But, isn’t that exactly how it happens?
Not in my opinion. A place gets popular because it has something to draw people in and then has an atmosphere that keeps “good” or “interesting” posters around, however one wants to define those adjectives.
Eta: there can be a point where the interesting community IS the draw but that’s not the first step.
Gah … I need to come into ATMB more often … completely missed Cecil & Ed’s farewell last week.
William Poundstone (Big Secrets series) once complimented Cecil Adams as a “fellow vade mecum author” beloved by those curious about the world around them. "Vade mecum" being Latin for “go with me”, as in “go wherever I go”.
That’s been my experience with Cecil Adams and The Straight Dope since discovering his first two books in the LSU bookstore at the dawn of the 1990s. I’ve moved households ten times in my life since then, and The Straight Dope books always end up back at my bedside to read, research, and re-read again and again. I’ve brought his books to more appointments than I can count so that I may productively kill time. Before Snopes and Google and all that made checking facts instantaneous, I’d sometimes have occasion to show friends passages from the books either to fight ignorance or to share a laugh – and sometimes both.
Farewell to the column. It will be very much missed, as this thread attests.
Mr. Adams and Mr. Zotti: thanks for over four decades worth of ignorance-fighting ideas. And for demonstrating the value of cultivating a healthy skepticism about the world around us.
A lifetime vBulletin license costs $250. My board‘s hosting costs $350/year. For our traffic and database size, that is more than enough — searches are instantaneous, pages load quickly, etc. Without the 20 million post database, I’m guessing the SDMB could be hosted on something similar to start, and then migrate to a VPS or dedicated server if traffic grew enough. That would cost between one and several hundred dollars per month. Not cheap, but very doable if the community was willing to pay a subscription fee or chip in at regular fundraising drives.
And CarnalK, this would be a way to keep the existing community going, not a plan to grow it. Message boards are not a growth industry.
I think the Dope needs to have it’s history of posts, ie the full database. Don’t You?
Take it for what it’s worth, but according to Ahrefs the SD has monthly traffic of 330 K, and 1.3 million organic keywords in the google database that it ranks for. There is definitely a monetary value that exceeds the cost of maintanence.
Just checking in as a civilian. There’s no reason to think the SDMB is going away any time soon. Last time I checked, there was ample revenue to cover the costs, and the mods remain on the job. Whether message boards in general are a long-term good bet I don’t profess to know. People think baseball’s on the way out too, but I spent a pleasant evening at Wrigley the other day (Cubs won), and my thought was: this hasn’t come to the end of the road yet.
so when is the empire going to take over the city ?
Hey, Ed! I’ll add mine to the chorus of THANKS for all the specifics and all the years. I too will eagerly buy the next book, whenever.
And I’m encouraged that you, with something of an inside view, believe predictions of gloom for the SDMB are premature. That’s quite a good thing! But I am familiar enough with corporate entities to know full well that many decisions are made capriciously, sometimes in contradiction to the actual best interests of the company. Somebody gets confused, somebody gets a wild hair, somebody misunderstands direction… CYA takes effect and {something terrible} happens. “So sad, too bad, move on!”
So I’m also glad to know that there’s a relatively simple, not terribly expensive, alternative if that occurs. If this site suddenly returns a 404, I’ll look for a rallying thread at Giraffe’s place.
I’ll be here until they turn the lights out, but thank you, Giraffe, for offering Plan B.
Well, dang, that doesn’t sound right…
Damn, I don’t come up to ATMB enough. Thanks for the awesome columns over the years. They are what drew me to this amazing community.
Out of curiosity, if **Ed **isn’t the Administrator anymore, who is? Who becomes final arbiter if things go south in a thread? Who’s picking new Mods and giving them their og-like powers?
What do we do if all the mods decide to quit en masse? :eek:
[Why yes, I was Chicken Little in a current life. Why do you ask?]
I’m even more worried about who stays on the back of IT if the server goes down or a backup fails. Who remembers to renew the agreements with PayPal so the dues keep getting processed? Who yells at the ad provider when penis enlargement banner ads creep into the rotation? Who tells the lawyer to send a sharply worded letter when yet another mirror site pops up somewhere?
In short, who will be The Powers That Be?
Another 20 years of the sdmb might be rather sad. Think of all the death announcements.
( My Bolding added ) Well- SOMEONE’s wearing their Judgey pants today, huh? 
It’s a good question. Have we also lost our long-suffering I.T. maven?
I’ll do it.
All I ask is that I be referred to as ‘Your Magnificence’ and someone sent me a bar of chocolate once a month or so
So greed has taken over? A coffee cup isn’t enough?
I would happily volunteer were this ten years ago and I was poorly/completely unsupervised at work, but I’ll help with the SDSAB stuff.
I want a coffee cup too…and a pony.
That’s a very generous offer, so thank you. Although I do have the problem that your site has long been a haven for snarky gossip about other people and cyber-bullies. So until that changes I will not be taking you up on your offer. I have no desire to go where I am clearly unwelcome not by you, but by other members of your forum.
Don’t worry. If this place dies then the snarky gossip section of GiraffeBoards will die with it so it’s all good.
Moderator Note
Let’s have no more discussion of Giraffeboards in this thread, please. We’re getting into long-standing issues which will only derail this thread.