Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
The problem with someone buying it is, the money they have tied up in it needs to pay back somehow. Hence the pressure to increase traffic and get more clicks on more ads.
Back in the early days the DS forums were not so very different than here. DS obviously had a broader subject matter and appeal and grew larger than we did. But we have always been a privately owned site run because we just want to do it basically .... we advertise to cover costs but we have no investments to repay and no staff wages. So as social media has put old fashioned bulletin boards under pressure they have had further to fall and more to lose, and we have been able to sustain (modestly) lower visitor numbers without cutting back on what matters, namely your daily dose of forum banter.  |
I think you're absolutely spot on there Chris.
I don't know why Hearst thought that transferring their frivolous subject matter from their paper magazines to a forum built primarily on an interest in technology and media would work.
In addition to all the aforementioned external pressures faced by CF and other forums, it has had to face competition from the launch of the VM Community Forums, yet has still survived.
I guess that this forum is also lucky in that Paul does the technical side of things, the DS search facility has been broken for yonks, they are aware of it, but there are no plans to fix it!
Surely it wouldn't cost that much; it's so unprofessional for a forum not to have such a basic thing as a search facility- there are duplicate threads all over the place.
If nobody reports them, they just get left because it's only reactively moderated.