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.
-
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!
Great posts from you guys.
Well, there’s still a few of us around at least…
Yeah, I saw it. It also states it in your username 
By the looking back over the forum I could tell that when you joined it was still a lot busier than it is now. I took leave in 2011 due to personal/family issues and didn’t return til last year. But what I meant in my last post was that 2010 was the golden year for activity around here. I was lucky to join when I did, really. You would have loved it then. Still, I’m glad you and some other members are around now
Well, the spammers have really come back with a vengeance. sighs
I’ve just reported around 10 different spammers. All have posted since yesterday.
I’ve just spotted that one of the spammers is called donaldtrump 
Quite fitting, really…
Yeah, i seem to be the only moderator around. honestly, i browse every now and then to see how things are and to rid spammers, but keep in mind that sometimes i wont get to them right away. But i will get to them.
A part of me feels that forums are a bit harder to keep relatively active since you have a larger length of time to reply to an earlier conversation. With a smaller forum like PP, most of its members have grown up with the site yet have to move onto real-life commitments. I kind of stopped logging in since I mainly hung out in the Toy Story section which hasn’t seen actual activity in months and didn’t find anything interesting to contribute. Granted, I still lurk on this website but I never found a bigger incentive to continually log on.
It’s kind of ironic when even the “where is everyone?” thread hasn’t been updated in 2 years
but it’s pretty indicative of the rest of the site…
I know I disappeared kind of involuntarily, I forgot my password and couldn’t get a new one emailed to me because our local email addresses were tied to our cable company in town and that keeps changing so we end up getting a new email address every 2 years or so… I haven’t been able to access the email I have connected to this account in YEARS. But I got on the other day (almost exactly 3 years after my last log in) and my laptop decided to remember my password so I was able to get on. I’ve seen evidence that others had similar problems, forgotten passwords, malfunctioning logins, lots of spam bot issues.
The really sad part is when I find threads where the last post was ME, over three years ago, and no one ever responded again.
But I’m planning on being around every few days for a bit, and I saw a recent post from a Mod so there’s still someone lurking around!
Aww, this thread makes me so sad! I’ve been feeling incredibly nostalgic lately. Like most of you all, I also miss the days when we had lots of vibrant discussion happening. I know there are still places out there where that still happens and it just kinda makes me a little discouraged that we aren’t still a kicking community like we used to be.
To be honest, I think a lot of the decline came from the fact that a large portion of our original userbase left around the same time due to the fact that we were graduating from high school, moving on to university, or getting jobs, married, etc. So we couldn’t devote the time to the site like we used to. I know that’s the case for most of our mods as well, since I still stay connected with a few of them on other social media sites. The mods really were the backbone of the community back when it was hoppin’, and I think not having a mod presence like we used to also contributed to the decline in activity, unfortunately.
I would love to see this place make a comeback, as I’m sure there’s many Pixar fans out there who would love to connect and have discussion about all the new and awesome stuff the studio is putting out.
little chef
Well, considering the other day when I checked there were something like 64 people online (me, the google and yahoo bots, and 61 guests) I’d say SOMEONE out there is still getting on here, so we’re not totally abandoned by the general internet, people are still finding us.
Edit: I just checked and there’s 74 people on the board, me, GoogleBot, and 72 guests. (I feel like I should start saying hi to the GoogleBot, GoogleBot is always here)
I think the dropoff has a lot to do with the unfortunate decline of the internet forum itself. I used to be an active member in several messaging boards related to my interests (though none really to the extent of PP) and it seems to be a general trend in the past few years. Boards like this used to be the go-to place for discussion about niche interests but with the rise of social media and sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, even Facebook groups, things have really start to move away from that model. Corporations started realizing that there’s a ton of value in collecting data, which really kicked off the de-anonymization of how we interact online.
You guys will probably remember a window starting in the mid-2000s with the increasing accessibility of the internet and ending in the mid-2010s with the rise of social media where people really flocked to forums. Targeted advertising wasn’t really a concept yet so you could remain anonymous and pretty much lead a separate internet life. That’s why so many of us members who were active were all about the same age. Now we’re in our 20s and busy with boring adult stuff. There was really only a brief window of a few years where enough people were visiting here to grow it into a thriving community, which became perfect refuge for those of us with active imaginations weathering the turbulence of growing up. The golden age around 2010-2011 really showed that.
Now most websites require linking to your Facebook or Google account to sign up and it’s difficult to do anything on the internet without leaving a digital footprint. It’s a great tragedy that the idea of the small, self-sufficient online community is becoming history, and I really hope as we move forward we don’t forget the time when it was possible to visit a website and see the same familiar usernames every day. God knows the countless hours I’ve spent refreshing threads for that next exciting reply in some fun debate about the latest movie. Or formatting BBCode, squinting at the monospaced post I was typing until I went cross-eyed. Reading fanfiction and discussing what could be next in the canon. Staying up late for movie nights and Chat-O-Ramas. Being accepted by this great community in my roughest years and making friends, some who I’ve stayed in touch with outside PP and others who’ve disappeared and I miss dearly.
For anyone here still reading this, I hope you’re doing well. This was an important place in my life. We had a pretty good run.
-Ding
[size=85]PS: If we ever talked, feel free to PM me to stay in touch on FB.[/size]
Six years since I’ve joined the forums today, and I hardly log in anymore due to lack of activity…I just don’t know if I want to keep going by evspixarfan2012 here…I mean, I’ve had a few other usernames over on Twitter and DeviantArt, but none of them have worked out…and I’m afraid that this one’s no longer working out for me, either…
But not to worry, though…I’ll still be here from time to time…it’s just I won’t be logging in…I’d change my username if I could, but according to the rules, I can’t…and with Incredibles 2 on the way (plus that upcoming new Pixar Pier attraction), I feel as if now’s the time for me to correct some of my previous mistakes which I have made in the past…the result being, eventually, that I will not only have changed, in terms of being more active within the fandom itself…but that my profile accounts elsewhere are slowly set up, to the point where I will soon have found a perfect username, to suit me all perfectly well and whatnot…
And hopefully, with whatever username I come up with next on any of those accounts…be it on Twitter and/or DeviantArt, for example…if all goes well then I will not need to start over again, like I have done a few other times in the past year or so…for as the 100-day mark fast approaches, in the one-year final countdown for Incredibles 2 (and with that same 100-day mark being only 3 days away as I am typing this right now)…to those of you who have followed me elsewhere, back when I used to go by either Pix-Cali-Tropic, PixarFanGirlForever, and/or 4ever-a-Pixar-girl, I no longer go by any of these usernames…but the next one, will eventually be revealed later on in the year, and with it I hope to eventually be able to stay for good…and be more active, wherever else in the fandom you all go nowadays.
NOTE: I apologize if some of what I just said over here didn’t make sense, and I also apologize if you didn’t understand any of this. But a lot has changed for me in the past six years, and especially within the past year itself some other things have also changed fast for me as well. I’m very excited for Incredibles 2 and I want to be a lot more active in the fandom, but I really need a different username–one that I won’t ever change again–especially on Twitter and DeviantArt, or wherever else I can also find you again. Thanks for six years of all the fun here, guys!**