PM to Yaz, on how he doesn't want this forum to die.
I do wish to say something and it's just a matter of fact. This place will eventually die off. It sucks, but it's a fact. I've been here over a decade and, in that time, I've just seen the evolution of the Internet. People don't want to come to web forums to discuss anymore, it's so much easier to simply pull out their phone and post on social media. And a wrestling forum is even more susceptible to such changes because wrestling traditionally appeals to the under 25 demographic, a demographic which has grown up with mobile devices and ease of social media commentary. Even the Disqus on the main page is easier to use than signing in to a forum and posting along.
But that's only half the equation. The other half is the fact that Crave Online is not going to invest in this forum. They're not going to update our forum software with an upgraded version which is more mobile compatible. The version of software this forum runs on was released 10 years ago. The software is a decade old. Twitter was barely a year old. Instagram wouldn't be released for three more years. Google hadn't owned YouTube for even a year. George W. Bush was President. All of which to say our forum software is not friendly in today's Internet. It's old software and it's an old medium of conversation. And it's not going to change, Buffaloed essentially guaranteed that.
So the fact of the matter is this forum is going to eventually die off. It's a forum dedicated to an increasingly esoteric entertainment medium (wrestling), whose target audience are people who have been conditioned to tweet rather than register on a forum and discus, based off software a decade old. It's just inevitable. And, eventually, Crave Online will simply pull the plug on the forum, likely with no advance warning.
That's why I decided years ago to simply accept the trend and try and guide this forum along the path we're on. As you said, this forum has a fairly strong sense of community. We try to hold ourselves to a little higher standard of posting. We still do some traditional things which would appeal to younger posters, but other things are designed more to retain the users we have, rather than actively seek new users who simply aren't going to be likely to be here.
It's not ideal. It sucks, quite frankly, because I think things like Facebook and Twitter are horrible mediums to discuss wrestling. I think Disqus is a blight on the Internet. But it is what it is.
I don't mean to say all these things to seem pessimistic or that I've "given up" or anything like that. It's more of a case where I just try to provide you with a little insight on why (Slyfox note...I never finished this thought)
I do wish to say something and it's just a matter of fact. This place will eventually die off. It sucks, but it's a fact. I've been here over a decade and, in that time, I've just seen the evolution of the Internet. People don't want to come to web forums to discuss anymore, it's so much easier to simply pull out their phone and post on social media. And a wrestling forum is even more susceptible to such changes because wrestling traditionally appeals to the under 25 demographic, a demographic which has grown up with mobile devices and ease of social media commentary. Even the Disqus on the main page is easier to use than signing in to a forum and posting along.
But that's only half the equation. The other half is the fact that Crave Online is not going to invest in this forum. They're not going to update our forum software with an upgraded version which is more mobile compatible. The version of software this forum runs on was released 10 years ago. The software is a decade old. Twitter was barely a year old. Instagram wouldn't be released for three more years. Google hadn't owned YouTube for even a year. George W. Bush was President. All of which to say our forum software is not friendly in today's Internet. It's old software and it's an old medium of conversation. And it's not going to change, Buffaloed essentially guaranteed that.
So the fact of the matter is this forum is going to eventually die off. It's a forum dedicated to an increasingly esoteric entertainment medium (wrestling), whose target audience are people who have been conditioned to tweet rather than register on a forum and discus, based off software a decade old. It's just inevitable. And, eventually, Crave Online will simply pull the plug on the forum, likely with no advance warning.
That's why I decided years ago to simply accept the trend and try and guide this forum along the path we're on. As you said, this forum has a fairly strong sense of community. We try to hold ourselves to a little higher standard of posting. We still do some traditional things which would appeal to younger posters, but other things are designed more to retain the users we have, rather than actively seek new users who simply aren't going to be likely to be here.
It's not ideal. It sucks, quite frankly, because I think things like Facebook and Twitter are horrible mediums to discuss wrestling. I think Disqus is a blight on the Internet. But it is what it is.
I don't mean to say all these things to seem pessimistic or that I've "given up" or anything like that. It's more of a case where I just try to provide you with a little insight on why (Slyfox note...I never finished this thought)