I also took the same steps to make a little analysis about the activities of local board and also about the sustainability of the forum and its users for local Indonesian board.
1.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5209309.02.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5348298.0Since theymos implementing merit as a new requirement for rank and rating quality post in 2018, I've seen a decline in the forum's user base exacerbated by bounty situation, most of which ended in scam. Many local Indonesian users stopped posting and left their account especially users with low rank. That condition lasted throughout 2018 until the price of bitcoin and most altcoin began to rise in 2020.
What do you think? Do you think forum is losing userbase and this is a bad thing? Are there other reasons this is happening and other solutions?
Yes, I have seen a decrease in the user base. Even though the number of registered account has exceeded 3 million, I'm sure there are still many old users who leave this forum.
I also found data showing a decrease in the number of merit distributed on the local board as well as the number of users involved in the merit cycle since I updated that thread every month since 2021 whose data I retrieved from the DdmrDdmr Merit Dashboard. Of course it is not the best condition if we have a number of merit source scattered throughout the forum and some of them are also representative of their respective local board. But I think this is not only happening in local board, but globally this decline is clearly shown based on merit dashboard data.
I just hope that once the merit source is increased to 111 users, there will be an increase in the number of users involved in merit distribution and encourage users who have never used sMerit before to get involved in this cycle. The forum's user base may still increase if the bitcoin price hit ATH again, but the user base involved in merit distribution will not grow if user interest in using their sMerit on quality post is not stimulated.