I was thinking how quiet the forum have gone compared to earlier, so I went and did some very rough statistics. I estimated the number of threads on the F16 forum here each year. I spent only 5 minutes on this so there are some significant uncertainties here..
However, I think it is very clear that activity have dropped significantly.. Looks like discussions and interest on the forum peaked in 2007 and have dropped since.
Now why is that? I have some opinions but would like to hear others opinions.
E.g. Hans Klok just announced three championship bids for the europeans next year. No replies, no discussion, no interest..
I'm thinking that back in 2007, the class was growing/expanding with several new designs coming to market?
And maybe there was some extra buzz with the Alter Cup being sailed on a F16, and the US Economy had not fully hit bottom (has it yet?) or at least not gone as low as it is today, so perhaps there was more interest from more people, (people with jobs), than there is in 2011?
And on the European Championship input...well...most of the people on this board are in the US...?
by looking at those old threads, most traffic came from the southern hemisphere and europe. The US started to generate real traffic in 2005 I would say.
The class is still growing in the number of boats. But activity on this forum is way down.
Rolf, forum activity is down across all of the forums (I suspect). It may be that people have grown bored with the pointless sh!t storms that appeared to be the norm for a while (and yes I was very much a part of that).
I wouldn't be hasty to draw any conclusions related to forum activity and class interested. For example the F18 forum has to be one of the least active on this site yet class interest and numbers are up, and the same thing can be said for the F16 class. It could be more people are doing it instead of just talking about it :-)
"Do or do not. There is no try." - Yoda "Excuses are the tools of the weak and incompetent" - Two sista's I overheard in the hall "You don't have to be a brain surgeon to be a complete idiot, but it helps"
Rolf, I think the F16 class was still unknown in the beginning and a lot of questions came on what the class was by people googling. I think today the class is more know and less questions might occur?
The questions should come from leisure or racers looking for trim questions, etc. but I don't think the F16 is like the F18 on that topic, so less questions are posed.
And ofcourse some of the die hard posters have left or are busy with other stuff at the moment.
I think the F16 class was still unknown in the beginning and a lot of questions came on what the class was by people googling. I think today the class is more know and less questions might occur?
That is not how I remember it from "back then" and not what I found when counting threads today. Might be wrong of course.
I also think the now absent "die hard" posters make a significant difference.
How does your statistics correlate to the direct involvement of Wouter?....Love him or hate him he interjected the F16 concept in any and every topic that came up on the multitude of Catsailor forums. No one else has carried on that level of passion for the F16 class.
It is funny that no one seems to want to mention his name....kind of like saying beetle juice three times would make him appear...WOUTER...WOUTER...WOUTER...ha!