Baldrick I’ve not signed in since the move but I’ve used it once or twice as a search engine to get answers to my more “beginner” questions.
Unsurprising that things have become toxic when the heart of it has been removed.
I think once the moderators (me Systemic and Rob left), then posting started to return to type, sometimes from new members and also from other members who ought to know better. We would never have let it go that far. I’m quite glad we have all moved on and so far in our community, there has been no need to moderate anything and hopefully it will stay that way. Moderation is one of the least interesting aspects of a forum.
I think the thing to make absolutely clear to people is: Vertical are a large corporate, they don’t care if the forum dies, it makes no difference to their bottom line. They will show 7 adds boxes per page that change to give 14 impressions. Every page you look at will generate 14 impressions if you spend any time on it. They advertise almost anything, and high value stuff.
- If you use an ad blocker, they don’t care, the ads are still served and they get paid for the impressions. They make money every time you look, or will once they migrate the forum.
- If no one ever posts, they don’t care (you have seen the dead forums in the links I gave)
- The supposed honeypot of data attracts new fish, who join post a few times and leave due to a dead forum
- The actual data and data quality isn’t important, just the SEO…they keywords used, as it acts like a fishing net when people do searches. Quantity not quality
- You can’t hurt them or their bottom line
- They did suffer a massive data breach, but there shouldn’t be any private data on there to concern you
I didn’t set up this forum to hurt them, or even try to hurt them. I set this up to give us a community space that wasn’t commoditised. I’m fed up with helping forum owners who crap on the membership. I have seen with amazement mention of the good old days by a few, who have no idea of how much the first forum owner crapped on them before selling up to Tait, for a lot of money, and I mean a LOT.
It might help set an example to other communities/forums…I don’t know. All I do know is, this felt like the right thing to do.
I certainly don’t want to give Vertical any more data to monetise for their corporate pockets. UK forum, Canadian company, even their taxes are not paid here, and soon the forum will migrate to Xenforo and be a standard “cookie cutter forum” hosted in Canada. They always seem to find volunteer moderators to help paid admins who have 30 forums to manage or possibly much more (keeps their costs to the minimum). I felt sorry for the Moderator with almost 9K posts on the GTA Aquariums forum, she was obviously an active member before they took over, and it took her a while to realise what was going on and stop posting..but eventually the dead forum sucked the life out of her.
I am sure they will find moderators for CFUK and good luck to them…me I will just look on and shake my head in amazement. The 3 of us moderators managed to save CFUK from closure, make it profitable…We had no choice, and still it was sold, for short term gain and a community destroyed.
I’m not angry, but after almost 20 years of non-profit in coffee, as a hobby, I do get fed up with the bull I see spouted from all those making money from it. Patrick Rob and I have proved we can run a forum well and create a community space…and we will continue to do our best here..
