I’m finding it a little disheartening how dead the boards are now… four years ago (or even two) this place was booming. It’s almost always empty now. 
Who all is still here?
Think of it this way. As time goes on, we all grow up and take on different interests and responsibilities. We all grow up. And eventually lose interest in coming back to PP altogether. I know i took a little bit of a hiatus with school and work. But now adays, my office job gives me a little time to browse the boards to post a little and clean up spam before i get back to work.
I asked the same question when I joined a year ago. Like TSS said, many users have real life commitments that prevent them from constantly posting on PP. Sure there are some sparks in activity such as the Toy Story 4 announcement but many users must have moved on.
If it helps, I’m still here and I don’t plan on leaving any time soon. 
Hey, I’m the one who’s been visiting very frequently in these boards for the last 2 years or so now, mainly that of after my graduation from high school.
I think a big part of that is when Pixar Planet was really booming, I’d say almost everyone was in the age range close to 16-20 years old. I think everyone was pretty much growing up around the same time, and thus all got new commitments and such around the same time as well.
If you think the boards are dead now you should have been here when Inside Out was still far away. Back then it was regular to go literally days without a single post.
As sad as this sounds, people grow up and move on. It’s not me trying to be pessimistic, it’s just unrealistic to really expect there to be as much activity now as there was in the golden days, despite how much we may want it.
Another factor to take into consideration is the fact that, simply put, we aren’t really living in the age of message boards anymore. Which isn’t to say they’re outdated by any means, but really, we’re more in the social networking era now. Social networking is just a more convenient tool with which to put out content, and that can’t really be argued. However, I mourn this because message boards will always be something special, something untouchable when it comes to most forms of social networking. The community aspect isn’t the same on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, and neither is the communication. It’s not as formal to start an in-depth discussion on the characters of The Incredibles or some other particular topic on such places, for example. That’s why forums are so neat… they readily provide you with the means to discuss any specific subject you want.
I personally don’t plan on ever abandoning this site, but really, it’s just unrealistic for me to be on it as much as I was when I was 13 and had all the free time in the world to be talking about how much Up means to me. (Which it still does btw!) At present, I’m 18 and trying to get my life together, and the fact that there’s decreased activity in general on here from all the users kind of makes my interest in the site wane. That’s only a given.
So, although I would never suggest that users stop trying to keep the site active, I will say that this is probably just how it’s going to be. Inside Out’s release sparked a good wave of activity but the community element is not there, and at the end of the day it just doesn’t matter very much if you have a lot on your mind about a film and want to discuss it if there’s hardly anyone to discuss it with.
Yeah, I know I was one of the ones to abandon the site. I mean, after the end of February 2012 to February 2013, I didn’t post. It really does correlate with life. That year was my junior/senior year of high school and I just never found time to post. That post-Cars 2 era really killed the site for a lot of people. A lot of negativity radiated and I noticed a lot of high profile members just up and leaving. Even now, there’s just so many other forms of getting your message out there. I mostly use Twitter to interact with the Pixar community because it’s far more active over there. So, will we ever see a time like the summers of 2010 and 2011? Probably not. But I hope that, with the success of Inside Out, the site can maybe be more than just Toy Story collectors sheltered in their little area and literally nothing else.
I’ve been visiting but I haven’t been posting much as of late…on account of my boring job that’s stressing me out right now.
evspixarfan: We miss you. Hope your job doesn’t stress you out too much.
Okay…sorry I’m late for saying this, but…my job hasn’t been stressing me out anymore as of late…I quit last fall.
Good for you! 
I say if you don’t like your job (or any aspect of your life for that matter) then change it! A few months ago I had a new manager take over and she employed so many new people and I felt so uncomfortable (as I always do with change) but now I get along with pretty much everyone 
Back to this topic - because it seem rather prescient today.
I joined about a week ago, and since then I’ve made around 50-60% of all the posts in the last week on here. The rest have been contributed by the above two users (around 30% and 15% respectively), with 3 from Drumatic and one from TSS.
Oh - and I’m forgetting - a couple of spam posts advertising kitchenware installations in Rochdale.
It’s come to the point where there as many bots as regular members online when the forum is busiest. Since the heady days of 450 members at once and visits by Andrew Stanton, the forum has deteriorated enough for it to reach the state of having only 2 of us on yesterday (myself and Ami) and only 3 today.
This isn’t the only forum where this has happened/is happening. If a core of people set up a forum, then when they move on, so does the board. We need new blood - so many regulars appear to have grown out of it, and people aren’t signing up anymore because this has become such a desert.
Finding Dory hasn’t done much to rectify this. Toy Story 4 probably won’t either. Many people said that they felt disenfranchised with Pixar when that movie was announced, which may have something to do with the lengthy list of forum exoduses (exodi?). But, in any case, there’s not much we can do to keep this forum going.
So it might be good to think about the next course of action for Pixar Planet.
My thoughts are:
-
Reach out to another Pixar forum. Specifically, the Pixar Post. The Pixar Post is flagging badly too, but it does seem to have a slightly younger membership. A merger would create a single Pixar forum and give us the strength of two of them.
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Appoint a new moderator. Not myself, but someone more experienced who can take more of a leadership role while many of the old ‘regulars’ are away.
-
That’s all I got, really.
So, basically, we’re dead. We survived, but we’re dead…
So the spammers are back again. sighs
The last 4 users to sign up have all been advertising this website. These are the only updates that these forums get now. Spammers. And none of these have been banned yet.
-asmorbegovoc
-eduardozono
-capaneh
-phdtd
I can’t help but notice a pattern with people coming here and really wanting to try and stir up conversation but they’re pretty much the only ones there.
I did it (I think. Fuzzy memory).
Space Sheriff (I guess he isn’t around anymore) did it.
Now Wee Dingwall.
I honestly don’t know why Pixar forums (it’s not just this one; I’m on another, and it has more traffic than this but it’s still one of the quieter forums I’m apart of) are all such small communities. I was so sure when I went looking for a forum that I’d find a bustling community or two.
Maybe this forum is kind of its own worst enemy. You find a forum that’s pretty much a ghost town, you don’t normally bother to sign up. Those that do end up eventually give up or at least severely lower their activity level because there’s only so much you can do to try and revive the place.
And yeah, the spambots are bad. It’s gotten to the point where whenever I see a new post has shown up in a sub-forum if I don’t immediately recognize the username I presume it’s a spammer. I think the problem with those is that Star Swordsman is the only even remotely active moderator (as far as I know).
I think you’re right. And yeah, I’ve just flagged up another spammer - by the name of cuscus. It’s funny that it’s actually got to the point where we’re only getting spammers from one site.
What’s the name of the other Pixar forum you’re on, BTW?
Pixar Post Forum.
Quiet now, but it actually gets a decent amount of activity closer to releases. Or, at the very least more than here.
(I use a different username there, for the record.)
I’m one of them 
It’s for nostalgia’s sake, really. And it’s all in vain. I just miss the old days. I wish so bad for just 1 old member to come across here again and see that I’ve been posting a lot lately and they be like oh look- it’s Ami! Haven’t heard from her in a few years, I should totally reconnect with her!" . Like that’s ever going to happen!
You would have done 6 years ago. I wish I could turn back the clock for you, Wee Dingwall and [b] evspixarfan2012 [b] to then, you all would have had a whale of a time meeting and talking to so many members. Some of which have met in real life because of this place. There was a solid community element, and they all felt like family.
Same. They usually have really strange usernames, all lower case letters and some don’t even form proper words. Just like spam, of course.
And as for the Pixar Post forum, I checked it out a couple of hours ago and I’m not sure about it. There doesn’t seem to be as much content there and isn’t as well set out as this place. But that’s me, and this place is familiar. Almost like home (or at least it was).
Maybe it’s because Pixar Post was only started while I was in high school like this place was started while I was attending Eastern? And of course they’re better known for the blog posts. I follow a lot of other Pixar sites while going under the username Pix-Cali-Tropic. And I’m a frequent to those places…yes, including here. By the way, Biggest_Pixar_Fan_Ami, in case you didn’t see my join date I’ve only been here for like, 4-and-a-half years now. I think the whole place was sort of a bit more active back when I first joined…but I got in a hiatus for a while during the course of my high school senior year and thus, offically returned again at some point after graduation, only to face an unceratinty from time to time but that didn’t stop me from still coming here every once in a while, and even more so here these days!