Open up the Forums

+1 for me, Allen!  Where have all the Forumites gone?  The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind...

Allen, I totally agree with you.

I prefer the older format, which I found easier to read.  The biggest issue to me, though, is that there is no ability to communicate with the authors of the workouts.  When I started, swimdogs was the guy doing basic training.  He was great about answering any questions.  Now I don't know how to interpret something, and there is no way to find out.

But yes, I come here less frequently.  I think traffic drives traffic, as well.

Concur.

Dan

I think the reason why the forum was so popular in the late 1990's was because it was the only communication chat exchange going at the time. There was no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc and USMS swimmers seem to navigate to those social mediums. Plus, with all the other swim forums that were not around plus the swimming podcasts that have started and getting very popular have an effect of reduced activity on the USMS forums. I see a lot of people through the years that were very active on the USMS forums going to those other social media platforms. For me, social media platforms reach a wider audience, and you can also connect with non-members of USMS. 

If other forms of social media were available back when the forums started, we really don't know if we would have had that increased activity. I remember that the forum activity started to drop off when other social mediums were getting very popular. Back in the day we had so much activity that you had too not miss a week's activity because if you did, you had a lot of catching up to do with the interesting activity that was going on. I am not sure if including non-members would make a difference right now for increased activity. The time it takes to view podcasts and be involved in many forums has that effect because people only have so much time in there day to be involved in these activities.