Now, now.
The reason this sort of bothers me is that since after the Restoration (after the take-down in April, which lasted for six weeks), while viewship has increased by leaps and bounds--it's way way way up, visitors lurking here; it's grown stratospherically--participation by members has actually declined considerably.
conservativecave has become a snapshot of America--fewer people producing more, and more people freeloading (i.e., not joining and participating).
I dunno why this is, and I'd like to figure out why.
I'd say its a few things -
- Obviously, the downtime played a major role in the drop in participation. It 'broke our stride' - and even though I did manage to salvage damn near everything, six weeks on the internet may as well be six years.
- If you look back at the posting history, you'll notice that The Cave rides a four year wave - it follows the run-up to the Presidential elections. Sadly, Obama winning a second term took the wind out of many of our sails. Different people cope with loss differently. Some took it badly and left - others took a break from The Cave and returned, while others picked up and carried on. With that being said - I suspect that if the 2014 Elections go as well as many believe they will - posting here will pick back up as a result.
- Every day there are more conservative sites on the internet - there was a time when the only real conservative site was Free Republic. Now there are hundreds of them, many of which are good quality sites. - which for The Cave's daily post totals isn't great, but for conservatism as a whole, its fantastic. - It's another one of the differences between conservatives and libs. We view most of the other conservative sites as allies instead of competitors and welcome them - whereas liberals compete with each other - each declaring superiority. Consider our relationship with CU, and compare DU's relationship with Daily KOS.
Anyway, that's my take on it. I view the sharp downturn in posts as a temporary condition.
-As for the ginormous increase in views, that is partly my doing. I
HEAVILY promote every site I host. (or should I say, the server is set up to do that for me)