This surge or any other historical surge is unsustainable, for a few reasons.
Our website has little to offer. Unlike surfing Reddit/Youtube/DouYin, you get far less dopamine surfing this site. On the contrast, you may even get frustrated some time by the annoying white screen / response time and get tired when reading some few long articles. Most of the recent posts are fragmented information or personal feelings / complaints that is boring and of little meaning to viewers other than the authors, or maybe even the authors.
Any publicity or reference elsewhere attracts the same group of people and the same persons. Human like novelty, that’s why we have surges here. But the passion turns into boredom quickly and inevitably as we have little to stimulate users’ dopamine.
Users failed to make friends with other users in real life. We have no off-line activities to help users bond and know each other. And actually there is no place for this website if two want to bond.(why don’t I use other handy IM software)
But, this doesn’t mean there no meaning for the operator to spend hundreds of dollars a year for the infrastructure and several hours to maintain this platform. I believe there must be something meaningful and informative that can be distilled. So let’s accept this normal level of inactivity and use it whatever you want as long as it is permittable by law and ToS.
Because plain and ordinary is life, I place my hopes on grandeur, yet I am deeply entrenched in a quiet corner. Every day I am fixing the ugly code I wrote the day before.
We must imagine that meaninglessness is the foundation of meaning, just as we must imagine that plainness is the foundation of liveliness and prosperity, because otherwise we would suffer a mental breakdown. We must imagine, that every single step counts，that all our effort accumulate and forge itself into something,that after a seemingly endless and fruitless enduring of loneliness and solitude a certain someone will finally walk into our lives…
I’d like to know why an anonymous moderator/admin uses English always, and whether user(s) behind the account are identical. Is OP a native English speaker? How does he/she read most of Chinese contents?
Is it a dual‑use account? For example, I can now reply anonymously. But last time I sent a private message to @anonymous_coward, I also received a reply. So does this mean the account is used by an individual and also serves as a public anonymous account?
Not so; it seems to be related to the size of the user base, even to how closely users communicate, whether they are familiar with each other. For example, water sources have many diary towers; if people can chat together they can build thousands of layers.
Can you tell at a glance that the English was written by a non‑native speaker, so now I let GPT revise each short passage I write to make it smoother.
There is a point worth noting but often overlooked: language comes before writing; writing is merely a tool to record language. Therefore, even in written language, word choice should aim for phonetic smoothness, since reading text also involves mentally voicing it. Especially for a language like English, which has many consonants, a non‑smooth flow when read aloud can cause the tongue to get tangled, and a non‑smooth text is likely to tangle the mind.
Only then do I understand that simplicity and composure are the truth
Looking back again, my heart remains unchanged
Looking back again, it feels like a dream
You’re right. Although I really like this forum format, the current number of users is still insufficient to sustain a vibrant community. Every time I open it there are few updates; many posts are diary‑style interactions among acquaintances, and I don’t see much potential for expansion. Moreover, the user profile within the forum has a clear bias, as some have pointed out.
Regarding the third point, I tried adding friends directly to chat, but the other party said it wasn’t appropriate and suggested chatting within the forum instead. It’s a bit of a pity; perhaps deep relationships aren’t easy to build that way.
Normal life has its own meaning. I would prefer a typical life, rather than fantastic adventures or unrealistic daydreams. Sometimes I even wonder, why there are so many people, who would prefer unstable adventures without cherishing people surrounding them. For me, from my own personality, I would prefer alone or small community rather than developing complicate social connections with strangers. Building a high quality discourse is not contradict with having only a little number of participants.
In fact, from my own perspective, there will only be 2 ways to make a discourse to prevail. First by authoritarian, introducing the officials to promote this discourse as the ONLY LEGAL BBS in the campus. Second by sensational, attracting contents. But both ways will severely downgrade the quality of the contents which a discourse provides, since the former will severly impact the creativity of the content-providers and the latter will cripple critical thinkings, with tensions, chaos and argues permeate inside each corners. That’s why I chose to retreat and cancel from shuiyuan BBS, since I cannot find a quiet place to produce my own thoughts while exchanging my ideas with few others.
Of course this is only my own opinion, and I am always enthusiastic and ready to give my full support to develop here better.
