topic Re: Shrinking Member Count. in SmorgasBoard

Shrinking Member Count.

805orbust — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 00:55:04 GMT

Anyone notice the # of members is down by 1/3? About a year ago I noticed we hit 300,000, and now it stands at about 213,000. Maybe dormant or robot/spam accounts?

I have the best memory for absolute useless miscellany. If only I could monetize that 🤣

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

JoeRockhead — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 01:11:58 GMT

Could be they closed severely dormant accounts combined with people just leaving.I've noticed several folks who used to be on daily, but haven't been on much at all in quite a while ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

805orbust — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 01:58:45 GMT

@JoeRockhead totally agree. I just got over a 2 month accidental hiatus myself... not on purpose either, just got busy as hell, not to mention worn out. And that was after going hard at it for 3 years straight. Never had a streak like that but... Pandemic had me on here like a kindergarten schoolgirl.

Not surprised at members going dark tho... its getting rough out there.

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

FireMedic1 — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 12:03:53 GMT

@805orbust wrote:
@JoeRockhead totally agree. I just got over a 2 month accidental hiatus myself... not on purpose either, just got busy as hell, not to mention worn out. And that was after going hard at it for 3 years straight. Never had a streak like that but... Pandemic had me on here like a kindergarten schoolgirl.

Not surprised at members going dark tho... its getting rough out there.

@805orbust I have many friends who retired and went back to work. I wanted to retire this year. Had it all planned out. Dont know now.

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

Horseshoez — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 12:31:56 GMT

@FireMedic1 wrote:
@805orbust wrote:
@JoeRockhead totally agree. I just got over a 2 month accidental hiatus myself... not on purpose either, just got busy as hell, not to mention worn out. And that was after going hard at it for 3 years straight. Never had a streak like that but... Pandemic had me on here like a kindergarten schoolgirl.

Not surprised at members going dark tho... its getting rough out there.
@805orbust I have many friends who retired and went back to work. I wanted to retire this year. Had it all planned out. Dont know now.

LOL, we had it all planned out as well, then the recession hit in 2008-2009, and then "life" happened and we lost our retirement, our jobs, our businesses, and our home. We ended up separating, filing independently for bankruptcy (her a Chapter 7, me a Chapter 13) when we were 56 and 57 respectively, and then ulitmately getting back together. My wife is no longer working and it remains to be seen if she will ever work again; I figure I'll work until I'm in my early 70s before we are comfortable enough to retire.

The good news? I like what I do and the pay is more than adequate.

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

Kforce — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 17:20:41 GMT

For me, I think every new post is a "Déjà vu" moment.

If you could only have 1 card?, How do I get a CLI?,

Will I get this card?, Why is my score so low?

Have been thinking about taking a vacation from the forum my self.

My view of a simple few cards, not chasing high CL's, not doing AZEO monthly, not chasing SUBs, no BT's,

not rotating and playing with 25+ cards. etc. I am about 180 degrees from the forum's norm.

Can't fully contribute to the majority of the forum questions, because my view is usually the exact opposite.

One persons view of you should wait for about 6 months, gets lost with 10-12, you only have 3 new cards this year and 4 inq's, you are good to go!, better get the Chase because you are at 4/24.

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

wasCB14 — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 18:31:57 GMT

@Kforce wrote:
For me, I think every new post is a "Déjà vu" moment.
If you could only have 1 card?, How do I get a CLI?,
Will I get this card?, Why is my score so low?

Have been thinking about taking a vacation from the forum my self.
My view of a simple few cards, not chasing high CL's, not doing AZEO monthly, not chasing SUBs, no BT's,
not rotating and playing with 25+ cards. etc. I am about 180 degrees from the forum's norm.

Can't fully contribute to the majority of the forum questions, because my view is usually the exact opposite.
One persons view of you should wait for about 6 months, gets lost with 10-12, you only have 3 new cards this year and 4 inq's, you are good to go!, better get the Chase because you are at 4/24.

I've been on here less.

There's also not a whole lot going on as far as interesting new/improved cards that would drive lurkers to join en masse.

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

CreditMarathoner — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 23:16:49 GMT

@Kforce wrote:
Have been thinking about taking a vacation from the forum my self.
My view of a simple few cards, not chasing high CL's, not doing AZEO monthly, not chasing SUBs, no BT's,
not rotating and playing with 25+ cards. etc. I am about 180 degrees from the forum's norm.

Can't fully contribute to the majority of the forum questions, because my view is usually the exact opposite.
One persons view of you should wait for about 6 months, gets lost with 10-12, you only have 3 new cards this year and 4 inq's, you are good to go!, better get the Chase because you are at 4/24.

I'm the same way. I don't chase 5 figure CLs/6 figure TCLs. I have a whopping 4 cards (and that's more than I ever used to have) and a 26+K TCL (also more than I ever had). I'm like MyFICO Lite. I don't need any more CLIs, or new cards/trade lines. I can just garden indefinitely, but the Garden Club is gone too. There's just fewer reasons for me to be here.

Going into the approvals forum and replying "Congratulations on your CLI!" over and over gets old. I have nothing special to contribute in terms of helping people with their credit... nothing that the other 200K+ members could say just as well if not better.

And I get tired of having to log in every day. Persistent logins aren't a bad thing on forums.

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

805orbust — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 02:20:52 GMT

Ok so it's real then... we're all getting a little lethargic. Honestly, we've all been thru alot in the last 4 years. The good thing is, think of how much fun it's going to be here in a couple of years when the dollar is worthless and we'll all have to chase after $200,000 CLI's, or Crypto cards, or whatever way it's ultimately heading 🤣

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

805orbust — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 02:34:58 GMT

Aaaaaand, it's down to 205,000. And I looked thru old posts and there are a TON of accounts that are titled "Anonymous". Several I know because I remember the topics they started/commented on... again my great memory for useless things. 🤣

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

NoMoreE46 — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 02:48:11 GMT

Good observation @805orbust.

I recall that membership was just under 300,000. Now is it 198,122 as of this post's time/date stamp.

There must have been a purge of the inactive accounts.

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

805orbust — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 03:15:19 GMT

@NoMoreE46 dude thats one hell of a purge... crazy. Must have been a long time coming. Although there are ALOT of lurkers. I can't count how many times I hear New Members comment on how they've been lurking for a long time when asking a question then you never hear from them again.. maybe just another small part of it.

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

JoeRockhead — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 13:40:08 GMT

@805orbust Down even more today.... interesting

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

Horseshoez — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 13:52:00 GMT

@JoeRockhead wrote:
@805orbust Down even more today.... interesting

Here's one thought; I am a moderator on a number of other forums and we have occasionally performed house cleaning by correlating IP addresses with inactive users with known spammers. On one site, with only a fraction of the traffic of myFICO, I ended up deleting over 300,000 users. Not sure if that is what is going on here, but it is possible.

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

NoMoreE46 — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 14:10:03 GMT

Count is down to about 194,000 now. Interesting to note that members who haven't logged in since 2008, still exist here.

Regarding spammers, the CMs (fka the Mods) were pretty good at picking them out @Horseshoez .

@Horseshoez wrote:
@JoeRockhead wrote:
@805orbust Down even more today.... interesting
Here's one thought; I am a moderator on a number of other forums and we have occasionally performed house cleaning by correlating IP addresses with inactive users with known spammers. On one site, with only a fraction of the traffic of myFICO, I ended up deleting over 300,000 users. Not sure if that is what is going on here, but it is possible.

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

Horseshoez — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 14:18:10 GMT

@NoMoreE46 wrote:
Count is down to about 194,000 now. Interesting to note that members who haven't logged in since 2008, still exist here.

Regarding spammers, the CMs (fka the Mods) were pretty good at picking them out @Horseshoez .

@Horseshoez wrote:
@JoeRockhead wrote:
@805orbust Down even more today.... interesting
Here's one thought; I am a moderator on a number of other forums and we have occasionally performed house cleaning by correlating IP addresses with inactive users with known spammers. On one site, with only a fraction of the traffic of myFICO, I ended up deleting over 300,000 users. Not sure if that is what is going on here, but it is possible.

The point I was trying to make is, as they pick out new spammers, correlating the IP Addresses of said new spammers to inactive older accounts. Just today on another site I had two new spammers come in with IP Addresses in the 122.168.* and 223.236.* ranges, and when I checked, there were literally hundreds of older accounts on that site, all of which had either sneaky spam posts, or a pattern of user names like "markwahlberg##" (where the "##" portion was some number between "00" and "99").

The problem with these latent accounts popped up on several of the forums I moderate, years after I was minted as a moderator, and years after the accounts were created; the bot which created them circled back and posted thousands of spam messages in less than an hour. By cleaning out old accounts you mitigate this risk.

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

805orbust — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 10:29:04 GMT

Ok I gotcha. So basically at some point we're just gonna have AI fighting this battle for us on both sides eventually.

...until it decides that our existence is the problem 🤣

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

Horseshoez — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 11:22:41 GMT

@805orbust wrote:
Ok I gotcha. So basically at some point we're just gonna have AI fighting this battle for us on both sides eventually.

...until it decides that our existence is the problem 🤣

LOL, I design AI systems, and contrary to the common belief, AI will not become sentient anytime within our life times.

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

FireMedic1 — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 15:26:22 GMT

I have no inside connections of course. Went by cleaning house of old accounts that were no longer active for who knows how long. Years it seems. This is from the GC 04/2017. 5 yrs ago. Many Anonymous usernames. Dont know who they were. A couple of them I knew their pattern. But doesnt mean its them. Scroll thru and see. Purging old non use user accounts?

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Garden-Club-April-2017/td-p/4906097

Re: Shrinking Member Count.

805orbust — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 09:39:12 GMT

Good stuff guys... Oh, and by the way, 181,000. Boy we are quickly approaching a 50% purge. Impressive.