com). From what I can tell there seems to have been a major drop in our search ranking right when I switched it to HTTPS, almost as if Google threw out their old index and started over afresh. It seems to be marginally better now, but I’m not sure. At any rate I don’t obsess too much about metrics, because at the end of the day my only job is to provide a pleasant and functional environment for everyone here, not aiming to please the Google or Alexa bots.
My account and posts on reddit are long deleted, but if the information I seek can only be found there I read it and leave. I recently saw a post where someone was decrying a flashlight as “useless” because it didn’t fit their personal idea of a good flashlight. Their vitriolic rant suggested that the know-nothing manufacturers should have asked them or the community what to make. Why was it useless? It wasn’t a single-cell, high CRI light. Now, many people on BLF enjoy single-cell and high CRI but I think most of us realize that there is a use and a demand for other types of lights. Some people might have a use for double or triple the runtime…
Why not both :sunglasses:
I know lots of people with random or silly usernames. I don’t judge them for it.
If they have offensive or borderline offensive names then i care.
Strange this subject is being discussed again, as I have just recently been spending time over there trying to figure out the situation after new ownership started. I am curious what is being built there and is the atmosphere friendly like it is here. My first post there in 2.7 yrs with no problems. The layout is different than BLF and I’m still lost after a week of poking around. BLF seems easier to browse and it appears to me there is more activity here on BLF.
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What concerns me is division of flashlight lovers over forums. It would be better if we as individuals do not shun other Flashaholics coming and going, but welcome everyone.
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I have considered changing my name to BoatyMcBoatface, very silly, but my posts would be the same as they are now.
If i were starting over i might do that, but i am long since Bort so thats that.
Forum names imo are just identifiers and i don’t read that much into them, its very rare in my experience that they actually define a person more than their posts. In fact i can’t think of the last time that happened.
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