I see the debate is lively again on the dying forums as to why they\u2019re dying. Some of the people complaining the loudest are the same people who have never contributed anything other than harassing beginners or pretending to be experts behind a veil of self-inflicted personal failure of some sort.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s not uncommon is the \u201cwhat\u2019s changing\u201d complaining has been going on for more than a decade and the folks who complain loudly are never the ones who are contributing. But I think at this point, contributing doesn\u2019t matter, anyway. Other mediums do more for peoples\u2019 dopamine, and the reality is that most of the people on forums were there because it felt to them like they were learning something or planning to do, and putting off doing. If most of us who have been around for a while went back to the older forums, the post volume was unreal. Woodcentral, if I recall, had post volumes in the neighborhood of 100 a day on average and gradually got to 100 a month. The other forums whether they moved at the same speed and are dead now or just have 10% of their original traffic, same story, just the details are different.<\/p>\n
Group Buying of Forums<\/strong><\/p>\n The era of cheap interest (now over) and waning forum traffic seems to have been a success for groups like Group Builder, who is tagged at the bottom of the UK forum. What happens to forums like that that continue, but with seeming indifference at the surface always confused me. What I mean by that is the forum gets new ownership, and little seems to change except for some \u201chey bro\u201d PMs appealing for cash, and the ubiquitous \u201cwe\u2019re replacing our server\u201d. I\u2019d ask them for an agreement that you\u2019ll get a picture of the dedicated server after the fact, it looks in my opinion more like an appeal for cash as part of a business plan.<\/p>\n You can belong to forums set up like that to eliminate ads without paying anything. That should be a red flag because it doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n I browse all of the forums sometimes. There are a few former members i like to observe, and I guess I shouldn\u2019t admit this, but some of them in humor more than seriousness. There isn\u2019t anything I\u2019ve read on the forums in a long time that goes into the \u201clearned\u201d category because that\u2019s just not what happens on forums with buildalongs. Unless you are copying someone building along, you\u2019re looking at something now you might apply 4 years in the future in a different context. It\u2019s kind of pointless except for entertainment.<\/p>\n So, I don\u2019t see the UK forum often because it is abysmal in terms of information level, and the indifference persists.<\/p>\n But someone on there pointed something pretty smart out in the context of private equity or VC or private capital enterprises just buying things up and putting them in a framework. And that is that most of the sites now have economic value not for the current forum members or advertisers to members, but by being set up to attract beginners who are one-offs. What\u2019s a one-off? It\u2019s someone who is looking for information to do something once and then seeks to use google to find instruction. It could be someone who wants to sharpen one thing, or someone who has no exposure to woodwork at all but just had a daughters (or son!) dribble nail polish remover on a lacquered table.<\/p>\n What\u2019s your Value as a Member?<\/strong><\/p>\n If you\u2019re a long member on a forum, telling people technique with nothing leading to a sale, the value to advertisers is low. Too, let\u2019s be realistic, when people have an issue to solve, their first thought is \u201chow far can buying get me in solving this\u201d, not, I\u2019m willing to try three or four things and they may not work. We all thought we were valuable, but what\u2019s valuable is having a giant database of posts for google to crawl so that someone searching \u2013 who knows nothing about the forum \u2013 may come across the forum when they search for \u201cruined table finish\u201d or \u201ctable finish repair\u201d. If you\u2019re a member, will you tolerate a 15 second full screen ad every time you log in? You definitely will not \u2013 you\u2019ll tolerate appeals for \u201cmoney for the server\u201d and PMs of the \u201chey brother, can you spare a dime because our costs have gone up\u201d stuff, but you wouldn\u2019t tolerate an ad. One will drive you away, the other will drive you to complain, which takes no effort to solve. You\u2019ll give up on that if the appeal doesn\u2019t occur too often.<\/p>\n We are worth less than the database of general info at this point, and realistically \u2013 if I start posting answers or Derek Cohen starts posting long build threads, the person looking to get information and a link to amazon following what to buy just isn\u2019t going to be interested.<\/p>\n Not encouraging anyone to go to the UK workshop \u2013 I have an aversion to the way the site has changed and the strategy in general, but just as a check, I browsed over to the site. As a nonregistered guest, I got a half page banner ad for Ashley furniture, four video ads and two animated perimeter banner ads. Actually, having Ashley pop up for someone looking to fix ruined furniture is pretty smart, even if the furniture itself probably leads to need for repair soon when bought new.<\/p>\n If you see someone complaining about what killed the forums and they are the type who never contributes any legitimate advice or help, ask them what their contribution has been and what they do for a day job. The honest answers probably aren\u2019t continuous employment, lots of woodworking and frustrated by too much success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I see the debate is lively again on the dying forums as to why they\u2019re dying. Some of the people complaining the loudest are the same people who have never contributed anything other than harassing beginners or pretending to be experts behind a veil of self-inflicted personal failure of some sort. What\u2019s not uncommon is … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/davidweaver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/davidweaver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/davidweaver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/davidweaver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/davidweaver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/davidweaver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/davidweaver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/davidweaver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/davidweaver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}