Time For Me To Step Down

[Celegorm]

These rules?

That would be them!

 

[Andy R]

I'll be keeping a close eye on how you go about things here and what you do.

Great, you will see we are reasonable and fair and plan to listen to the members and try to get this place going again.

You have a monster job ahead of you here. The hack wasn't all that bad. It's the collateral damage that brought it to where it is now.

We arrived without any prior knowledge of the history or other issues. I can only assume the site was much more active at some point because there are 1 million posts (in total) and in August 2005 there were nearly 23k post and last month there were just 2,375 posts. It looks like the slow down was gradual over many years with a couple of steep drops. Usually those drops correlate with some drama or something that happened that might have caused some members to leave. Do you have any insight on the past that might help us avoid similar issues in the future?

 

[setishock]

You have a PM.

 

[root]

Do you have any insight on the past.

it's a very long story...

very very long...

There is not a single reason, but instead rather a long list of little reasons as to why this place went down hill since then...

the long and the short of it, (clearly) is that more people left than joined so the active member base has dwindled.

 

[Lowndsey]

The main thing that was always the biggest issue was the average age of the members. The majority have always been mid to late teens. They leave school and go on to college and get jobs etc and drift away from spending their life on a forum.

 

[Lowndsey]

it's a very long story...

very very long...
.

hahahahahaha that's an understatement


are we able to get our auto merge put back on?

 

[Dngrsone]

I get the felling that I am lucky to have been away during that period...

 

[root]

no. They were good times...

just not good times for all.

I think that it's probably safe to say that a few mistakes were made, a few attitudes were left unchecked for too long and a few pots simmered over...

I was just as guilty as anyone else at the time too. (sometimes still am now guilty of having a bit of an attitude problem.)

A lot of members were lost, (some banned, some just signed off permanently) some very good members, some not so good members were lost too.

 

[Dngrsone]

Ah. Been there, done that...

 

[mikee]

Its a little weird seeing admins with post counts of 7 lol we may have lost an admin but gained 2 more so heres to many more years of CF. In my long time here I certainly have seen some ups and downs.