tompoland - there are many others which they haven’t removed.
What corporates can do when they monetise a forums data
- Edited
tompoland 11 hours this post has been on CFUK … not a moderator in sight.
I think they are being all-inclusive 😆
The paid admin probably has 40 forums to manage, perhaps more…they do need to keep their costs down. I notice they did the important things, for whatever advertisers are left, they have removed the banners links to the home pages of those advertisers, and they now point to seemingly random pages on the site. Other advertisers have been prevented from renewing.
As usual, they communicate with no one…absolutely don’t care, they bought the database of posts, not a forum. Those still posting are simply trying to breathe life into the corpse of CFUK and helping line corporate pockets. It’s unfortunate, because although we can’t damage VS, as they got what they paid for, an internet billboard full of words that act as a net for the search engines, it doesn’t show others what happens when a forum is taken over.
I look through the internet, littered with dead forums, the main visitors being 1 post wonders who join (because a search led them there) expecting a community, and find a ghost town. Forums which seem to survive are those that are either business backed, or where historic data is of some value. If more communities do the same as us, or don’t set themselves up as a commodity that can be sold in the first place, the better it will be for the future of forums.. It’s why I set up a donation link to freeflarum.com as they made this possible.
It’s very difficult for people to believe what the VS agenda actually is and how they make money….but it’s definitely not by providing a community with a shared interest….which is what a forum is all about. It’s why I have not posted on there since we left…I don’t want to give them any more traffic.
I think when they finally migrate away from Invision (which they clearly don’t have the skills to administer), to Xenforo, their standard platform, that will be an interesting time.
This site after only 3 weeks has 3 times as many posts per day than CFUK, it shows how many people realised CFUK is not where they want to be any more.
P.S. dead forums do eventually go down in the search rankings, some of those I found have not had an admin even visit them for months. There is no spam because spammers find forums by inputting keywords. If they are low down in the rankings….they don’t come up. Once our forum is fully crawled by the googlebots, we will start getting more spam.
Just as an example, apart from @Rob1 purposeful posting late last night to spread the word about our forum, CFUK has had 17 posts today…so far we have had 72. Even if you add in robs sterling effort of 10 posts, that’s still only 27.
Of those CFUK posts 1 was spam, and 6 were from 1st time posters, plus a couple of for sale posts.
I think technically my posts were spam so that’s 11 spam posts to 17 genuine posts.
I had no idea about this stuff. Very sad. Going to exit CFUK. Unfortunately the faster it dies the better. No interest in supporting people like that.
Hmmmm…. How the heck does one cancel a CFUK account?
I don’t know Tom, this is a long but very interesting read.
https://bardsandsages.com/juliedawson/?p=1982
tompoland , @DavecUK - if you scroll up on this thread to 6 days ago, you’ll see what you need to do to have your account erased in CFUK.
It’s a shame but there seems to be no way to link back to a post. Maybe there’s an extension @DavecUK ? also, linking back to dead forums is giving VS SEO ranking. 😉
- Edited
hornbyben Just to let you know. I’ve just heard back from verticalscope. They have deleted my account, and the posts I
MediumRoastSteam it already exists, find the post highlight a few words or a sentence, click quote and thats it. The image below shows you how.
MediumRoastSteam Thanks, done!
DavecUK it already exists
Thanks! I didn’t know if you clicked it would also go back to he post. That’s a neat feature. But, what about if I wanted to link to a post not on this thread?
tompoland Unbelievable, these people are like a plague of locusts.
Yes, in a way worse (like the Borg)…they could, without meaning to, cause the destruction of forums as we know them. as they move from community> commodity. It should be clear to members of the other forum now, that they simply do not care about coffee, the community or the members. They don’t deal with spam, they have never communicated with the mod team, all they have done is make things worse/non-functional, advertisers banners being a prime example. There is still the clusterfeck of migration to their Xenforo forum system to come!!
I noticed when the mods decanted from there to here, there were a few, lets say, not so kind comments (from mainly previously banned members), but make no mistake, morally, the 3 of us could no longer put up with what VS were doing to members and advertisers. I’m sure people initially thought it was all going to be good, and it can’t be true…but there’s enough material on the web to show it’s SOP for them.
I have said we cannot damage them as a corporate… which is only partly true:
What I meant is the damage we do is meaningless in the scheme of things, but what we say and have done will be seen by others. They will have a blueprint for saving their community. The most important thing, is to do it as we did…really fast (with signposts to the new forum), before the forum is migrated and before all the core users drift away one by one, lost forever. I was lucky in that I have review sites, web sites, a Wiki and YouTube channel which could have their links changed to this forum instead of the old one. Which will help us until we rank higher in the search engines.
The other area of potential damage is their monetisation of the database…they probably hope to get their money back in 3 to 5 years. A forum they assimilate often takes 2-3 years or longer to die (because misplaced user loyalty keeps breathing life into the thing). This means the database can be heavily monetised long enough to get a +ve return, or at least their money back. They probably paid in 45K to 50K for the forum (possibly more, as Tait made a small profit over the very large sum he paid Glenn). If a forum dies within months, or even under 2 years…I would imagine they make a loss. With few new posters, they gradually move down the SEO rankings and fewer adverts are served because they come up in searches a little less. As money is made by the adverts they serve (adblockers don’t affect that, the ad is still served, you just don’t see it).
As much as I hate to see a forum die, it’s the best thing for the other forum. I am pleased to say, after 3 weeks it’s almost dead, where our daily post count is now often 5-8 times theirs…we had 160 posts yesterday to their 18 or so (of which a few were spam). This post is as much information us, as it is members of other forums facing assimilation, showing them there is a free way to keep their community together.
The activities of the Borg upset me, and I always deal with upsets like that constructively
@
MediumRoastSteam Thanks! I didn’t know if you clicked it would also go back to he post. That’s a neat feature. But, what about if I wanted to link to a post not on this thread?
Rob1 It’s probably the best bottled water. You’ll need to descale the service boiler though, a fairly simple task however you do it (removing fixture or just filling with the pump).
Like this?
DavecUK Here is what you do
Bingo! Thank you!
I wonder if someone could make up a down-loadable ‘standard’ avatar that we could use on CFUK directing folk here?