I’ve noticed that the community numbers are just dropping, and activity is minimal.
People moving to a different platform?
Lots of memes on Facebook.
No. Google has blacklisted this community from their community search. We are unable to find out why, because as always Google is ever-knowing, and ever-unreachable to find out why it’s happening. We had a bunch of community members report this problem but are still unable to figure out why we’re blacklisted. It really sucks because I love the cards layout, I love the people, but it looks like G+ has destined this community to death.
I’m highly considering starting a new 3D Printing community, copying things over and then disabling this community with a sticky at the top with a link to the new community. I don’t know any other way to save this…
@ThantiK I literally had the exact same happen with one of my communities. We did gain any members for a long time. Probably a year or so. I contemplated doing the same thing with starting a new community. But then for whatever reason, we recently started gaining more members and now you can find the group again. I was never able to figure out why though. I tried changing the name of the community. Sharing it like crazy. Basically everything I could think of. We were stagnant at about 1700 members and now we’re pushing like 1800 or so after just a few weeks. So may you just need to ride this one out as well. Although a new community would likely cut down on the spam.
I suggest keeping the community as is. I haven’t been able to get anything from my contacts at Google just yet but I’m still working on it.
What are the chances it’s been blacklisted because of the 3D printed gun hysteria/nonsense that’s been in the news?
We still don’t know what’s actually going on. I’ve seen many things with my current tech company attributed to malice when it wasn’t.
@Taylor_Landry1 probably not very good honestly. Why would Google block a 3D printing company but still let you search up how to make one on the internet? Like I stated above, I had this same thing happen to my community and it lasted for about a year. Then one day we just started getting more members. I tried everything I could think of and nothing worked. I just had to wait it out and now we are slowly gaining members again.
This group still has almost half a million members. Most other avenues already have their own large 3d printing groups and I dont see what would entice people to leave them for a new group on the same format. People will always have thier own preferences on what sites/formats they prefer, but I think any talk of killing this group off or closing it down is ridiculously premature.
@Jason_D Half a million bots and spam accounts. About 50 actual active members. Go through the actual member list sometime. It’s nothing but Indian spam bots.
Probably about 1000 or so semi-active members.
@ThantiK damn, you weren’t kidding… Maybe a new group and a link to it may not be a bad idea after all. I bet it would cut way down on the spam too. Honestly, G+ needs a purge option. That could basically achieve the same thing.
This is what the ‘insights’ moderator page looks like for a 30-day history. It wouldn’t be a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Don’t worry about the dwindling member numbers. In my free time (when I’m bored) I go in and search for common spammer names and start removing them. That number going down is my efforts to remove inactive spammers…maybe because whatever happened was related to spam? I dunno - grasping at straws.
As an user who dont post regularly, sometimes you learn more by just watching the experts, right now i learn how to properly print and use alloy 910 thanks to this comunity, right now working on some heavy use objects that would be imposible or too expensive to make in the past
@ThantiK Well I’m not searching through 490,000+ names but I did browse through some and while I saw some questionable names I don’t quite think it is that bad. Granted I have seen the occasional spam post and don’t know anywhere near as much about the level of spam as you moderators do, I still don’t think the fake membership is as high a percentage as you implied. Atleast I hope it’s not…
Keep in mind that on social media, for better or worse, activity breeds more activity. The more people post and see an active group the more they comment and post in return. When there are posts saying the forum is dead or dying, that can cause a certain percentage to believe that and tune out, therefore becoming a self-fulfilling outcome.
Have you compared the numbers to a year ago? I would assume that there would be a drop in activity this time of year as many students and educators are busier with the restart of the school year. The 3d printing hype has really died down over the last 2 years even though the number of users have increased. Shapeways’ forum, which used to be extremely active is now a virtual ghost town. There used to be 5-10 posts a day a few years ago with people posting pictures of their orders when they arrived, now you see 1-3 posts a week on there. Many new printer may also be posting more on groups dedicated to their specific printers than in a general group as well. Just throwing that out there as possible causes.
@Kevin_Danger_Powers It’s under the “Moderate” page. It may have popped up due to how large this community is?
@ThantiK apparently you can only see it on a desktop browser. For whatever reason it’s not available on mobile.
That’s because mobile is stupid. 