An offer to the SDMB and the Teeming Millions

[Liberal]

@Liberal

Samclem was a bit over-dramatic, but it’s no big deal.

That was Marley. :smack:

[Arnold_Winkelried]

@Stink Fish Pot

But one of these offshoot websites might actually stick, and when that happens, this place will go dark quickly (the message board, not the SD site itself).

From my own personal experience, the offshoot boards do not grow, they don’t attract a lot of new members. There have been many offshoot boards in the past, some created at times when performance of the SDMB was much much worse than it was now, and the SDMB has not gone dark. The fact of the matter is, the long-term prognosis for an offshoot board is not that great, if you judge by past experience. My theory is that the SD columns and archive bring in new posters, and the offshoot boards don’t have that. The splinter boards suffer from member attrition but don’t have a built-in mechanism to bring in new members.

[Fenris]

@Seven

We use virtual systems all the time in our datacenter for testing and production. In fact, giraffeboards.com is running in a virtual environment and I have a copy of it is set aside. If I ever wanted to test something I can fire up the copy, give it another IP address and play to my hearts content.

So our [del]battleplan[/del], [del]simulation[/del], [del]plan[/del] purely hypothetical completely abstract idea for overthrowing Giraffe and feeding his corpse to the wombats while we change “Giraffeboards” to “Fenris’s All-Night Pornserv-O-Rama: FREE PORN FOR THE MASSES!” is still on track?

Good.

[sub]Let’s remember we need to keep it quiet![/sub]

[glee]

@Arnold_Winkelried

From my own personal experience, the offshoot boards do not grow, they don’t attract a lot of new members. There have been many offshoot boards in the past, some created at times when performance of the SDMB was much much worse than it was now, and the SDMB has not gone dark. The fact of the matter is, the long-term prognosis for an offshoot board is not that great, if you judge by past experience. My theory is that the SD columns and archive bring in new posters, and the offshoot boards don’t have that. The splinter boards suffer from member attrition but don’t have a built-in mechanism to bring in new members.

I think that’s a fair point.

Nevertheless, having many offshoot boards suggests that there are regular problems that weaken the SDMB.
If these were solved, it would be a bigger, better board. It would bring in more adverts. This would bring in more money!

[Liberal]

@Arnold_Winkelried

From my own personal experience, the offshoot boards do not grow, they don’t attract a lot of new members. There have been many offshoot boards in the past, some created at times when performance of the SDMB was much much worse than it was now, and the SDMB has not gone dark. The fact of the matter is, the long-term prognosis for an offshoot board is not that great, if you judge by past experience. My theory is that the SD columns and archive bring in new posters, and the offshoot boards don’t have that. The splinter boards suffer from member attrition but don’t have a built-in mechanism to bring in new members.

I believe your theory is correct. In fact, that’s exactly how I came in — a link from Bad Astronomer’s website, and then reading the articles.

HOWEVER, times have changed since then. The board I came to is not the board of today. There were no picayune Pit rules with (of all things) forbidden words. The software was behind, but not THAT behind. The server was not particularly speedy, but it never crashed, at least until the big one. We didn’t have to wait 5 minutes between searches just because we checked “Show threads” and meant to check “Show posts”. We could Pit mods for their rulings. We were a much tighter community than we are now, I believe. Sure, there’s a core membership. But even people in that group are becoming tired of server timeouts, database timeouts, 404 errors, crashes, onerous rules that differ from forum to forum, and so on and so on. I’m just saying it’s not the Roach Motel that it used to be. And some of the fun has been just slapped right out of it. I guess I care because, after ten years, it feels like home to me. And I hate seeing my home deteriorating just because we don’t have the good sense to use a maid when we need help.

[aldiboronti]

@Liberal

Due respect, aldiboronti, but behind the scenes to whom? Who among the admins has the expertise necessary to comprehend the offer Seven has made? Using the car analogy again, it’s like the mechanic offering to fix your brake pads. If you don’t know what those are and why you need them, how can you make an informed decision?

Among the “teeming millions” are lawyers, doctors, and Indian chiefs. And a few IT professionals. We are saying that this offer is a once-in-a-lifetime complete car overhaul. You drive in with a junker; you drive out with a Rolls Royce. Seven is the Chip Foose of computers.

I do take your point. I can just see more bad feeling being stirred up if this very public offer is rejected.

[What_Exit]

@Arnold_Winkelried

From my own personal experience, the offshoot boards do not grow, they don’t attract a lot of new members. There have been many offshoot boards in the past, some created at times when performance of the SDMB was much much worse than it was now, and the SDMB has not gone dark. The fact of the matter is, the long-term prognosis for an offshoot board is not that great, if you judge by past experience. My theory is that the SD columns and archive bring in new posters, and the offshoot boards don’t have that. The splinter boards suffer from member attrition but don’t have a built-in mechanism to bring in new members.

Actually the Giraffe Board is doing very well. Mellophant/Domebo not so much but we basically just started over and are trying to go our own way now. GB has a lot of traffic, views and posting.

BTW, can we use the term spin-off instead of splinter. I am trying to remove the idea of confrontation and competition. I’m not saying that is not how Domebo started, but I don’t believe that is what Mellophant is at this point. We are just a tiny board/community with ties to the SDMB. If the Dope should go dark for any reason, these spin-off boards are places somewhat familiar that posters can head to. The fact there are many choices is not bad.

[TubaDiva]

@Muffin

Common sense suggests that you are in a conflict of interest, and therefore should clearly state when you are speaking as a poster or as an SDMB offiial. This is a discussion board, and this is the forum on this board to discuss this board. Liberal was doing so. You and Marley, who are both in conflict of interest positions, have essentially told him to quit putting forth his opinon. What is common sense to me is that the two of you should clearly set out whether this is your personal opinion or that it is a direction by an authority for the SDMB.

There is no “conflict of interest.” Moderators and administrators work on the site but we do not decide who works here in a technical capacity. We do not own this website.

You must have missed this:

@TubaDiva

This is something that can in no way be decided by the Teeming Millions or by the staff – it’s not our call to make, not any of us.

Since neither the staff nor the community has a say in this choice – none of us having hiring authority – speculation on that decision is not useful. Chicken-Little-like comments (“we’re gonna die!”) create discomfort and concern in the community and that’s not helpful either. There’s more appropriate places for that sort of drama.

Finally, let me point out that this is a business, the Straight Dope is owned by a corporation. What company would give some stranger unfettered access to their computers, computers that have not only website and message board information but other data as well? The Straight Dope shares server space with other CL material and always has. CL is a privately owned company – as the Chicago Reader was before it – and does not as a matter of routine share information with the public.

This is Ed’s call. It’s not our call. As such, I am closing this thread awaiting resolution by the man who can make this decision.