Changes

As noted above, the RationalWiki Moderator Bongolian wrote at RationalWiki: "Over time, RW has clearly become less snarky over time, particularly in 2017 when the Scientific Point of View became favored over the Snarky Point of View when there was any issue over SPOV." <ref>[https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=RationalWiki:Saloon_bar&diff=2477600&oldid=2477597 Revision as of 06:33, 14 August 2022 (edit) (undo) Bongolian (talk | contribs) (→‎Rationalwiki should tone down on the snark.)]</ref>

As noted above, the RationalWiki Moderator Bongolian wrote at RationalWiki: "Over time, RW has clearly become less snarky over time, particularly in 2017 when the Scientific Point of View became favored over the Snarky Point of View when there was any issue over SPOV." <ref>[https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=RationalWiki:Saloon_bar&diff=2477600&oldid=2477597 Revision as of 06:33, 14 August 2022 (edit) (undo) Bongolian (talk | contribs) (→‎Rationalwiki should tone down on the snark.)]</ref>

As noted above, worldwide searches for RationalWiki did not go up post 2017 despite RationalWiki adopting a less snarky point of view (see graphic above). But as noted above, RationalWiki tripled its organic traffic from 2017 to late 2019 in a big way and then something happened to cause a massive decrease in organic traffic in November 2019 (See: [[RationalWiki and Google referral traffic]]). In addition, starting in June of 2020, the Google search term "RationalWiki" started seeing a big drop.

As noted above, worldwide searches for RationalWiki did not go up post 2017 despite RationalWiki adopting a less snarky point of view (see graphic above). But as noted above, RationalWiki tripled its organic traffic from 2017 to late 2019 in a big way and then something happened to cause a massive decrease in organic traffic in November 2019 and beyond (See: [[RationalWiki and Google referral traffic]]). In addition, starting in June of 2020, the Google search term "RationalWiki" started seeing a big drop.

Although RationalWiki is strictly not an atheist/agnostic website and it has some [[theism|theist]] contributors, it is worth noting that worldwide Google searches for the term "atheist" began to see a steady and consistent decline from the period April 2015 to 2018 before largely leveling off again (see graphic above). So RationalWiki decision to use a less snarky point of view may have had a modest effect. Starting in June of 2020, the Google search term "RationalWiki" started seeing a big drop and so the use of a less snarky point of view seems to have had little to no effect on its brand awareness during this time.  

Although RationalWiki is strictly not an atheist/agnostic website and it has some [[theism|theist]] contributors, it is worth noting that worldwide Google searches for the term "atheist" began to see a steady and consistent decline from the period April 2015 to 2018 before largely leveling off again (see graphic above). So RationalWiki decision to use a less snarky point of view may have had a modest effect. Starting in June of 2020, the Google search term "RationalWiki" started seeing a big drop and so the use of a less snarky point of view seems to have had little to no effect on its brand awareness during this time (But RationalWiki's massive decrease in organic traffic beginning in November 2019 somewhat clouds this issue).  

In June of 2022, SimilarWeb reported that RationalWiki received about 40% of its traffic from the United States. Given that most of the websites with a large amount of traffic and most of the news websites with a very large amount of traffic need to know about RationalWiki in order to mention RationalWiki, RationalWiki's loss of an enormous amount of Google referral traffic makes it less likely that such websites will mention RationalWiki in the future.  Also, trust in major news organization is very low in the United States at this time.<ref>[https://www.axios.com/2022/07/08/news-republicans-democrats-trust-partisanship Trust in news collapses to historic low], Axios, 2022</ref> Furthermore, the [[atheist movement]] has died (see: [[Decline of the atheist movement]]).

In June of 2022, SimilarWeb reported that RationalWiki received about 40% of its traffic from the United States. Given that most of the websites with a large amount of traffic and most of the news websites with a very large amount of traffic need to know about RationalWiki in order to mention RationalWiki, RationalWiki's loss of an enormous amount of Google referral traffic makes it less likely that such websites will mention RationalWiki in the future.  Also, trust in major news organization is very low in the United States at this time.<ref>[https://www.axios.com/2022/07/08/news-republicans-democrats-trust-partisanship Trust in news collapses to historic low], Axios, 2022</ref> Furthermore, the [[atheist movement]] has died (see: [[Decline of the atheist movement]]).