TAY Ski Reports Declining- Why?

TR's per year: 2019- 53, 2018- 67, 2017- 82, 2016- 94, 2015- 84, 2014- 106, 2013- 124, 2012- 149, 2011- 161, 2010- 141, 2009- 174, 2008- 202, 2007- 158, 2006- 121, 2005- 98, 2004- 103, 2003- 93, 2002- 43, 2001-43.

High month number of reports per year according to stats listed on site today. Mostly increasing up from 2001 to 2008, then flat to down-ish from 2009 to this year. Snow years have an impact to be sure from year to year, but is BC skiing sliding downhill (sorry!)? Is detailing every last aspect of an adventure declining in popularity? Or is something else leading to a decline in TR's?

Seems there have been some site issues too.

Possible reasons:

+ Growth of social media
+ Clunky old TAY software
+ Episodic trolling
+ Overcrowding in the backcountry
+ Aging TAY community
+ Others?

I'm one of those who has become more active on social media in recent years, though I'm not very active there in terms of trip reports. I think social media (e.g. Facebook) is a lousy place to post trip reports because it's really hard to find them after a short while. As an amateur journalist and historian, I value looking up old reports and social media really sucks for that.

I think if you look at a histogram of TAY trip reports and compare it to the usage of social media, you'll find that the former went down when the latter went up.

I think updating the TAY platform would help, though it might not return to its former stature without injecting some serious marketing and community building effort. There's too much competition for eyeballs out there.

I think there's a place for storytelling in the ski community that social media doesn't satisfy. I'd like to see TAY continue to provide that.

I think maybe the current online culture is changing so that people only tend to post about the most impressive trips, leaving out the simpler trips that everyone else has done like "just skied Silver Peak in May" or whatever. Ironically, those simpler trip reports are often the most useful though, as it's most likely that someone else will want to do them.

Social media has taken a lot of users away from the site but think the proposed redesign could invigorate the community. TAY is highly recognized in the ski community and has to potential to flourish. Good history here. There are young users but dont post much. Personally not a fan of FB and hope to shift things back to a ski specific site. Only way to change it is to post more trip reports directly on TAY!

Another factor is that the "kids" today strongly discourage posting TRs on social media. That's why you don't see may TRs on the FB version of this site.

Although it could be improved, I still think TAY is the best platform for sharing information regarding BC skiing. It's a shame that use of the site has declined as social media has exploded, since none of the social media platforms organize the content and posts are quickly lost as time passes.
My favorite place to post trip reports and research for mountain climbing is now peakbaggers.com. Mainly because trip reports are associated with a peak, making it very easy to locate all the trip reports ever posted on that peak. That approach wouldn't translate well to BC skiing since most trips aren't associated with a peak, but the search function on TAY is a pretty good system for researching past trip reports for a particular area/peak.