[Cloren]

The activity levels in this forum is getting worse and worse. It already hit a big decline in 2016 and now it feels like a waste land. In 2017 we had a lot of new members but from 2018 onwards I have barely see any new member. I genuinely feel 2019 is the least active year in this forum since I’ve joined. I wonder if an admin can confirm this. That’s why @cmchelsea didn’t host the 2018 newcomer of the year and it looks to have the same fate this year unfortunately.

I guess the current tennis state doesn’t really help much. I wonder how TF is doing

 

[upriser7]

I don't think it has anything to do with current tennis state...lot of forums slowly become inactive after a certain point of time...I think the biggest reasons for decline are - that password issue in 2016, decline of Big4 in last few years, tennis twitter. Tennis twitter is pretty active and I feel like lot of people these days prefer to use twitter than forums for posting/discussing about a topic.

 

[Cloren]

I don't think it has anything to do with current tennis state...lot of forums slowly become inactive after a certain point of time...I think the biggest reasons for decline are - that password issue in 2016, decline of Big4 in last few years, tennis twitter. Tennis twitter is pretty active and I feel like lot of people these days prefer to use twitter than forums for posting/discussing about a topic.

Twitter is active but is full of toxic people. Desperate to find conspiracy theories. Full of gays fanboying on a players looks and zero tennis insight. MTF trolls are honestly a lot better than the guys you see on Twitter.

There is also a lot stat padding which is interesting to see at first but when it’s constantly repeated it gets a bit tiring. Fed fans are most guilty of this. And ofc NoleFam keep shoving their made up stats under our throats too

 

[Fargif]

The decline is simple. For a simple tennis fan to come in here and talk tennis without beeing labeled and a Tard is hard. Now if he is a fed fan then he has more friendly partners. But still has to deal with Rafa and Noles camp.

IF hes a Nole or Rafa fan then the Fedfans will all but cruxifie him. I dont have a problem with a good argument. But when they cross certai lines im gone.

Who wants to deal with this type of abuse? Ive been here last few years mainly for Suicide. But even tghere the cheating and disregar of the rules has gone to shit.

Like i said a few posts ago. In a way cant wait for the big 3 to retire so some of these so called fans can die irrelevant.

 

[Chris Kuerten]

Yeah a match like Thiem - Federer yesterday would have spawned five simultaneous match threads before, now I strolled onto MTF five minutes after the match and had to create one myself

On the bright side, this might inspire us to do something more useful with our lives than watch a bunch of clowns hit tennis balls

 

[Fargif]

Yeah a match like Thiem - Federer yesterday would have spawned five simultaneous match threads before, now I strolled onto MTF five minutes after the match and had to create one myself

On the bright side, this might inspire us to do something more useful with our lives than watch a bunch of clowns hit tennis balls

If you like tennis like me then one can watch tennis but doesnt need to come here and get bombarded with the same old arguments from rival fanbase.

 

[Joe Speedboot]

If what you all are saying is true then how in earth could you keep up with everything here. Even just a bit. And was it just more quantity or also higher quality?

 

[Supercell]

What is more, MTF is losing its star power. Pepita is gone, Boss is gone, Slade disappeared. It's like tennis without Big3.

 

[guitarra]

Guys, maybe instead of complaining we should try to come up with ideas how to promote MTF, gain more new members and give it second life?

The potential is still huge but my impression is many potential fans haven’t even heard of MTF...

For example: TTW has more members while MTF has GOAT games section, TTW doesn’t even come close in that department...

 

[Ilkae]

If what you all are saying is true then how in earth could you keep up with everything here. Even just a bit. And was it just more quantity or also higher quality?

What is more, MTF is losing its star power. Pepita is gone, Boss is gone, Slade disappeared. It's like tennis without Big3.

Connected points. If more activity meant more so flame wars, what is/was truly lost... Losing posters whose existence is mainly based on fanboy battles changes the makeup of the forum and weeds out space for game related discussion. Is related to how the forum will appear to people popping by for the first time / what's the content... Who / which kind of posters will it appeal to...

 

[Joe Speedboot]

For me the activity here is good as it is. But this is purely me preaching my own case. I have a fairly busy life and because of that already feel I miss a great deal of talk that goes around here. I try/tried to play tennis elbow next to it on here because I really like it. But that already became more extra time next to checking GM and other non tennis reads.

Next I tried to get involved into the maffia game here which once again is really cool. But that completely took whay too much time reading up on everything for me. Kuddos for the guys playing that game.

What I'm saying is that this forum is already busy enough for somebody like me. And I'm even somebody with 5000+ posts in two years, so I'm not what you call an inactive member.

So if it's a matter a quantity I'm glad maybe that I didn't see the busy times of years past. Quality will always be debatable. I like a lot of posters on here. Read good insightful posts. And the trolls never bother me. If I find myself at a point that some internet troll can bother me I have some soul searching to do in my life.

For me this is a good place and don't see myself leaving. But yeah maybe we should try to steal some members from TTW

 

[64794]

Yeah a match like Thiem - Federer yesterday would have spawned five simultaneous match threads before, now I strolled onto MTF five minutes after the match and had to create one myself

On the bright side, this might inspire us to do something more useful with our lives than watch a bunch of clowns hit tennis balls

Haha, exactly.

 

[Budadiii]

definitely feels bad...

mods banned a lot of people of late, some lively rafa fans like tvipos for example.

 

[cmchelsea]

The activity levels in this forum is getting worse and worse. It already hit a big decline in 2016 and now it feels like a waste land. In 2017 we had a lot of new members but from 2018 onwards I have barely see any new member. I genuinely feel 2019 is the least active year in this forum since I’ve joined. I wonder if an admin can confirm this. That’s why @cmchelsea didn’t host the 2018 newcomer of the year and it looks to have the same fate this year unfortunately.

I guess the current tennis state doesn’t really help much. I wonder how TF is doing

Well I'm probably less active now than before, but it does feel like it's less active in general these days. 2016 was indeed declining and 2017 increased slightly, the way I see it Djokovic and Murray dominating had something to do with it, these are very popular players in UK/Serbia of course, but worldwide they don't have nearly the same support as Fedal. Now 2017 we had a bit of a wave of new members, most of them I can think of support Federer or Nadal and it was during a time when they both had a bit of a resurgence, if Djokovic and Murray had kept dominating tennis in 2017 would we see this resurgence on MTF? Who knows but honestly when Federer and Nadal hang it up for good the activity around here will drop like a stone.

As far as MTF next gen goes, it'll come back this year and 2018 posters will be eligible as well as this year obviously, its maybe better to happen every 2 years tbh, cancelling it last year was not something I wanted to do really, I was still keen, it was like you said more to do with the decline of the place rather than lack of interest on my part.

Personally I think 2014 was the best year for newcomers

 

[Alex999]

I don't know the stats but I do know a couple of things. Let's go.

We lost too many good old members even great trolls. They were funny.

I was banned for a 2 weeks for posting something in the ruin threads I thought. Well, it wasn't there apparently. Second red card in 12 years :nerd:. So, you can't even joke any more. The mod who did it is some young kid who joined the board much later than me. OK, i said whatever. He said 'well, you can complain if you wish'. I'm not in a freaking court. Simply silly. So, if I say something stupid next time I'll be banned :surprise:. The mod says red cards do not expire. Well, when I look at my profile my old red cards expired. So, which one is it?

I'm good with all tennis fans. I tend to be very sarcastic sometimes and I joke a lot. I'm good with Fed fans, Rafa fans and many other fans. When I see something stupid I do react regardless who you are supporting :grin2:.

I'm, personally against bans in general unless someone really goes over the board. People are too sensitive nowadays.

MTF members are pretty good at recognizing who is trolling deliberately, who is joking etc. I hope we get some answers from Admins and Mods here. Hello bosses :angel2::bigwave:

 

[Yuma]

I lurked here in 2015/16 but didn't make an account until 2017... so I can't really know exactly how it was before these years but I can tell it was clearly a lot more active. Forums on the whole are not the place people go these days, with lots of social media sites like Twitter and Reddit providing similar platforms for discussion I think a lot of younger people especially don't use a traditional forum like this at all, for any topic of discussion.

Just looking though, even in this thread, how many people did join in 2017 (like a third of the posters so far) it shows there is still possibilities for new surges of members. I think it more likely relies on what happens in the sport though rather than anything this website can do to increase the amount of new users. It's not anywhere near dead here though. Still plenty of posts and topics and even if this is a decline there is clearly still an active community here.

I don't think losing blatant trolls makes a difference. Many of them are on the ignore lists of active users anyway, certainly on mine. If they are willing to display tennis knowledge they might get a pass and not be ignored so much but some of them don't even do that and tbh people don't come here looking for cool trolls, they'd go 4chan or some place if they wanted that so badly. They come here for tennis, so its more important to have people talking about tennis than keeping some trolls around.

 

[abraxas21]

When the moderation team begins acting like the Gestapo and when everything that made the site unique in terms of its open tennis discussion without fear of getting infracted and banned has been progressively eradicated, then you can understand why MTF is going down the gutter.

At this point the site is barely distinguisheable from Tennis Forum.

 

[ant131531]

TTW is a lot more active these days, especially with American tennis fans. A lot of people have probably slowly migrated there. There and Reddit.

 

[Bella&Mirka]

I actually prefer MTF to TTW. Just too many smartasses on there, whereas I feel this forum is improving thanks to increased banning of trolls. Quality over quantity. Probably a lot of new users in previous years were just double accounts anyway. I agree though, when the Big 3 retire this place aswell as tennis in general could slide into the wastelands.

 

[davsmi]

Yep twitter and instagram are the place now. All forums, not only MTF, are in a decline. You are far more likely to spend time at a multipurpose platform like twitter or instagram than a a single purpose forum. But I love MTF :inlove: