Is Chao Island Forums Dead?

[Chao31]

In my view, usually only guests are online (presumably users who prefer to look at random posts of people and never join in the craze) and no one else... so that got me thinking... is this forums dead user wise and only guests are aware of this place?

[krzys2]

Forum is definitely not dead, some are lurkers who hide their activity, but chao island discord is tons more active tho

[ChillyChao]

The site seems dead because Chao and forums are both really old concepts that not a lot of people care about anymore. In the background, there's some people who are here and post, but then there's people like me who joined but stopped caring.
So, it's dead, but also alive.

[Chao31]

that's a relief still many problems I face unbeatable like the omochao crashes upon attempting to use CWE and being forced to download visual c++ without getting the admin to help out with the install.

[AugustChao]

Personally, I check the forums on a daily basis to see if there are any new posts and what-not, and I usually only post myself when a new thread or something that interests me shows up. However, I've noticed a rapid decline in new threads and stuff like that between now and the beginning of the year, so I think things are slowing down for that reason.

Also, am I the only one who finds it funny that there are consistently always more guests viewing the forums than registered members? I always check to see how many people are here, and what usually happens is there's one or two registered members (one of which being me because I'm the one checking), but there are usually about a hundred or so guests. Maybe they're members who are just checking and aren't logged in? I dunno.

[chaoadventures]

I usually check the new posts a few times every week. I'm not logged in by default, so I usually show up as one of the guests.
I say stuff here when I think of it.

[Ivogoji]

I crosspost stuff from here and vice versa from time to time.

[Jeffery Mewtamer]

I check daily for new posts, and admittedly, there's usually only enough new posts for someone who doesn't know finger binary to count on one hand and sometimes days with no new posts at all.

Part of it is probably that the last biggish thing in Chao was the Steam and PS360 ports of SA2B and there having not been anything truly new with Chao since like 2003.

Part of it is probably that many members who had already lost interest in Chao specifically or Sonic in general left when the off-topic boards where shut down.

And yes, part of it is probably due to most young people not caring about old school social media like forums and mailing lists, which hurts this place more than others as Chao was specifically added into the Adventure games as a means of easing younger children into the medium and doesn't have nearly as big a peripheral audience as most well-made children's entertainment(certainly not on the level of any classic shonen or shojo anime from the same time frame as the Adventure games and not even in the same galaxy as say Pokemon or MLP).

And now that I think about it, pretty much all of the forums I'm on are positively ancient by Internet standards(This. site has been around in it's current form since 2008 if I remember correctly, My registration date on Sonic Retro is from 2003 if I'm not mistaken, and the Twisty Puzzles Forum proudly states in it's headline that it's been online since 2002. I'm pretty sure some of that predates Internet fixtures like YouTube and Facebook... *Takes a brief wiki walk.* Okay, The Twisty Puzzles Forum predates MySpace, arguably the first modern social media platform and is nearly as old as Wikipedia... Also, Google would be old enough to drink alcohol in the US if it were a person... and yet I can remember the days before Google became synonymous with web search... Damn, I feel old and I don't even turn 33 until Monday.

[retrolinkx]

Pretty much what's been said has been said, but yeah. Once the off-topic boards were shut down I saw no real reason to stick around. I spent ages trying to stir up discussion on those boards only for it to be meaningless in the end. Everyone has moved onto Discord, and a lot of the older users (myself included) are just talking on there. Sega Carnival became a thing but that barely gets any posts due to the nature of the internet these days.

Hell, I took Chao Island off my bookmarks this year. It was the first one on my bookmarks toolbar since 2009, and Youtube was second. Still seems odd to see it gone. I always thought that I'd stick around this place forever honestly, perhaps even coming to own it due to my persistence in actually wanted to keep up with it no matter what. In the end though it didn't matter, once Mooncow removed the off-topic boards and such I couldn't care anymore.

Kinda a shame, I always had a dream of becoming a moderator on the first forum I ever joined, but now that'll just remain a dream....

[AugustChao]

Looking through all of these, it's plain to see that the closure of the Off-Topic forums was the main reason a lot of people stopped coming here as often, so that tells me that the clear solution to the problem would be to re-open them.

In fact, Mooncow himself said that they were going to come back at some point in this thread from back in December...

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=49321

He said that it would be coming back in the near future following that post, but 10 months have passed and they still haven't come back, so I don't know how that's going.

[AugustChao]

Going back even further to early 2018, we also have these two threads by Mooncow explaining why the Off-Topic forums were shut down, and that he always did have plans to bring them back in some capacity...

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=48899

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=48970

Now, I'm assuming the main reason it hasn't been brought back yet is because they've been working on a seperate area specifically for the Off-Topic forums, and it just hasn't been finished yet. It does make sense to me why they would want to do this, because Mooncow wanted the Chao forums to be... well... Chao themed. We haven't heard anything about the progress of this since the post in December, so maybe it has been being worked on behind the scenes with no updates. I guess only time will tell...

[Jeffery Mewtamer]

In all fairness, even before the closure of the off-topic section, these forums had seen a long period of declining activity(see the points about nothing new in Chao and forums being oldschool social media from my previous post).

A new off-topic section might encourage some extra conversation, but most of the oldbies that hung out there are long gone, Chao is too old and too niche to draw much in the way of new blood, and most newbies are probably going to gravitate to the discord over the forum anyways.

Short of Sega producing a brand new game featuring Chao that manages to both capture the charm of the original, expands player-chao and chao-chao interactions, and generally revamps the virtual pet aspects to become one of the best in genre all while avoiding complaints of "Something so relaxed in slow paced doesn't belong in a Sonic game" that I'm sure contributed to Chao's fall into irrelevance, I'm pretty sure this site's, or at least the forum's golden days are long gone with little chance of a renaissance.

That said, I plan to stick around for the foreseeable future even if it mostly amounts to answering the occasional question.

[Roaxes]

I personally stick to the Chao Island Discord server. I don't usually have much to talk about on the Forums. Mostly log on to see if there's been any reports, but more use to moderating for Discord.

But I think both are good, discord for quick chats and showing off pictures
and forums for long extended discussion that would otherwise fill a whole discord channel. Long discussions usually end up changing topic real quick on discord.

[BTC4]

Wow, Chao Island forums! Great concept, but only if there is off topic place to post!

[ChillyChao]

Yeah, what are you supposed to do w/ a site that has no off topic boards lol
I like the Chao Garden. That's the only reason i still play SA2. I don't want to deticate my entire forum experience to it.
Comparing this forum to Kirby's Rainbow Resort (another forum that is dead) some people still stick around because there are off topic boards. In fact, i have almost 1K posts in 3 months there, compared to my almost 300 posts in a year on here. There's about 5-10 people active daily on here, and only about 1-3 active people daily on there, which is less.

[Sable]

Wow, Chao Island forums! Great concept, but only if there is off topic place to post!

[Mooncow]

Now, I'm assuming the main reason it hasn't been brought back yet is because they've been working on a seperate area specifically for the Off-Topic forums, and it just hasn't been finished yet. It does make sense to me why they would want to do this, because Mooncow wanted the Chao forums to be... well... Chao themed. We haven't heard anything about the progress of this since the post in December, so maybe it has been being worked on behind the scenes with no updates. I guess only time will tell...

It's mainly for priorities. The priority at the moment will always be getting the main site to a "complete" level - which is very close. After this, the focus will be the Wiki and Forums together.
Some of you ask for off-topic forums, and some of you (BTC4, Sable) will joke about it - but also note that these two haven't posted anything else here for over a year. Quick to pass through and have a laugh, but not keen to actually contribute.

An off-topic section is not a priority because of the lack of activity. Making an off-topic section to create activity isn't going to help the site. An off-topic section is for the people who use the site and are active, not to attract new people, or old people who no longer have any Chao interest.

As Roaxes said, we have a healthy Discord which is active and has a good atmosphere. We are also working on the mods section of the website and a new Chao Island Daycare feature (which will use the discord server) which should be released over the next week or so!

[DoubleBlackDiamond]

I use it all the time!