Where has the Off-Topic community gone?

I feel like a shark in an aquarium in the new forum. Initially, it is very crowded but now it is boring like a shark in the aquarium- not enough space to move

Where has the Off-Topic community gone?
Long time passing.
Where has the Off-Topic community gone?
Long time ago.
Where has the Off-Topic community gone?
The girls have picked them every one.
Oh, When will you ever learn?
Oh, When will you ever learn?

@Raspberry_yoghurt said in #22:
> Where has the Off-Topic community gone?
> Long time passing.
> Where has the Off-Topic community gone?
> Long time ago.
> Where has the Off-Topic community gone?
> The girls have picked them every one.
> Oh, When will you ever learn?
> Oh, When will you ever learn?

I like it ! , a bit of tongue in cheek humour related to the original post ! lol ;)

@AaronNZ said in #1:
> i'm not that guy to quote a long text and just make you guys scroll past it :)

I miss finding old forum posters that i recognized. i remember following a few forum posters and them following me back just so we could respond to each other. no words exchanged, just happened.

@teachmewell said in #8:
> I guess I am one of the new guys, how were the 'old' ?
> Is it a matter people like us can tackle? ...
We need to bring Lichess new like the old times. You need to bring Lichess new like the old times.

I was never in the original one, but I was posting here for the last few days and here is some song following the description of the forum in the beginning of this thread.

Verse 1:
Do you remember when we used to post
On the Off-Topic forum, we loved the most
The threads were active, the chats were long
We talked about everything, right or wrong

Chorus:
But now the place is quiet, the silence lingers on
Where has the Off-Topic community gone?
The laughter and the jokes, the memories we made
It's all in the past, and the memories fade

Verse 2:
We used to share our chess games and our lives
The good and bad, the lows and highs
We had our own inside jokes and memes
We were a family, or so it seemed

Chorus:
But now the place is quiet, the silence lingers on
Where has the Off-Topic community gone?
The laughter and the jokes, the memories we made
It's all in the past, and the memories fade

Bridge:
Maybe we've all moved on, to a different place
Or maybe we've lost touch, and lost our pace
But the memories we made, will always stay
In our hearts, they'll never fade away

Chorus:
But now the place is quiet, the silence lingers on
Where has the Off-Topic community gone?
The laughter and the jokes, the memories we made
It's all in the past, and the memories fade

Outro:
So here's to the Off-Topic community, we loved and lost
The memories we shared, no matter the cost
We'll always be grateful, for the times we had
And hope one day, we'll find each other again.

I've been posting in the forum since about August of 2010. Took a year off recently, but I like doing it, so I'm back. - :]

Anyone else find it funny that so many people attribute the decline in lichess forum quality to the end of the COVID lockdown?

As I remember it, the forums went to hell when a bunch of the wee ones found themselves with too much time on their hands as a result of schools switching to online classes. A bunch of these kids thought it would be fun to use the lichess forums as a sort of group chat with their friends and spammed the living daylights out of it. There are always a couple of kids who don't know how a forum works and uses it to make posts like "lol" or "what does ____ mean", or shanghai conversations, but during the dark days, This annoyed a good number of the old guard into either leaving for more discussion grounds, or getting chatbanned after fighting with the kids.

Then most of those kids either went back to school or began using TikTok. A couple of them stayed, but they've pretty much learned the error of their ways.

If you don't believe that the COVID days weren't exactly golden, feel free to compare mid-Covid threads to present day threads by using my handy lCSI tool, detailed here: lichess.org/forum/off-topic-discussion/who-are-your-favorite-forum-posters?page=3#27

@AaronNZ said in #1:
> I remember when users would remember other users' names and would form a type of friendship with each other. The thread activity would be much more active and the most recent post would only be 2-3 minutes ago, not like now, where the most recent post is like 20 minutes ago and the one before that was 1-2 hours ago.
>
> I guess people came together during the lockdown period and socialised on Lichess but now as restrictions have been released people are starting to return to OTB and coming back every few weeks or even months to see how things are going.
> It's pretty hard to explain because when I was at the peak of playing online chess the community would be buzzing with people.
> New topics would be receiving replies and comments within seconds or minutes. When Lichess posted a new blog and it said "Comment in the forum" The place would be flooded with comments and reactions, users would rush there just to get the "first" comment and then get backlashed which was pretty funny haha.
>
> Oh yes, and we cannot forget those times when @MrPushwood posted something hilarious and kids would be spamming his post with the laughing emoji
>
> Thanks for the good times people :)

Bunch of people come here from facebook thinking that this is the new facebook.
Their contribution to discussion is zero, their topic causes zero interest, only think they do is trying hard to look cool and flooding the forum with bullshits. What a pity.