When a forum is sold to the corporates like Vert\*\*\*\*\*\* this is what happens, because it's the database they want, not the users. The database is the honeypot for the search engines. https://www.hockeyforum.com/ This was a huge active forum now it's absolutely dead…like the Parrot. [URL=https://i.imgur.com/m9uQzag.jpg][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/m9uQzag.jpg[/IMG][/URL] It's had 8 posts in the last 4 months, mostly by people who join, post a couple of times and move on because they get no reply. [URL=https://i.imgur.com/5DHw4Hj.jpg][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/5DHw4Hj.jpg[/IMG][/URL] This is when the head admin last posted, The other admin appointed 7 months ago has made 19 posts the last one to a 1 post wonder 22 days ago. The whole place a monument to how the corporates can destroy online communities…do they care no, because it's slathered in adverts, it's a billboard sprayed heavily in search engine attractant. Effectively the forum itself is like a huge spambot. It's quite depressing.

Thank goodness Dave, that you have publicly stated that this will never happen to this forum. You ensure that by using a totally free hosting. By not forming a Limited Company…….let us talk a little here. It is just my view but to turn a forum into a Limited Company suggests either the owners are worried about being sued, therefore seeking to limit their liability, or more likely, they think it is easier to sell on one sufficient growth has occurred. Sometimes it is much easier to be transparent akin to the way we have tried to raise funds from the forum to be passed on in entirety to Flarum, than raise funds which are passed on to the Limited Company then lost from view. I wonder which business model will be around the longest?

@"DavecUK"#p736 It’s sad the way the established forums become irrelevant. Some good observations and questions from @"dfk41"#p748 IMO, which we all know, limited companies despite their limited liabilities, have to be profit driven. The firm will also have to discharge the responsibilities, governance, file tax returns, … within the defined set of parameters; these costs money and hence the profit motive. It’s difficult not to give-in to the temptations of selling, if a good offer comes around. The current model, I think, is better, although it creates a dependency, setting in motion a what if scenario. We don’t know how much it costs to keep them going. The third option is a non-profit organisation route, whose duties and responsibilities are similar to that of the limited firm. Is there a fourth option, which is not profit-driven, not requiring non-profit org registrations and legal responsibilities route, free us from the dependency and yet continue what we do? It will cost though. The biggest challenge is finding finances to keep it afloat. We know some one will have to pay to keep the forum running. Either the forum members will have to fund enough to cover all *a to z* costs or let it funded by sponsors and adverts. There are no free lunches, I am afraid. 😊

let’s not forget we don’t have any control over this. At any point our hosts might decide to switch their servers off and we will need to find another home. What coffeetime shows us is that there’s no second intentions behind the scene here. We are here because we enjoy coffee. If our hosts go - we hope they never do! - we will just have to find another home and start again. We have a community, we proved to ourselves we can do it and that’s what it matters: the community. As the saying goes, it’s about the people, not the building.

@"MediumRoastSteam"#p758 Exactly

@"MediumRoastSteam"#p758 I have considered that possibility and already identified a paid hosting plan should anything happen. We can simply take the database, they already have flarum loaded, I could probably have the basic forum running in a day and all extensions functioning and configured by day 2. I would then put a signpost on Tapatalk coffeetime.

@"DavecUK"#p761 Without wanting to appear a sycophant I am impressed mightily by your grasp of the forums complexities and what lengths you are prepared to go to achieve your aims. Well done. Ian

@"DavecUK"#1 Must agree with Eyedee you have put a lot of work into setting the forum up and working hard for it’s continued success. Thanks again Steve

@"DavecUK"#p761 brilliant bit of disaster planning.. straight Sod's Law…if you make all preparation for the worst, it never happens, lol

As others have said, a huge thanks to Dave for his time and efforts setting this place up it's very much appreciated

When Glenn set up CFUK in 2008, I like to think he did it to further a community spirit for all things coffee related. That said, it became clear, as time progressed, Glenn's focus began to shift IMO. Glenn was adept in maintaining the image of a forum focussed on a community aspect whilst building the forum as a profitable business evidenced when he sold it for a five figure sum. The new owner bought it as a business which understandably hacked off a number of members who bought into the community myth Glenn fostered. That said, the new owner, after getting his fingers well and truly burned, ceded responsibility for day to day running to the mods. This proved to be a two edged sword. It enabled the mods to ensure the forum wasn't taken over by a small vocal minority and, as a consequence, it thrived and attracted more paid advertising. Mods knew this would likely mean that at some point the new owner would seek to cash in and sell on which happened recently. The new owners have a very different agenda. They made no attempt to get in touch with CFUK mod team to start a dialogue/relationship - clearly it would seem the past was of no importance to them. It's a sad story but that's life - everything is reduced to monetary value - community is a term that is bandied around like confetti but the reality is the opposite. CFUK may continue but its heart has gone IMO which is why the mods decided to withdraw completely and set up this independent, not for profit, coffee community focused forum.

What corporates can do when they monetise a forums data

hornbyben

Interesting, they’re obviously getting cheesed off with our requests, as they replied to me next day. We’re obviously having an impact 😝

Meldrew

I sent my privacy email on the 29th December and have not had any confirmation from them.

DavecUK

Presumably they are getting a tad upset…

Meldrew

DavecUK

SiblingChris

I know everyone has been sending the privacy email to VS requesting account deletion but I also realised yesterday the T&Cs still say about termination that accounts aren’t ever deleted so if you don’t want it anymore don’t use it, I suppose you could change your user name and email address yourself and remove other profile details if bothered about that, you could even use a new email account make the changes on the forum and then later delete that email account…

MediumRoastSteam

SiblingChris

SiblingChris but I also realised yesterday the T&Cs still say about termination that accounts aren’t ever deleted so if you don’t want it anymore don’t use it

There’s more to it. They don’t need to delete the data. Let’s face it, once out of your hands, it’s here forever. All they have to do is to make sure they obfuscate and make your data anonymous, so there’s no way anyone can see the data and then correlate it with that being yours due to some PII not being dealt with (e.g.: historic data, data logs, snapshots, audit trails, etc).

CafeNoir

SiblingChris Funny you should say that…….lol lol

Rob1

To be honest I was never really happy with the old place. The monetisation and advertising on one side and then ‘sponsorship’ on the other. Either it’s run as a business and it makes money from users and traffic and advertising or it’s independent and relies on donations. When you run something for profit you can’t ask people to make donations and sponsor you so you can make more money.

That signatures got locked away behind paywalls irked me, especially when I had links in the signature to help people. Then there was the fact it claimed to have tens of thousands of users yet only a tiny percentage of those were active and posting….but that didn’t stop them using their inflated stats to get small businesss to pay more for adverts.

I just glad we’ve got a place that is not for profit and we’re free to discuss things without worrying we might recommend something that somebody hasn’t paid to advertise.

DavecUK

Rob1 I just glad we’ve got a place that is not for profit and we’re free to discuss things without worrying we might recommend something that somebody hasn’t paid to advertise.

Absolutely, with no costs, we are our own masters….even if we get too big for freeflarum, to run flarum on a host is inexpensive, and we will cross that bridge if/when we come to it. Even having a commercial directory and areas for specific companies is a cause for concern, and the three of us will be discussing that over the next few days/weeks.

It’s quite likely that it will go and members, who are commercial companies, will simply have a commercial tag against their name. This forum is here to benefit our community…nothing else, and it will be what we make of it..

As for the old place, they have not even migrated it to Xenforo yet, for if you didn’t like it as it is… then it’s like that old song.

If you look hard, you will spot Orlando Bloom (Legolas) on drums

HVL87

Rob1 Nicely said - my thoughts exactly.

capuchin

DavecUK To run a forum like this is inexpensive as you say, probably £50-150 a month including admin and legal costs. I say legal costs as you’d absolutely need to make it a cooperative ownership structure to prevent the same pitfalls. That way no one person would have a right to sell or advertise on it, no matter what. The server stuff is relatively easy, you’d want to pay somebody to run the backend (takes around an hour a month), and then have volunteer moderators.

Grif

DavecUK If you look hard, you will spot Orlando Bloom (Legolas) on drums

Hehe… thats uncanny!

JahLaza

@DavecUK I left a message for you in donations a couple of days ago, just wondering if you got it or if it’s not working for me?

DavecUK

JahLaza I got it, but I was just waiting to group it with any others that come in….but I shall send a paypal ff req out in the next few days.

DavecUK

capuchin To run a forum like this is inexpensive as you say, probably £50-150 a month including admin and legal costs. I say legal costs as you’d absolutely need to make it a cooperative ownership structure to prevent the same pitfalls. That way no one person would have a right to sell or advertise on it, no matter what. The server stuff is relatively easy, you’d want to pay somebody to run the backend (takes around an hour a month), and then have volunteer moderators.

Well at the moment it’s free and certainly even if it was on a paid server, it wouldn’t cost 50-100 per month, I have already found one should freeflarum ever say we’re too big, affecting other forums and have to move. Hopefully that won’t happen as I keep it lean.

The one thing I know is I’m not going to sell it…but when I can no longer run it, or no longer want to admin it…all the above stuff can be dealt with as it’s handed back to the members. At that point people will know how successful it is, how much if anything it costs to run, how they need it staffed and owned. Sadly life has taught me that some people are easily corrupted and you can never tell who they are, not geting political,<politics on> but there is a shining example in Westminster </politics>. It takes a lot of resistance when a company like VS says here’s 50-60K for your forum. I know I will tell them to get stuffed and I have to make sure it never goes into an ownership structure where people say…thanks and ride off into the sunset

So you guys can open that complex can of worms when the day comes……at the moment I’ve done my best to ensure the forum has little if any value.

There are no prebuilt migration programs for flarum to other systems that I know of
there is no url, we share the freeflarum certs and url
there are no images or documents held on the forum (why do you think Tait was so desperate to have everything held within the forum database).
The forum has no paid advertising (and soon may have no commercial directory)
I’ve already shown every member of this forum, just how easy it is to set up another one and move the entire membership to it, for “completely free”
We have given VScrote a bloody nose and word gets round, so I don’t think anyone’s even going to be offering to buy us.
I couldn’t care less about SEO, so thread name changes, tag changes, peoples name changes…I don’t care. All these things affect SEO and thus value.
I have not formed a company…in my experience, corporates need to pay a company, see accounts and suchlike

One thing I completely forgot to mention, because it should be obvious, if a profit making corporate or business entity owned this forum, it would be rapidly shut down by freeflarum as it breaks the TOS.

Rob1

It would be interesting to see if something could be done on blockchain for forums. I was looking into it but was unsure how the structure would work. In my mind the idea was to have a one time only fee for rights to post (token ownership allows interaction) and that way the forum is truly community-owned and lead. I’m not sure if there’s an application that already exists for that (I couldn’t find anything) but seems one of the most logical uses for blockchain. ARweave as the blockchain hard drive is the closest thing I could find, that and some version of tiktok. I don’t see why a forum couldn’t exist on chain, I just can’t find any examples.

LMSC

Rob1 This is a nice read.

JahLaza

Ah cool,great cheers👍

Cuprajake

Thats me done

John_Yossarian

@DavecUK Dave I did not have the slightest idea of the scale of what the corporate could do to a forum. I would call it a “forum plague”.
I have been visiting the old forum not realising that I was somehow helping their cause.
I will stop doing it, however tempting it might be sometime helping a newbie with an advice (we all have been there in the beginning) and I will stand guilty as charged.

DavecUK

John_Yossarian Dave I did not have the slightest idea of the scale of what the corporate could do to a forum. I would call it a “forum plague”.
I have been visiting the old forum not realising that I was somehow helping their cause.
I will stop doing it, however tempting it might be sometime helping a newbie with an advice (we all have been there in the beginning) and I will stand guilty as charged.

Obviously, I need to ensure I clarify some things. It’s not every forum that dies, certain types of forum will always survive e.g. the speakev forum they purchased, because it covers a huge base of all electric cars and is something that (according to the government) we will all be driving one day. It’s all very new to most people, so a forum based on that topic will flourish. In general, forums have been having a hard time of it, as most (not all) are operated to make money for someone, and many don’t make much money at all.

VS are not evil in as much as no corporate is…but they are not there to further the interests of coffee or the community. Realistically, they are there to make money…period. It’s a bit like amazon, it’s to make money, now I have no problem with Amazon and use it, because it’s a convenient way to get stuff.

Coffee is my hobby though, it’s what I do for fun in retirement….I like helping people and people got a fairly poor offering 2 decades ago, a sort of any colour as long as it’s black world. I enjoyed helping companies bring far more richness to the consumer. Much of it by helping one company, which stimulated change and innovation in others to keep up e.g. Helping design the first Izzo Duetto. So it irks me to see what keeps happening in coffee and recently more and more people in it just to make a quick buck, prepared to say anything, regardless of it being bullshit.

The VS thing was simply a step too far for me, and something I could no longer support in any way possible. The stuff I did before for Tait was purely to help keep the forum healthy, so he would hang on to it (not close it)…instead he also decided to cash out. Please remember these are my standards and right for me..I don’t expect anyone else to follow them or feel the same way, I just wanted/needed to share my thinking and rational for what I (and the other 2 mods did).

I hope that it shows other forums who get assimilated that there is another way, and it doesn’t have to revolve around money. While freeflarum.com exists, anyone can do what we did for free and a few days of their time. It might also give VS pause for thought the next time they want to assimilate a small community, and do proper due diligence to find out it wasn’t almost 30K users…not even close..

I know we all like to help people (otherwise we wouldn’t be here) and it is very tempting to answer, only natural. However, I am glad you were able to make your own mind up about what was a “step too far” to you. I for one, hugely enjoy being on this forum compared to CFUK…because it’s ours.

P.S. CFUK only has 10-20% of our posting activity each day, as more people realise, it would be nice to see that drop to only spam posts and 1 post wonders, who join and wonder why no one replies..

John_Yossarian

I have also noticed that under the Top Contributors for the last week are the names of people who had not been seen since April 2021. This should be some devious software solution.

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