The hardest question of all... how do you get new users?

I was browsing this 9 year old topic for ideas, when I realized that getting new users is not a question for me.

My forum has been quiet for two years. No ONE posted anything. The negligent admin (= me) didn't even bother to upgrade it. NEVERTHELESS, every now and then someone signed up.
I got an email from someone who was unable to register, which was a wake-up call, because there was a whole bunch of registrations waiting for me to activate. My forum was dead and people still wanted to sign up.

How to get new users is not the hardest question.
Harder than 'the hardest question of all' is this one: how do you encourage new users to start posting? And even harder: how do you encourage them to stay active?

Oh, and I realize that abandoning your own forum may not be the most effective strategy I really hate to tell you this, but forums are dying these days..

You could chalk that up to the collective IQ dropping, no interest, or whatever, but it's true.
Personally I only check in every few years, but I have no interest in solving problems for people who think Windows 10 is a good thing.
Trading anything away, is a bad trade.. Freedom for security, ease of use for privacy...

So, if you're wondering how to keep a forum active. You have to put in the work, make the topics RELEVANT, and if nobody stays active, be willing to throw in the towel and call it a day.

This might be the last forum account I ever bother myself with. Too many 'stupid' 'self-serving idiots', who think the world is supposed to revolve around them, expecting people to solve problems for them they could easily have Googled if they even bothered to put that much effort into solving their own problems.

Believe it or not, that's how many of the solutions are aquired these days. A bored computer tech logs into a forum account with nothing better to do, sees a post asking for help with problems that seem easy/simple/trivial to them, (easily resolved by using Google), and does the legwork for the lazy sob's that can't figure out how to type a proper search question and follow it to a useable conclusion. Then filters the answer based on their own knowledge, to sugarcoat the answer, and make it easy for even an idiot to comprehend. Then, when said idiot responds, that they don't know how to fix their own problems based on simple logic, lays it out even simpler, so a 5 year old can understand it..

I hope you get my point.

I might seem jaded and burned out, but just read some of "Patio's" posts and you will see what I'm talking about.

Btw, that's how I feel about the question you asked, but I'm trying to be nice...A lot of those "new users" might be spammers.I've noticed that forums are generally quieter than they used to be, especially computer forums. I think this shows that computers aren't so problematical these days. Hardware and software, by and large, just works better and more reliably than it used to. Think back to the W.95 - XP - Windows 7 - 8 days and there were always comparisons to be made, discussed and argued over. People asking how to make the change, should they make the change etc. Praising or rubbishing various releases. A lot of that seems to be subsiding now and a much more stable situation exists.

I can see that a tech person could become bored with that and I've often said there is nothing more BORING than a computer that works properly, although that might be just mine because I have nothing really useful to do on it ..and it does just work.

Regarding answering questions and helping, yes people could search for answers themselves but I think sometimes, the pages they find won't always be the best ones. Far better that an experienced tech person searches out the best links/pages on their behalf, possibly along with comments based on knowledge and experience. That can be just as helpful as anything else.

I'm no tech but have had experience of some aspects of computing and it's mostly only those that I'll post about if I spot them. However I might refresh the memory with an Internet reference or two simply because the memory needs jogging. Even then, perhaps wait a day or so to see if anyone else might know more about the subject. Any pages linked to are (I hope) carefully chosen for the best information.

Forum tiredness can EXIST and having been posting in computer forums and general forums for about 24 years, there isn't quite the enthusiasm for it that there once was. I just get the odd burst of it from time to time ..like now.