Hello everyone!
As I am sure is clear to anyone who has been here more than a couple of years, we have been a waning community for a while. We have been struggling with traffic and visibility and therefore with new members. Peer support only works with enough peers to do the supporting, so this is an increasing problem.
What has caused the problem?
The problem has been accumulating since 2018 when Google rolled out the "medic" update. This update said that websites dealing with health-related topics needed to prove "medical authority and expertise" for the sake of safety. Websites that couldn't/didn't do this were downgraded. The core anonymity of SF meant that it was impossible for us to show the required authority.
Over the years, search engines (in particular Google) have continued to make it harder and harder for us to get new traffic:
In normal business life, if you lose your organic rankings you can run some ads, but platforms won't run ads relating to suicide, and it's in our URL, so there is no way around it.
All of which is to say: our identity is working against us. We need a new identity. We can't be "Suicide Forum" anymore.
Criteria for a New Name
Most importantly, it needed to be a name that wasn't already in use and that had an available domain name to register. This particular issue wrote off most of the names that admin considered.
Where did we land?
The crux of what we do here is to help each other to hold on through the pain and the darkness. We sit with each other through the literal and metaphorical darkest nights and support each other to keep going, even when it feels hopeless and impossible.
Statistically, suicidal thoughts and behaviours get worse from around 9pm, with self-destructive behaviours peaking around 4 am before rapidly dropping off as it gets to morning.
Where we landed is: Until Sunrise. The literal sunrise, when statistically the peak danger zone has passed and the figurative sunrise when people can finally see the growing rays of light in the darkness, however long that takes.
We are a peer support community made up of people who understand what it's like to be unable to imagine anything other than darkness and pain. We support each other to live in the times when living feels impossible. We sit with each other in the darkness, and we support each other to hold on Until Sunrise.
So now what?
We will be changing the name of the website to Until Sunrise. The website address will be untilsunrise.org
What we do here every day doesn't change. Same chat. Same forums. Same members. Same rules. Same fundamental principles.
Next Steps
There are some technical things that need to happen before the name can change, and we want to let people have a few weeks to swing by here and see this notice. We will be working hard to make sure that there is a page on the website that still ranks, somewhere, for "Suicide Forum" for when people who haven't visited for years want to look us up again.
Once we have a new name, we can reinvigorate our SEO, rebuild our link profile, run some ads that won't get immediately banned and see what traffic we can bring back to the site. We understand that forums have been replaced by social media and even chatrooms are being replaced by AI "support agents" but we are not going to go out quietly.
For those that may think that SF is already over - I was here (and older members may also remember) back in 2015 when the chat room had dwindled to the odd one or two chatters, the website wasn't even indexed in Google and we were down to fewer than 3 posts per day. We made changes. We resurrected then and we will fight to do it again.
We will update here with specific timelines as they become available.
As I am sure is clear to anyone who has been here more than a couple of years, we have been a waning community for a while. We have been struggling with traffic and visibility and therefore with new members. Peer support only works with enough peers to do the supporting, so this is an increasing problem.
What has caused the problem?
The problem has been accumulating since 2018 when Google rolled out the "medic" update. This update said that websites dealing with health-related topics needed to prove "medical authority and expertise" for the sake of safety. Websites that couldn't/didn't do this were downgraded. The core anonymity of SF meant that it was impossible for us to show the required authority.
Over the years, search engines (in particular Google) have continued to make it harder and harder for us to get new traffic:
- Forums in general have been downgraded in search.
- Suicide as a topic started to be categorised by Google in 3 ways: News, Registered Charities or Research. Ranking for suicide topics without being one of these three things has become harder and harder.
- There has been an increasing focus on semantic relevance: if a site is about healthy eating, Google expects to see words like nutrients, calories, protein, carbohydrates, vegetables etc. If a site is about suicide, Google expects to see terms related to suicide. Most of those terms feature methods, and we don't allow them.
In normal business life, if you lose your organic rankings you can run some ads, but platforms won't run ads relating to suicide, and it's in our URL, so there is no way around it.
All of which is to say: our identity is working against us. We need a new identity. We can't be "Suicide Forum" anymore.
Criteria for a New Name
- It needed to not have "suicide" in it
- It needed to be related in some way to what we do here without using any medical terms.
- It needed to not have "toxic positivity" vibes.
Most importantly, it needed to be a name that wasn't already in use and that had an available domain name to register. This particular issue wrote off most of the names that admin considered.
Where did we land?
The crux of what we do here is to help each other to hold on through the pain and the darkness. We sit with each other through the literal and metaphorical darkest nights and support each other to keep going, even when it feels hopeless and impossible.
Statistically, suicidal thoughts and behaviours get worse from around 9pm, with self-destructive behaviours peaking around 4 am before rapidly dropping off as it gets to morning.
Where we landed is: Until Sunrise. The literal sunrise, when statistically the peak danger zone has passed and the figurative sunrise when people can finally see the growing rays of light in the darkness, however long that takes.
We are a peer support community made up of people who understand what it's like to be unable to imagine anything other than darkness and pain. We support each other to live in the times when living feels impossible. We sit with each other in the darkness, and we support each other to hold on Until Sunrise.
So now what?
We will be changing the name of the website to Until Sunrise. The website address will be untilsunrise.org
What we do here every day doesn't change. Same chat. Same forums. Same members. Same rules. Same fundamental principles.
Next Steps
There are some technical things that need to happen before the name can change, and we want to let people have a few weeks to swing by here and see this notice. We will be working hard to make sure that there is a page on the website that still ranks, somewhere, for "Suicide Forum" for when people who haven't visited for years want to look us up again.
Once we have a new name, we can reinvigorate our SEO, rebuild our link profile, run some ads that won't get immediately banned and see what traffic we can bring back to the site. We understand that forums have been replaced by social media and even chatrooms are being replaced by AI "support agents" but we are not going to go out quietly.
For those that may think that SF is already over - I was here (and older members may also remember) back in 2015 when the chat room had dwindled to the odd one or two chatters, the website wasn't even indexed in Google and we were down to fewer than 3 posts per day. We made changes. We resurrected then and we will fight to do it again.
We will update here with specific timelines as they become available.