Is WhiteBlaze dying?

[Alligator]

+1 on FB complaints...
In addition to the crazy randomness of what FB shows you, I'm sick and tired of FB sending me a Notification that someone has replied to a comment I've made, and I click the link and it just takes me to the conversion, and now I'm supposed to FIND my post in a conversation with 1,000 replies, and you only get to see about 20 at a time (and you don't know if your reply was a top level reply or collapsed in some sub-response.
If you can tell me I have a reply, why can't you just take me to the reply???
Unfortunately, for collaboration and getting questions answered, it seems the ease of creating groups in Facebook means that's where the "action" is currently located.

+∞! This drives me nuts! When friends and I are planning events we use FB events and then people respond to random comments and it's impossible to find the spot the response was made. This is something I think would be helpful here but the software as far as I know doesn't bring the user to the reply. I know other forum software can do it. It is something that would be helpful as it promotes engagement significantly. Currently the software will only note there was a response to a thread. It is something I will look up and discuss with ATTroll.

[kythruhiker]

Still lurking from time to time...from the old AT-L mailing list, to Trailplace, to Whiteblaze. From handwriting Baltimore Jack's resupply guide out to learning from Lone Wolf it was just walking - lots of knowledge has passed through these hallowed but overly moderated walls these many years.

[Fëanor]

The inactivity worries me!
Something has happened ,not sure what but hikers do not show or lost interest in hiking.. My biggest redflag is YouTube where some of my favorite channels haven't posted in years and some just went offline(MyOwnFrontier) really sad!
Maybe the same thing is happening here as well. I will NOT follow a channel where they show ass/tits click bait TheTrek has become like also.. ***! What has happened to good ole hiking!

[Sailing_Faith]

I hope to be here as long as I am here….

I still have the free “HYOH” stickers if anyone needs one.

[Traveler]

I wouldn't let inactivity during the busy spring and summer months be a concern. Many people are out doing things, graduations, weddings, vacations, and a lot of stuff in-between that typically shows up in spring, carries through summer, and ebbs in Autum.

[double d]

WB has and will always be a great webpage for those who wish to share in our love of the AT, hiking and or just a place to visit and read what hikers are doing
and thinking. Keep up the great work WB, as usual in life, things change and we all have to adapt to those changes.

[JDB1]

Message boards are dying. I am 47. I started posting on college football message boards in the late 90s (Hook 'em Horns). I am still on one message board that I have been on since 1999. It is mostly people in their 40s and older. Very few people in their teens to 30s are on message boards. I like them better than Reddit or video social media. But younger generations do not.

[JPritch]

I agree. A few other message boards I belong to have all but died out. Most lost to Facebook.

My issue with Facebook is that it's basically become 'post a photo for quick hit gratification' content. No engaging posts really. The AT group for example is full of people who walked a couple miles from a trailhead to snap a photo at a popular spot, or garner 1000 likes from a thru-hike announcement (funny, I never see finish photos from these folks). But god forbid ask a valid question, and the moderators swoop in and tell you to use the search function.

I know more and more folks grow weary of social media every day, so I really hold out hope that people begin to migrate back to message boards. I still have close friends that I made in the aughts on a fishing forum. Seemed much more personal back then, even though we all had aliases.

[WTX2WY]

I found this place in 2015 when I first set foot on the AT for a day hike and probably read every new post and most of the older posts over the course of the next couple of years. Not sure I have even opened the site in the last 5 years as FB groups and Reddit captured more of my attention. There are a lot of good stories and trip reports here that are somewhat of a time capsule. I even recognize some of the usernames still, lol.

Speaking of, a few months back I was looking for some info on the MST and saw a few posts from Dogwood over on Reddit. If I recall he was a long time poster here who split time between Georgia and Hawaii and had hiked many thousands of miles across the country and was always big on the idea of just getting out in the wilderness and putting one foot in front of the other, the "acronym trails" were not the be all end all. He could pound out a 1000 word reply in almost any thread that included not only hiking advice but life nuggets. I looked him up on Reddit and here at WB and it did not seem like he had posted on either in years. Does anyone know what happened to him? I hope he is just out enjoying the non-digital world and getting some miles in rather than the alternative. If you still lurk here Dogwood, I appreciate you and hope all is well.


Back on topic, I have been in a few other forums over the last 20 years and most have either completely died off or are just a shell of their former selves. That is the nature of technology and social media. There does seem to be a small resurgence in the forum format over the last year or so as people have tired of the censorship/trolling/data harvesting of sites like Facebook and Reddit.

One little rant, especially if WB wants to increase membership. I forgot this login existed and tried to register a new account the other day. WB may have the worst registration experience I have ever seen for a website. Biggest annoyances were asking for location (both residential and where I was signed in), making me retype in the password twice every time the registration failed, and one of the rotating security questions was "what is the shape around the WB logo", lol. Diamond? Tilted square? Other? Oh, and after I eventually got everything keyed in correctly they would not accept my email address because it was not from a pre-approved data harvesting email company like Gmail or Outlook. I realize those measures are designed to prevent bot/spam accounts but after 10 minutes of failed attempts to register an account I said screw it, and assume that others do too. Then I found this login saved in my password manager so here we are again.

Thanks to all the old heads here who made this place a great community back in the 2015-2018 era. Hopefully WB makes enough to keep the lights on forever so the wisdom and experiences shared here live on for future hikers.

[BradMT]

Message boards are dying. I am 47. I started posting on college football message boards in the late 90s (Hook 'em Horns). I am still on one message board that I have been on since 1999. It is mostly people in their 40s and older. Very few people in their teens to 30s are on message boards. I like them better than Reddit or video social media. But younger generations do not.

Spot-on. Yes, I think WB is dying, and that's too bad. There's a collective wisdom lost on non-forum social media, which is a pity.

[illabelle]

I found this place in 2015 when I first set foot on the AT for a day hike and probably read every new post and most of the older posts over the course of the next couple of years. Not sure I have even opened the site in the last 5 years as FB groups and Reddit captured more of my attention. There are a lot of good stories and trip reports here that are somewhat of a time capsule. I even recognize some of the usernames still, lol.
Speaking of, a few months back I was looking for some info on the MST and saw a few posts from Dogwood over on Reddit. If I recall he was a long time poster here who split time between Georgia and Hawaii and had hiked many thousands of miles across the country and was always big on the idea of just getting out in the wilderness and putting one foot in front of the other, the "acronym trails" were not the be all end all. He could pound out a 1000 word reply in almost any thread that included not only hiking advice but life nuggets. I looked him up on Reddit and here at WB and it did not seem like he had posted on either in years. Does anyone know what happened to him? I hope he is just out enjoying the non-digital world and getting some miles in rather than the alternative. If you still lurk here Dogwood, I appreciate you and hope all is well......

I had a private exchange with DW around the time he left. He expressed frustrations with both WB and Reddit over conflicts with moderators and issues with forum functionality. I was sorry to see him go also. He had a lot of good information and experience to share.

Even Facebook isn't what it used to be. There was a time when people used FB to interact with friends. All I use it for these days is to laugh at the memes and get/give info in the groups.

[zelph]

Backpackinglight.com is dying also. Pandemic has taken it's toll

[Gambit McCrae]

Where is slogoin? I have not seen him post in quite some time.

Update: I looked his profile up, he is still posting a bit, just not like he use to.

[illabelle]

Even the thread about Kristian Morgan's current record attempt is getting much less traffic than those from a few years ago.